Borscht

This is another recipe I got from allrecipes, modified a bit according to the comments, and will probably modify a bit more next time I make it. Here's what I think needs to happen.

Ingredients:
*2/3 pound beef stew meat, cut into 1/2 inch or 1 inch cubes
*3-4 beets, peeled and chopped (see #1 below)
*1 large or 2 smallish potatoes, peeled and chopped
*1/2 cup baby carrots, chopped
*1/2 white onion, chopped
*3 cloves garlic or to taste, minced
*4 cups beef broth (may not use all)
*1 6-oz can tomato paste
*1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
*4 tbsp red wine vinegar
*3 tbsp brown sugar
*1 1/2 tsp dried dill weed
*1 tbsp dried parsley
*1 bay leaf
*1 tsp salt
*1/2 tsp ground black pepper, or to taste
*2 cups shredded green cabbage
*sour cream

1. Chop the beets. Supposedly beets are hard to peel unless you boil them for about 10 minutes first. I did this, and that did make them pretty easy to peel. I chopped them into cubes of no bigger than 1 cm, and smaller might even be better.

2. Chop the carrots, potato, and onion. The potato(es), too, should be chopped rather small. I chopped it large, because that's how we like it in curry and stuff, but it didn't get as soft as we would have liked: small is better here.

3. Put beef, beets, carrots, potato, garlic, and onion into slow cooker. Open diced tomatoes and put them into the slow cooker without draining.

4. In a bowl, whisk together the tomato paste, vinegar, brown sugar, dill, parsley, salt, and pepper with 2 cups of the beef broth. Pour into slow cooker. Add more beef broth if needed until everything is covered and there's as much liquid as you'd like. Put the bay leaf in.

5. Cook on low for 7 hours.

6. Add the cabbage and cook on high for an hour.

7. Serve with plenty of sour cream and some good hard crusty bread.

Notes: The amounts given in the original version of this recipe were too much for our 5-qt cooker - I ended up having to discard some potato and beet and carrot just to be able to fit the tomatoes in. And in the end there was no room for the cabbage, either, so we actually skipped that. According to the comments the directed half hour on high for the cabbage isn't long enough, so I'm guessing an hour might be, but that's just a guess. ...If you've never used them, everything you've heard about beets is true: they make an amazing mess. Their juice looks just like blood. But cleanup was easier than I'd expected, and my hands aren't pink, even though I didn't wear gloves. I think next time I might use canned (non-pickled) beets, to see if they work as well. I had a hard time judging how much beet to use, too: the recipe called for 4, but didn't say what size. I used five, because the ones I got seemed a little small to me, but further research makes me think maybe they weren't, so I think next time I'll use 4 or maybe only 3, if they're medium size. ...Obviously a lot of what we liked about this was the beef, but I'm sure it would be just as good without it, and with veggie broth instead of beef. The essence of it is the beet/tomato/dill soup, with the sour cream as a garnish.

Anyway, all those caveats noted, this came out pretty satisfying. I've only had borscht in restaurants a couple of times, so I don't have too much to compare it to, but it was a nice warm way to end a rainy day (you'll read those words many times between now and next May, I'm sure!).