Meal No. 306: Beef Burgandy

The visit here by the crew from New Orleans continues to go well. They seem to have contented themselves with relaxing and reading here at the house, mixed in with excursions to walk downtown, catch a movie at a/perture, check out Kernel Kustard's, tour Wake Forest University, and so on.

Dinner on this Monday night was another new recipe, and I think it turned out decent. This is beef burgandy from the slow cooker, with rice and Fordhook lima beans and some heartland sunflower bread from the bread machine.

I also made a carrot cake, using the wonderful recipe from Southern Living in 1981 that was passed on to me by education friends and colleagues John and Ebbie Linaburg.

I made this a couple of Thanksgivings ago and it was darned incredible. This time, not so much so. And I'm all the more disappointed because I know how good it can be. The second time was not the charm. I'm still diagnosing what I did wrong, but it may be that using the microplane grater and not being careful about how packed down the shredded carrot became led to a very, very, very dense result. Not very cake-y. It was almost like a flourless carrot cake. It was dense like a fruit cake. But the crew said it was good, and I agree. It does mean that much smaller than usual pieces would have been called for.