One step in the right direction

The other night as I was going to sleep, I envisioned in my head a nice dish of beef stroganoff. I love stroganoff. Growing up it was the only hamburger helper that I really loved.

Side story: I would always pick out the hamburger and eat all of the noodles. My mom, wanting to not waste money on meat, made it once without the meat. It did not taste very good.

Anyway, as a grown-up, I'm realizing that those boxed meals aren't really saving you that much time (you still have to provide your own meat, for one) or energy (you still have to boil noodles and mix ingredients)...and they don't taste nearly as good as the same thing made from scratch.

So, for a little bit of extra time and energy (but not that much), the average person can make tasty meals without having them taste like the cardboard box they came in.

Anyway, the other night, as I dreamed about beef stroganoff, I thought: we should make it.

We were in luck, because:
a) they don't sell very much convenience food here, if you know what I mean
b) we can find all of the necessary ingredients at the store to make it from scratch

So the next evening, on our way home from church (seriously, I'm getting so hungry just thinking about it) Steve asked what I would like to do for dinner.

I said I would like to stop at the store, get some ingredients, and make beef stroganoff (I have a feeling I keep misspelling this word. Sorry if I am).

We didn't have a specific recipe in mind, but guessed on what we would need. I'm not going to share the recipe here, because that's not what this post is about. If it were, the title would be "great recipe" but instead it's about taking a step in the right direction. I'm getting to that part. Hopefully.

Steve loves loves loves loves mushrooms, and eats them as often as possible. I don't like mushrooms, and I avoid eating them as often as possible.

Typical made-from-scratch (hyphens for Warren) stroganoff calls for mushrooms. I can't deny it.

So we got a whole bag of mushrooms. Steve promised he would chop them up really finely. And he did.

It took a while to get over the smell. To me, it all just smelled so strongly of mushrooms.

But seriously, all mushrooms aside, it was so good. Everything about it turned out so so good. And from start to finish, it took less than an hour from the time we started browning the meat to the time we were sitting and praying for our food.

And I ate it, mushrooms and all.

It's a really big step for me, as far as food goes. I still don't love mushrooms. But it's a step in the right direction.

Hey, that's the title of the post.