I love my husband.  He’s the most wonderful, supportive and loving person I’ve ever known.  And I know he loves me if for no other reason than his enormous patience.

When Keith and I married, I didn’t cook.  I knew how to cook (following a detailed recipe to the “T”) but just thought it was a big ole’ waste of time.  A few months into our marriage, I decided I wanted to make him a delicious dinner.  So many people gave me cookbooks as a wedding present (including Keith ) so I figured they must be trying to tell me something.

So I pulled out the cookbook with the most interesting cover, best colors and pictures throughout and decided that would be the day I’d cook for my honey.  The cookbook I chose…drumroll please…Emeril Lagasse’s, “From Emeril’s Kitchen.”  Couldn’t I have at least started off with the Betty Crocker book someone bought me?

Of course not, because I love a good challenge.  Which is also the reason I didn’t choose something simple like roasted chicken.  I had to try the Lamb & Feta Cheese Lasagna recipe.  Really?  Out of all the recipes to choose from I pick one that involves lightly roasted pine nuts, freshly chopped rosemary and oregano leaves and something I’d never heard of before that day, prosciutto.

So let me tell you how my cooking adventure went that day.  I got up with all the excitement in the world and pulled out Emeril’s cookbook.  I created my grocery list and headed to Gelson’s supermarket.

Tomato paste.  Check.  1 1/2 pounds of lamb.  Check.  1 pound of lasagna noodles.  Check.  1 pound of ricotta cheese and 6 ounces of feta cheese.  Check, check.  I was feeling good until I realized there were certain things on the list I simply couldn’t find at Gelson’s like the prosciutto.

So I headed to the second store, Vons, and continued my shopping.  Why couldn’t I find prosciutto there either?  Nowhere in the fresh produce section was prosciutto to be found (okay, stop laughing at me).  And why could I not find fresh rosemary or oregano leaves in the seasonings section?

Finally, I purchased all the groceries I could find and headed home to take inventory of what I still didn’t have.  28-ounce can of diced tomatoes in their juices.  Check.  Oh, wait…why does the recipe also call for a 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes?  Didn’t see that one.  But why didn’t the recipe just say I needed 42-ounces of diced tomatoes.  I was already starting not to like cooking and I hadn’t even fired up the oven yet.

But I wasn’t going to let anything keep me from preparing this special dinner I set out to make for my hubby, so I returned to the store — for the third time — to pick up the remaining items on my list.  Up and down the produce isle looking for the prosciutto, I finally broke down and asked the produce man where I could find it.  Looking a bit baffled he said, “Ma’am, the proscuitto is in the deli section.”  What would it be doing in the deli section, I thought to myself.

Ah ha!  Prosciutto is a meat not a vegetable.  Okay, one problem solved.  Now, about those lightly toasted pine nuts and fresh rosemary and oregano leaves.  After realizing the fresh leaves were in the produce section (not the seasoning isle) and the pine nuts would have to be purchased untoasted, I finally had everything I needed to begin cooking.

By now, it’s in the middle of the day and I’ve been shopping for ingredients in this one recipe for several hours.  So I begin to prep.  First, I needed to determine how to toast the pine nuts since that wasn’t in the recipe.  Do I put them in the oven or the skillet?  I decided toasting sounded like something I could do easily in a skillet.

Chopped the fresh leaves, cooked the lamb, boiled the noodles and began to pull everything together.  Somewhere in the midst of all this, Keith called to see how my day was going and boy did I give him an earful.  Not only did it take me three trips to the grocery store but now that I’ve prepped the food, there are literally pots, pans and dirty chopping boards all over the kitchen.  What a mess!

Keith could hear the discouragement and frustration in my voice so he gave me a gentle “I love you” and I got back to cooking.  After an hour or so of prepping came the moment of triumph.  I could finally layer all the ingredients into the 9″ square glass pan and exclaim “Victory!”  Then I looked at the dish and thought, “All that for this tiny amount of food?”

Nonetheless, I was finally done and could put the lasagna into the preheated oven (at least I knew how to preheat an oven ) for 50 minutes.  Halfway through the baking, and in the middle of me cleaning two sinks full of dishes, Keith returned home with a beautiful bouquet of white roses.  I thought, “God bless that man!”

The end of the story is the lasagna came out and was one of the tastiest either of us have had and it all seemed worth it.  Sort of.  Keith swears that experience traumatized me because it took me another 5 years but what I made brought the house down!

It was a slow cooker take on my aunt’s amazing 3-ingredient Roast recipe and to this day it’s a family favorite.  Make this at home…I promise you’ll thank me for it.

1 – Beef Roast (I bought a 2.5 lb one on sale for less than $8)

1 – 10oz. can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup

1 – packet of Lipton onion dip mix

That’s it.  That is the entire recipe.  And the best part about it is it is fail-proof!  All you do is rinse the beef with cold water and then pat it dry with a paper towel.  Put a pan on the stove large enough to fit the roast, turn the pan on high and pop the piece of meat right in the middle.  You only want to brown it so flip it over after 30 seconds or so.  Do this on both sides of the cut of meat and then turn it on its side and brown each side.  This whole process should take 2 minutes max.

Once your roast has been browned, pop it in the crock pot, pour the can of soup over it, evenly sprinkle the onion dip mix over the entire top, cover it with the top and cook it on the lowest setting possible (on my pot it simply says “low”).  Begin your day and 8 to 9 hours later – voila!  One of the best tasting roasts you’ve ever had.  The gravy is so delicious I burned the inside of my mouth not once but four times.  I was so excited it turned out so well I kept tasting it directly from the pot (not a good idea, by the way).

And an added benefit to this roast was the extra gravy it made.  If you have any leftover (I had about a cup leftover), add some Wondra Quick-Mixing Flour (directions on the can), put it in the freezer and when you’re serving rice, mashed potatoes, chicken or anything that can be spiced up with some delicious gravy, you’ve already got it in the bag (literally, the Ziploc bag).

Give it a whirl and tell me what you think!