Fast foods may have been the meal of choice for many busy families through the last couple of decades. But now the slow cooked, home-prepared meals are gaining in popularity! Crock pots, with their wafting aromas and 'ready to eat' meals, entice health-conscious, busy people.If you're an urbanite or someone who is used to prepared food like frozen dinners or grab-and-go restaurant meals easy beef stew you might want to stick with freeze dried meals or MREs.Now that your meat has been cooking and is good and tender it is time to add the veggies.Microwave the cut up carrots for about 10 minutes to start the cooking process. Add them to the meat and then microwave the potatoes simple beef stew for about minutes and add them. Microwave the frozen brussel sprouts just to thawed and add them.Kids rode the school bus; it was not derisively called "the big cheese". Many communities didn't have the money for luxuries like buses so children walked to school, even in bone chilling cold. If one could clamber aboard a warm bus filled with your friends - what a treat. The thought of hitting another child or not obeying the driver never occurred to anyone. Your dad would "ground you for life" or possibly "kill you".This recipe is one of the best stew recipes I have ever tasted! After cooking on low for 5 hours, the beef is so tender that it falls apart in your mouth. I remember my mom making beef stew when I was a child, but the meat never did fall apart quite like this!One of the advantages of the cast iron utensils is its ability to retain heat. That means that the heat is equally distributed thus allowing you to cook your food evenly. This is very crucial since we don't want a dish that is undercooked or overcooked. We usually regulate the heat of our stoves to be able to cook the dish more evenly. It wouldn't hurt if we get a little help from our pots and pans, would it? Uneven cooking is a problem that sprouts when cooking with non-iron cookware. An undercooked or overcooked meal is not very appetizing.Furthermore, if you add some good beef stock to your leftover stew beef, and throw in a little barley, you have the makings of a respectable Beef Barley Soup Recipe.Try taking a large pot and make a picture of the rainbow behind it. Take some green fabric and draw shamrocks the size of a small beanbag, then sew and stuff them. Use them to throw into the pot. The person who hits the pot from the farthest or the most times, gets a bag of gold chocolate coins.This meal is excellent served with jalepeno cornbread, or a sweet cornbread. I hope that you enjoy this Sunday afternoon stew, or have it on a cold winter night, as I have, simple beef stew seasoning with many friends. It is a handy dish to complete when you would like to spend more time out of the kitchen.