A little perilous adventure in the kitchen

I am in a cooking rut!  I have been cooking dinner for over 50 years!  Both of my parents worked so it was up to my sister and me to get dinner on the table at night after school and I have been cooking dinner ever since.   I pulled out a chuck roast to make into stew the other day and I just stared at it.  What could I do to get beyond the usual wine and herbs de Provence to flavor it up.  Fortunately, I have an extensive library of cookbooks also dating back 50 years.  (Cookbooks may not qualify as being "creative" but you have to begin somewhere) Suddenly I spied an old Good Housekeeping International Cookbook that I got in the dark ages using S&H Green Stamps collected from the A&P.  I told you it was from the dark ages because who even knows what green stamps are and what exactly is an A&P?  So I was perusing through the cookbook and discovered that just about every country has one kind of stew or another.  I found a recipe that met my main criteria which was that I did not have to drop everything to go to the grocery store to get more ingredients.  It was for a Guinian beef stew.  Now I have never cooked African before so this would be an adventure!  The peril would be if it resulted in a stew that my husband, George, would or would not eat!  So armed with beef, beef broth, tomatoes, onions, spinach, cayenne and ---------peanut butter (yes, I said peanut butter), I forged ahead!  Dinner time arrived.   The stew was simmering on the stove, the rice was ready and waiting, and the salad was made.  George lifts the top off of the pot of stew and says "This looks good!  Stew just like I like it with lots of gravy!".  A glimmer of hope quieted my beating heart as I told him what was in it -  but left out the peanut butter part.  So we sit down to eat, my eyes warily glancing at George's face to see his reaction to his first bite.  "Wow, this is great!  I think I like it better than regular stew!!!", he says!  So I let him eat on and finally confess that the magic ingredient in the stew that thickened it was actually crunchy peanut butter!  He never even slowed down his eating to comment. This recipe was a keeper! 

I may not be Julia Child but I do have all of her cookbooks and cut my teeth on the Art of French Cooking as a young bride,  I may not be Julie and have no plans to cook every recipe in the Good Housekeeping International Cookbook but it has earned a place of honor on the shelf of my favorite cookbooks and it has opened a door to being more adventurous in cooking.  Peanut butter in beef stew??  Really???  I mean really????  I hope George is ready for this.