Beef stew with carrots

There has been a bit of a break in cookbook challenge entries lately – mainly because there's very little point trying out new things when no one is able to eat anything other than hot toast. Luckily we're over that phase now so this week has seen me pour through all my cookbooks as I wrote the weekly shopping list.

It may have taken nearly three hours to cook, but tonight's beef and carrot stew from Apples for Jam: Recipes for Life was melt in the mouth perfect. I served it with a simple mashed potatoes which were a perfect accompaniment. The carrots provides a lovely sweet edge and the beef had fallen apart beautifully.

I have to admit that Apples for Jam is a cookbook that I originally bought purely for the lovely picture on the front cover. Very shallow I know, but in my defence I had also read a good review of it on someone's blog. All the recipes I have tried from it are delicious, but on a practical level the book is a bit of a disaster. Recipes are organised by colour (red, orange, yellow, pink, green, gold, white, brown, monochrome, stripes and multicolour). I don't know about you, but when thinking about what to include in the next week's meal plan I don't instantly think about what colour meal I want. Until you get to know the book it's therefore hard to choose dishes from it without having gone through the whole book first. The other practical problem is the light grey font on white background that is used for the recipes. In my kitchen there are a few dark corners, but when cooking I frequently find myself glancing at the recipe, but with this book it's hard to do so due to the lack of contrast. It may look "prettier" than traditional black on white, but I do find it much harder to read – and that's when wearing my contact lenses!