Some days on the RV road are a serendipity; a time to stop and smell the roses. Other days it is hard charging with a faraway destination as your goal. On those days, when you arrive, perhaps the last thing you want to do is spend a long time in the kitchen preparing your dinner meal. This soup is one answer to that problem.

The night before departure is when most of the preparation work is done; dicing the meat, peeling the potatoes, etc. With all the ingredients ready, the next morning all you have to do is brown the meat, add the remaining ingredients, bring to a simmer for half an hour, cover, and continue to heat to the red mark and then put the pot in the cozy. Nestled in the cozy, secure in the kitchen sink, the pot will continue to self cook for the next seven hours providing you with piping hot vegetable beef soup upon your arrival at your destination.

• 2 pounds lean stew beef
• 1 green Bell pepper
• 1 28-ounce can whole or diced tomatoes
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• Olive oil, to sauté meat

• 1 large Vidalia onion
• 4 stalks celery
• 2 16-ounce cans tomato sauce
• 1 pound frozen mixed vegetables
• Seasoned salt and ground black pepper, to taste

1. Dice stew beef into soup-sized bits. Preheat pan and add a bit of olive oil. Add meat and sauté until lightly browned.
2. Add 1 cup of water to blender. Add onion cut into chunks, carrot cut into pieces, Bell pepper cut into pieces. Process until pureed. Add to meat in the pan.

   

3. Peel and dice the potatoes to make soup-sized pieces. Add to meat.
4. Add the canned tomatoes and canned tomato sauce. Add garlic. Season with a bit of seasoned salt and a generous portion of ground black pepper.

   

5. Add water to bring level to within an inch of the top of the pan. Continue heating until the liquid starts to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for twenty minutes.

   

6. Cover with inner and outer lids and continue heating the pot until indicator reaches the top of the red mark, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat. Heat the warming packet in microwave, about one minute. Place the warming packet in the bottom of the cozy and cover with a folded over kitchen towel. Place the pot in the cozy and cover with the dickey. Cinch up leaving the indicator exposed.

   

7. The pot was sitting on the ceramic stove top. The residual heat continued heating the pot while we were preparing the cozy and the temperature coasted over the top of the red mark. The temperature indicator returned to the top of the red in about two and one half hours. The temperature indicator reached the top of the green after an additional four and one quarter hours making as total of seven hours of “self cooking” time. We removed the pot from the cozy. The temperature of the soup was 165°.