Single Mom Chronicles Nov. 13th
Is it already November? I’m just….what happened?! We just had Christmas like two months ago. I still have tomatoes on the vines out there. They are refusing to die and, frankly, I’m starting to get perturbed about it. I’ll just keep ignoring them.
Amanda is coming over today. She’s got the next several days off so we’re going to play with food in the kitchen. It’s like being a kid and playing with Play Doh, but it tastes better. And there’s wine. She wants to make what she calls ‘real super fancy cheese balls’. I’ve never actually made a cheese ball so this should be fun. I’ve got some sugar pumpkins so she want to make some hand pies. So much glee today!
But for dinner tonight, I’m making slumgullion. For the record, it is NOT goulash. It is also NOT Nov. 13th. It’s Nov 8th. But I’m making up for being late last time. Anyways. Goulash is something else entirely…it’s Hungarian and uses large doses of paprika. Slumgullion has English roots and was a Depression era dish my gramma made. In England, it emerged out of the slums (hence the name) and utilized undesirable proteins like rats or pigeons. Kind of gross. One blogger claims it came from Ireland. I kind of doubt it, but who knows?! But the name does sound Irish~y. Upon further inquiry, I discovered that there is an Irish stew, and it was called Slumgullion, but it was a beef stew…yanno with red wine and carrots, potatoes, and celery….chunks of beef. I yelled at the computer screen, “Well, that’s beef stew lady! Not Slumgullion!” Others claim that it basically had no rules whatsoever and you could throw anything and everything into it. The audacity. In America, it morphed into a ground beef, onion, tomato, elbow macaroni dish, which is probably where Hamburger Helper got it’s start in the “convenience” food industry. After the travesty of Hamburger Helper emerged, the dish became the less interesting “skillet mac”. Blah.
Gramma used lots of pepper and we ate it like we’ve never seen food. As a single mom, it was a lifesaver dish that came together quickly and the leftovers were never ignored. It takes the same amount of time to make a little or a lot, so of course I always made extra. The ingredients are few, very inexpensive, and it didn’t require washing forty seven dishes, utensils, and pots and pans.
While I no longer use canned tomatoes…I mean I have a serious tomato problem here…opening a can of tomatoes right now would be ridiculous….I’ll still post canned tomatoes in the recipe just in case. As a single mom, I would have never had the time to cultivate the fresh tomato supply I have hogging up an entire chest freezer right now. I almost feel bad about it. Ok, I don’t. One day, your prince will come too….and he’ll come bearing chest freezers and a tiller.
I typed Slumgullion recipes into the Googles and I was kind of alarmed at what I found. People are using all kinds of bizarre ingredients and some of the ingredients lists are quite long. Cheese isn’t that far fetched, but cans of pork and beans? Gross. Processed spaghetti sauces, cans of tomato soup….ketchup?! Just say no. I swear I saw one pic that looked like it had bologna it. What is happening?! Resist these urges.
Slumgullion
Ingredients
- 2 lbs ground beef *see note
- 1 large sweet onion chopped
- 1 lb elbow macaroni
- 1 large can diced tomatoes or 2 fifteen oz cans diced tomatoes, or 2 lbs fresh tomatoes, or 2 lbs frozen tomatoes defrosted and chopped (I defrost them and toss them in the food processor)
- Kosher salt and pepper **see note
Instructions
- Cook the elbow macaroni in a stock pot until al dente, drain, and set aside. In the same pot, brown the ground beef with the onions and season with salt and pepper the way you like it. For this dish, I use more pepper than usual. Add the tomatoes and cook for about 20 minutes on medium heat. Add the macaroni last and taste again for salt and pepper, adding more if it needs it. That's it!
Notes
*For this dish I use the fattier ground beef. If you must use lean ground beef, you'll need to add some oil of some kind, preferably extra virgin olive oil, but vegetable oil will work, too. Use just enough to give the dish a sheen, probably about 2 tablespoons. **Upon perusing the intrawebs for how other people make this dish (if at all), I found lots of added seasonings. Feel free to add whatever seasoning you like. I grew up with just salt and heavy pepper for this dish and so that's what I like and how I make it. I've tried other ways after being made to feel lowly about the simplicity of this recipe and they just don't taste right to me. I always come back to my gramma's way....simple, easy, tasty. Let's face it, fancy doesn't always taste good and people who look down their noses at simple food aren't my people anyway so who gives a crap about those opinions.