The Stroke of Winter

by Wendy Webb

She began by pouring a splash of olive oil into her favorite heavy dutch oven, along with some butter. As that melted, she added a bit of garlic and three large Vidalia onions she had sliced thin, along with chopped carrots and celery. She sautéed it all for a good thirty minutes until the onions started to caramelize. Then came the meat, chopped into small, bite-size pieces that she had dredged by placing them and a scant quarter cup of flour into a plastic bag and shaking it. With the meat added to the pot, she sprinkled some thyme and sautéed the mixture for a couple of minutes until it made a sort of paste, then poured in a bottle of dark beer. Tess let that simmer for a bit and then added enough beef stock to cover the meat and veggies, put the cover on the pot, and turned down the heat.

“I guess it’s a one-dog night around here,” Tess said, referring to the expression that people sometimes used to denote how cold it would be outside: one-dog, two-dog, or three-dog night. She reached for the remote and flipped on the television.