Beef with Raisins and pinenuts

1kg diced braising beef
2tbsp flour
6tbsp olive oil
125ml dark beer
1 chopped onion
1 crushed garlic clove
1tsp thyme
1tsp chopped rosemary
2tsp paprika
1tsp cinnamon
1 tin chopped tomatoes
2 bay leaves
250ml beef stock
250g mushrooms, halved
50g raisins
50g pine nuts

Preheat the oven to 180deg c

Coat the beef with flour, and brown in olive oil. Transfer to a lidded casserole dish.
Pour the beer into the pan to de-glaze. Pour into the casserole.
Fry onions and herbs for 5 minutes. Add garlic and spices and cook for a further 6 minutes.
Add to the casserole, along with the tomatoes, stock and bay leaves.
cover and transfer to the oven. Cook for 21/2 hours
Add mushrooms, pinenuts and raisins and cook for a further 30 minutes.

I like to serve this with a selection of steamed vegetables, especially savoy cabbage or silverbeet, and baked or mashed potatoes.

Sweet update

Way back in June 2011, I posted that I would:

• use mostly raw milk
• eat beef from traditional Devon cows
• enjoy the company of our own free-range chooks...
• ...and put their eggs to good culinary use
• grow heirloom vegetable varieties

So how did I do? Not too badly, actually. We've been drinking raw milk daily and eating the beautiful beef from Rannoch Meats several times a week. Sadly, the chooks didn't eventuate, nor did the heirloom vegetables, but we did achieve many other things that were not on the list:

• Went sugar-free for a year
• Frequently baked sour dough bread
• experimented with fermented veggies
• Brewed water Keffir 
• Presented speeches on the Weston Price Foundation, and the effects sugar has on your body
• Written a recipe book of family recipes (sorry, available to family only)

And of course, learned lots in the process. 

Such as: 

• Sugar alone isn't the enemy. Processed foods do more damage than a moderate (by which I mean no more than 8 or 10 grams, three times a day) sugar intake. 
• Don't give up on making sour dough if it tastes too strong. Each loaf tastes better than the last.
• My kids hate fermented veggies, no matter how much I disguise them. (But they do eat fermented tomato ketchup!)
• Too much nitrogen in the soil will prevent your broccoli from forming heads.
• Custard made with raw milk keeps better than it's pasteurised milk counter-part. (raw cream doesn't seem to curdle as readily as pasteurised cream, either) Not really surprising when I think on it. 
• Water keffir is awesome! It can take on so many different flavours, and I can get the kids to drink it provided it is blackcurrant flavour! I'm planning on a herb-scented grape juice one soon.
• No matter how many times you proof-read something on a laptop screen, errors will creep into the hard copies.

I'm pretty happy with that :)