California Roast, Baby Carrots and Creamy Garlic Pasta Shells

I bought a California Roast a couple Saturdays back. It's not a cut that is usually seen around our area. In fact, I have only ever seen it in one store, and that is the little full service grocery that opened in town just over a year ago. They have a fully operational butcher shop in the back and the meat appears to be cut on site. At least, the beef does. Anyway, they have these California Roasts that are supposedly more of a chuck roast, but a different shape. I guess like they have tri-tip roasts out West, but not here in the East. 

I usually buy bottom round roasts, but I haven't found any good prices lately. And, this kind of roast cooks down into a more tender piece of meat than the bottom round does, although the bottom round is prettier to cut. It cuts more neatly and evenly.

Still, I got this really big California Roast with the intention of having it the next week. I'm glad it was still good because it took me five days to get to it! LOL 

I put it in the slow cooker around noon, poured the dry onion soup mix over it and then added a can of beef broth and added some baby carrots. I turned it on high and left it to do it's business. By 4PM, the house was smelling very roasty. I checked it and saw that it was cooking well. I poked the carrots with a fork and was happy that they were mostly cooked through (carrots can be stubborn at times). 

Debra came home and my stomach was growling terribly, so I decided to try to put something with them because I didn't want to bother making mashed potatoes. I found a Knorr side dish pasta that we had bought when we went shopping a month ago and that's what I made. In less than 15 minutes, we had dinner ready to eat. I was surprised that I liked the Creamy Garlic Pasta because I really don't like garlic. But, this wasn't a heavy garlic flavor - it was very mellow and actually quite good.

Last of all, I had two slices of bread with the gravy I made from the roast. Yeah - really. That was something we used to do when I was growing up. Usually, we'd tear up the bread before putting the gravy on, but my plate was empty, so I left them whole and thoroughly enjoyed that little trip into the past. 

So, then I put the roast is back in the slow cooker with the remaining gravy. I let it continue to cook until it fell apart, then I shredded it. I wanted to pick up some Kaiser rolls so we could have hot roast beef sandwiches, but that didn't happen. Instead, I enjoyed some with tortillas.

This was previously posted to Bubblews.com. I've made some grammatical adjustments to account for a later posting date.