Once upon a time there was a very large crock pot that got filled up with hand-cut cubes of top round (which had been browned to a mahogany color along with a slew of yellow onions), carrots, potatoes, beef broth, red wine, bay leaves, herbes provencal, Kosher salt and cracked pepper and left alone to simmer all day on the counter until voila! -- a superb French style stew was born. A small amount of thickening slurry and some frozen green peas in the last five minutes finished off the creation and then the multitudes came.

I couldn't believe how many people could be fed from that one pot. Sure I made a tossed salad and we had delicious old-fashioned salt sticks warmed up in the oven and ready for dipping into the dark brown gravy in which the vegetables floated happily bobbing up and down when I stirred the massive pot.

I felt like jesus and the loaves and the fishes. More and more people came, all hungry, all not planned on and yet the crock pot kept yielding huge bowls of steaming hot stew. Oh yes, and nary a person had a single bowl, all wanted seconds. I am guessing that there were 24 servings of stew in that pot.

Unfortunately, unlike jesus, I was unable to turn water into wine. So we did run out of wine! Thank heavens for beer is all I have to say.