Meal Monday!

I used to have a deal where I did a plethora/smorgasbord/"whatever means A LOT" of recipes for different holidays. Well, over on Facebook, I posted yesterday about the menu I was making for Super Bowl dinner and I got SO MANY requests for the recipes that I decided to write them all out. You too can have a fabulous meal that's fairly easy to do. But b/c this does include a roast, best set aside time to do it right, such as a weekend. Please note that my meals are not for the calorie conscious. I make no bones about this and have made such disclaimers in past recipe shares.

My only request is that, if you do use it, please let me know how you liked it. Also, these measurements are mostly approximate b/c I just throw it in w/o really measuring. LOL!

Roast and fixin's:

* If you want plenty of gravy, fill the crock pot at least ½ way up with water

Take 1 large roast – (Top Round or Eye of Round)
Season it with a coarse kosher or sea salt rub, mixed with black pepper, minced garlic (can be found in the produce section of the grocery store – much easier than doing it yourself) , garlic powder and onion powder. In other words, mix all of those together and rub it on/in to the roast.
Place it in the water and add Worcestershire sauce to the water. At least 1/3 cup – dash it over the roast as well
Place 3 dry, lightly cracked whole bay leafs on top of the roast
Cook it for a minimum 6 hours in the crock pot.

Sautéed mushrooms:
Take 1 stick of butter, 3 tablespoons of minced garlic (with the garlic oil – the same as used above), 1 teaspoon of garlic powder and about 1½ cups of a heavy red wine (maybe a merlot or cabernet), about 7-8 dashes of Worcestershire sauce and about 1½ teaspoons of kosher or sea salt and put it in the skillet to simmer. Let it mix together for about 5 minutes after simmering starts.
Take a good size mix of washed pre-sliced and whole white mushrooms and place them in the skillet and put the top on it. The longer you simmer the mushrooms, the more flavor they absorb.

Honey and brown sugar baby carrots:
Place baby carrots in a pan, fill the pan partly with water, 1½ teaspoons of kosher/sea salt and one stick of salted butter.
Add ¾ cup of brown sugar and drizzle approx ½ cup of honey over the carrots.
Put lid on pan and let cook until soft

MY mashed Potatoes:
(This is for 2 very large russet baking potatoes – typically 1 large potato for every 2 people)
*NOTE: IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO FOLLOW THE MIXING STEPS IN ORDER!!! The potatoes don't taste as good if you lump it all together and do it at one time.
Peel and cube the potatoes and put them in a pot to cook
Add about 2 tablespoons of kosher or sea salt and let cook thoroughly. Adding the salt here allows you to cut down on the amount used later.
Thoroughly drain cooked potatoes
With a hand mixer or Kitchen Aid/Cuisineart stand mixer, mix the potatoes
Add 1 full stick of salted butter and mix together
Add 1/2 small container sour cream and mix together
Add 1/4-1/3 cup of HOT heavy whipping cream (for those of you with access to and HEB, it's in the purple and white container) and mix together
Add fine ground kosher or sea salt and pepper to taste and mix together
From here you can also add more heavy cream or butter to achieve desired taste
*The potatoes should come out very heavy and rich so that they peak when you mix them

Gravy:
Take some of the juice from the roast (about 1 cup) and about ½ cup of flour and mix it together in a shaker until the lumps are gone. *PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHEN OPENING B/C THE HEAT WILL CREATE A PRESSURE THAT WILL CAUSE THE HEAVY GRAVY MIX TO EXPLODE AND IT IS HOT, HOT, HOT!!! (I know b/c I burned the tar out of my palm last night with it!)*
Take a lot of the remaining juice from the finished roast and put it in to a pan.
Slowly stir the flour/juice mix in with the hot liquid.
If there are any little flour balls that float to the top, they can be removed by spoon, but there shouldn't be many, if any, if it is shaken right.

*Kosher and sea salt are both better for you than regular salt. Less sodium and you use less b/c they're so strong.