Bugster2 wrote:Not having to sear the meat is wonderful. Searing makes a heck of a mess and I have to wash eeverything, including the stovetop grates. Next time I will give it a try.
It may be messy but there's no getting around a good sear on beef -- there's absolutely nothing that makes up for the flavor it adds to a dish.
If you really hate cleaning up the splatter, you can cover the other stove burners and the back of your stove with sheets of heavy duty aluminum foil. That's what a friend's elderly mother has done for years. She picks up the foil afterward, too, and places the greasy sides together, folds it up and sticks it in a plastic bag. My friend said she gets a couple of uses out of the foil prior to pitching it, too.
I don't know about saving the foil but it's not a bad idea if you just cleaned the stove or you just don't feel like cleaning it over again. I guess you could use the regular aluminum foil instead of the heavy duty stuff instead. I'd imagine it looks like hell while you're doing it (I keep thinking of the Beverly Hillbillies
) but it must be kind of satisfying when you pick it up afterward and see your spotless stove underneath!
Brian and I invariably cook something that needs searing the day or day after Lynn, the lady who cleans for us, comes -- we laugh at ourselves all the time. But we DO try to remember the night before she comes to clean, "What can we cook that's kind of messy NOW instead of tomorrow night?!"
Lynn came today to clean so our house is absolutely spotless and even SMELLS clean. We're truly lucky to have her as you can tell she's concerned about us and always says prior to leaving, "If you two need anything at all or if I can help you with something, you call me, okay?" She was smiling today as I gave her a generous raise. She deserves it as she does a lot for us and now does stuff that she marks down on her phone's calendar that will need doing again in three months, six months, etc. Recently while cleaning out our really small, cramped laundry room, she insisted on pulling the dryer out to make sure the venting tube wasn't clogged up with lint but what she found was even worse. A cotton throw had fallen behind the dryer on top of the vent tubing (I plead innocent!). She removed the tubing which was full of water (!!) due to the pressure of the throw on top of it (and was taking FOREVER to dry things if it dried the bigger items at all), and got everything back in order. The dryer is drying in record time again and Brian is a happy camper (he does the laundry). We always pay her extra, of course, when she does things above and beyond regular house cleaning and she says we're way too generous but we're very lucky to have someone who really gives a darn about us like she does.
Lynn also does landscaping work, too (she's a Master Gardener!) and will repot plants, weed the garden, amend the dirt in spring or fall with fresh soil, compost, peat moss and/or manure and will even go to Home Depot and pick up all the stuff she needs to do what I want done. We can't lug any of that stuff anymore, nor can we tend to the garden like we used to. It's so nice to have someone who will do just about anything for us that needs doing (and will just go ahead and do those things). We're smart enough to pay her well and give her a generous Christmas bonus, too, so I think she appreciates us as much as we appreciate her. She's also handy as all get out, too, and has put together items I've purchased that need assembly and fixed things that have broken or stopped working. There's literally nothing she can't do but she told me she learned how to do tons of stuff by watching videos on You Tube! She raised 4 boys on her own (Lynn is in her late 50s & her youngest graduated from high school 2 years ago while her eldest is 38) so she said she HAD to learn to do things on her own.