Tonight, in the midst of much kid-wrangling angst I cooked a thing what was yummy. Consequently you get another in the “write it down for future reference” series of recipe posts.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic
4 small brown onions, sliced
4 small bull’s horn capsicums, diced
500g diced beef
800g tin diced tomatoes
2 carrots, diced
1 large potato, diced
smoked paprika – generous shakes, I dunno, 2-3 teaspoons?
dried thyme leaves – not quite so much of these, 1 teaspoon?
ground black pepper to taste
1 Massell “beef” stock cube (makes 2 cups)
1 cup of water
a couple of handfuls of green beans cut into 2-3cm lengths

Cook onions and garlic in olive oil in a large pot. Ask oldest child to stir them, apologise profusely when the garlic spits and hits him right in the eye. Be very thankful that he blinked quickly enough.

Add capsicum and cook for a little longer.

Add beef and sort of brown it. Yeah, that’ll do, close enough.

Add tomatoes, carrots, potato, paprika, thyme, pepper, stock cube and water.

Give it a good stir, let it boil and then cover and simmer.

Watch the clock calculating the latest you can serve dinner and still get your daughter to dance class on time. Add the beans after about 30 minutes. Decide it’ll have to do after about an hour. (The potato and carrot were just cooked enough and the beans were not mushy.)

Serve with rice.

Realise you forgot to take a photo.

Take a photo of the left-overs.