What's Cooking? Quick and Easy Crockpot Stew

This morning, I took my older daughter food shopping and she helped me pick out some food.  One of the meals we picked up was some quick and easy stew.  Working, gym time and kids leaves little time for packing lunches and making dinner, so crockpot meals that can be eaten throughout the week are life savers.  

 So, here's what I got:
3 lbs stew meat
3 bags of stop & shop stew vegetables (carrots, celery, onions, potatoes)
stop & shop all natural beef broth

other ingredients:
jar of tomatoes from my garden, you can use a 15oz can of chopped or whole tomatoes

I added a tiny bit of brown rice flour like 1/8 cup and salt and pepper in a gallon zip lock bag and coated the meat.  I then browned the meat in a large frying pan and then dumped into the crockpot.  I dumped in the tomatoes.  I defrosted the frozen vegetables a little and dumped the potatoes in the crockpot and the rest of the veggies in my blender - I blended on my salsa setting to make small chopped vegetables because I like my stew like mush.  If you like chunky vegetables in your stew you can skip this step.  Then I added to the crockpot.  I also added a good amount of minced garlic - also a preference.  Then I added a little - maybe 1/4 a cup of the beef broth, normally I would add more but the frozen veggies instead of fresh make it a little watery.  I scoop some excess water off the top from time to time as it cooks on high all day.  I usually make my stew with fresh veggies - but its cheaper (especially in the winter) and easier right now!