We were given a beef roast by my sister-in-law. It was packaged up in a commercially sealed bag, with some kind of marinade in it. It was frozen when we got it. There is no label on the roast, telling us what cut it is. So we’re not quite sure the right way to cook it. My wife suggested that we cook it in the oven for 20 minutes per pound at 350 degrees. Well, we weighed it on our postage scale and found it was 2.25 pounds. So I put it in the oven at 4pm, hoping it would be ready by 4:45 or 5pm. Well, we stuck a thermometer in the roast to make sure it was done to our liking, and we just now took it out of the oven at 5:40. Most of the cookbooks suggest about 20 minutes per pound, so I don’t quite understand why it took so long to cook! My wife always tells me when she cooks a roast that there really is no telling exactly when it will be done – she says “it’ll be ready when it’s ready!” I never understood why she would say that, but now I guess since I’m the one cooking it I understand that a little bit better – when it’s ready, it will be ready!
I’m sure hoping it isn’t tough! I’m letting it “stand” for a few minutes before slicing it. I wonder what flavor the marinade is!
I could not help but notice after we moved to Virginia, how many members of my wife’s family smoke cigarettes. Her sister, her brothers, her nephews and one of her neices all smoke. This was kind of a shock to me because I don’t have any family members that smoke. My parents used to smoke, but my father died of Lung cancer a long time ago, and my mother quit smoking about fifteen years ago.
Back when my father got his Lung cancer diagnosis from his doctors, he chose to hide the fact that he had cancer. We did not know what the Lung cancer symptoms were, and he was pretty good at hiding them from us. He was afraid of participating in any kind of Lung cancer treatment. He had heard that the Lung cancer surgery and following treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy would make him feel so bad that he’d wish he was dead. He also knew that meant he had to quit smoking cigarrettes, and he decided he’d rather simply die from cancer than quit smoking and go through the surgery and treatments.
When he finally admitted to us that he was sick and went to the hospital, he was dead in about two weeks. That was the first time we knew that he even had cancer! We were shocked and dismayed. It was a terrible time in my life, and I really wish that my in-laws would quit smoking because I don’t want any of them to get cancer and put their families through the grief that my family went through.
Yesterday my sister-in-law came over in her dilapidated old Suburban. The hinges on the driver’s side door had been sprung so she could no longer close the door, and the driver’s side window would no longer roll up or down. She asked me to take a look at it a couple of weeks ago and see if I could fix it for her. So I went up to her place and checked it out and told her that I could fix it, but she needed to pick up a few parts and bring it to my place for me to fix it (because my tools are here.)
So yesterday she came over and I fixed her junker Suburban for her. While I was working on it, she went inside and helped us out by doing some much neglected/needed dusting. So that worked out nicely. My wife has been too busy to clean house and I told her I’d take care of it but have not been keeping up with the work. So it was nice that my sister-in-law worked on that while I worked on her car! A little bit of “I’ll help you if you help me” going on there!
