Thank Heavens, Another Slow-Cooker Beef Stew Recipe aka Okayest Ever Slow-Cooker Beef Stew

Last week, the school year drew to a close and the Wife and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. We have the whole summer ahead of us and things are returning to some vague semblance of normalcy. We thought, "what could we possibly do to help drive things back to that wonderfully boring normal?" SLOW COOKER BEEF STEW was the resounding answer. And I'm not going to blow beef scented smoke up your asses and claim it's "Best Ever" because it's not. It's good. It's serviceable. It is mind numbingly easy to make and will fill you up. That's it. That's all I can say. I've got months of content I owe you, so expect a treasure like this every now and then. Much like this recipe, this post is vaguely satisfying filler until I can make something more substantial. As always, any notes are in blue.

Okayest Ever Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Ingredients

• 1 pound beef stew meat
• 1 bag (about 1 pound) mixed frozen stew vegetables (i.e. carrots, celery, onions, potatoes)
• 1 can (10.5 ounces) cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 large potato, cut into 1" cubes
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 cup water (in retrospect, I suppose I could have just not drained the tomatoes and omitted this step, but I justify it in the reduction of sodium)
• 1 heaping tablespoon corn starch
• 2 tablespoons cold water

Directions

1. Unceremoniously dump everything but the last two ingredients into a slow cooker. Don't even bother browning the meat. That's where we are right now. We're just getting shit done.
2. Cook on HIGH for 4-1/2 hours because I don't have the patience to wait for 8-10 hours on LOW. 
3. Take the corn starch and water in a small bowl and whisk it together until the corn starch is completely dissolved. At the end of the strew cooking time, stir in the corn starch slurry until things thicken up. 
4. That's it. Slop it in a bowl and grimly shovel it down in silence.

Good times!