Here's how to whip it up:
Round up your leftover hamburger and roast beef (save the brown juice it was cooked in, cut it up or crumble it into bite-sized pieces. 

Scrub your garden veggies - spuds, peas, carrots, onions - whatever kind you crave and/or can grow in your part of the country, then cut 'em into chewin' size and throw it all into a cast-iron Dutch oven or a regular roaster or kettle. Sprinkle some salt and pepper and seasoned/garlic salt across the whole deal, add some water or broth, and turn the fire on low to medium and simmer till tender. 

About now, you can thicken the broth a bit with flour and water, or cornstarch and water and call it Stew, or you can leave it alone and call it Soup. Your call. And you can whip up a batch of homemade noodles to compliment the pot, if you so desire. 

NOODLES: Crack 4-6 fresh eggs into a bowl, whip 'em around a bit till frothy, then add a couple little pinches of salt, and enough flour to make a moist dough. Now, right here, you can either stop adding any more flour and drop spoonfuls of the mix into the boiling stew/soup, or you can keep right on adding little bits of flour until it stiffens, then roll the dough out and cut out long noodles. Makes no never mind. Cooking time is about the same - 5-10 minutes. Tastes great either way. My preference, though, is the first sticky, drop-noodle way, especially if I'm pressed for time or the Boss and the Husband are calling me back to the "Front." When it comes time to settle around the kitchen table, just slap some butter on a chunk of homemade bread, dip out a ladleful of Cowboy Stew, and you got yourself some mighty fine grazin'!

The Pearson Angus Ranch is located approximately 2 miles northwest of Daniel, Wyoming, and 11 miles west of Pinedale, where she lives along with her husband, Rudy. Historic old Fort Bonneville, built in the late 1800s, is located next to her family's ranch. Cris is a writer and photographer for The Sublette County Journal newspaper, where you can find more of her accounts of life on the ranch. Cris can be reached by e-mail at: cowgirl@wyoming.com.

Copyrights: Photos and page text content copyrighted, Cris Paravicini, 2000. No part may be reproduced without permission of the author/photographer. Page graphics copyrighted, Pinedale Online, 2000.