Julia Child probably never cooked in a crock pot but my guess is that Julia never spent 9.5 hours on her feet working retail and arrived home without one single ounce of energy, only the promise of an already-cooked meal providing the strength to make it through the evening so she could start all over again the next morning.
Our fancy 7 qt. crock pot – the one with an electronic control panel which automatically switched to the warm setting after the specified cooking period – died before I left home. After consulting with Linda I bought a new 4 qt. crock pot at work – $16.99 less my 10% employee discount – with a manual control gauge and brought it home at lunch to start the pot roast. Damn thing worked liked a charm and I’m convinced there’s a lesson in that. Downsize. Simplify.
The pot roast was simple and delicious: dredged it in some salted-and-peppered flour; seared it in a pan with butter; crocked potted it (is that a verb?) with a can of diced tomatoes, 2 TB browning sauce, ½ cup coffee (an homage to my Swedish grandmother), 4 small sliced onions, 3 stalks sliced celery, 2 bay leafs and some peeled potatoes, cooked it on the high setting for 6 hours. We threw a small green salad at it and – violà. Plenty left over for dinner tonight and a sandwich or two.
THE WINE: pot roast = comfort food = Merlot ≠ the only Merlot I have on hand, an ’05 Duckhorn Three Palms Vineyard being saved for our 10th anniversary in 2015. I stuck with the box of Big House Red.
APROPOS OF NOTHING: Men over a certain age – is it 37? – need a woman in their lives if for no other reason than to gently remind them to trim their nose hairs. Ladies, adopt a single man today but be gentle. Nose hairs are a daily reminder of our advancing age.
lengthofthegrand.com 
Are you eating part of this cow every single day? Is this a grass-fed beef marathon? That would be interesting, at the end, when you would only have tripe and brains and such left, but you would be forced to eat them.
Is that coffee in the pot roast a Swedish thing? Interesting. I had a Dutch grandfather who put coffee in his pot roast. The coffee gave it a lovely dark color, and helped with an exquisite dark brown crust. Yummy! I join you in recommending coffee as a pot roast ingredient.
And finally… Your lean ground beef may be a matter of the mixture, rather than the grass-fed-ness. In the future, you may want to mix in some more fat. For hamburgers, I have much better luck with fattier ground chuck, than with the leaner stuff the supermarkets call ground sirloin.
Keep on beefing! Nice job so far!
This is great fun to read. You have made this so interesting. I really enjoy reading about food, preparation of food, and just getting different ideas. Thanks – let the journey continue!
All of us in Cleveland are so proud of you. Pat has been buying grassfed beef for some time at the local farmer’s market and it is good. If you have a suggestion regarding a good boxed Chardonnay and/or Sauvignon Blanc, please let me know!