This dish is not only extremely delicious, but it is easy to make and is a blank canvas.  Meaning that you can build upon this meal and make it your own, so easily.  Add a pinch of cayenne for a little heat.  Maybe some peas and carrots for more color. Add fersh herbs from your garden.

But it’s beautiful as is!

 

 

Let the savory adventure begin!

You know it’s going to be a good day when………………..you start cooking with BACON!

Fry up just 3-4 pieces,

and while that’s making your entire house smell like heaven, grab your kitchen meat mallet and beat up your 8 chicken breasts, till they’re of even thickness.

Drain your bacon fat and reserve for another day of glorious tasting, chop up your bacon & let it drain on a paper towel-lined plate.

In the same large saucepan, over medium heat, melt 6 tablespoons of butter.  Sauté chicken in butter until lightly browned.  Remove from pan and set aside.

Stir in 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour into same pan

and whisk till incorporated in butter.  Cook for about 4 minutes; until all of the flour flavor is gone.

Stir in 1 cup of half and half.

Whisk until combined and mixture in pan is thick and smooth.

Stir in 2 cups of chicken stock, slowly, whisking continuously until it’s all combined.  Cook until slightly thickened and

stir in 4 tablespoons Dijon mustard.

Return chicken to pan and simmer in sauce for 30 minutes.

Serve over a bed of rice with some cooked mushrooms, a sprinkling of the fried bacon, some fresh parsley and a side of your favorite green !

(Serve it with rice or mashed potatoes to soak up the creamy sauce or ….whatever you fancy!)

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

Oh yes, please.

It’s 8 pm, I had plenty to eat for dinner tonight, I just uploaded this photo and I am

s-a-l-i-v-a-t-i-n-g!

This waffle recipe is perfection.

It is simple.  It is quick.  It makes fluffy, airy waffles.  And it makes plenty for you to have seconds and possibly thirds!

Let the sweet (or savory – chicken & waffles anyone?!) adventure begin!

The magic starts right here in this large bowl.  You will need 1 and 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour.

Add 1 teaspoon baking powder,

1 teaspoon baking soda,

and 1/2 teaspoon salt

and whisk together.

Add 2 cups buttermilk, 1/3 cup vegetable oil and 2 eggs to the flour mixture.

Whisk gently until just combined.

Ok, actually preferable, to have lumps in your batter.  Let the batter sit after you’ve stirred it, for about 10 minutes, and the majority of the “lumps” of flour will burst and get incorporated as you pour the batter into the waffle iron!

Pour the batter into the middle of the waffle iron

and it will find its way to the edges by itself!

Don’t you just love those little cavities of butter and maple syrup?  I think that I may have to go and make a batch right now…

Breakfast for dessert?  Sure!

Makes: 4 cups of batter

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

 

 

Sunday night’s dinner was supposed to be Moules-Frites (mussels and french fries).  So at around 4 pm I start my prep work and slice up about 1/2 cup of shallots and 4 garlic cloves…

Then my little Beach Rose falls headfirst down the stairs.  All of them.  After starting from her toes and asking if they hurt and going all the way up her pudgy little body, we determine that, thank God, she’s ok.

As my husband is consoling her and bringing her into the kitchen to have a jelly bean to “make her feel better”, someone starts pounding on the front door yelling for us to “Quick! Open the door!”  Turns out that the wind has knocked down a tree on our road.  The tree fell on a power line and snapped it in 2 and the very live, dancing ends of the power line are in our side yard lighting it on fire!

Needless to say, we were out of power for 5 hours and the Moules-Frites were postponed till the next day.

Oh. My. Goodness.  The smell in the fridge the next day was breath-stopping.

I was sure that the mussels had gone bad and that rotten seafood was the culprit for the stench.  Once I’d decided that I would be able to open the fridge door without losing my breakfast, I took a whiff of the bag of mussels and… they smelled like the sea, beautiful.

My HUGE mistake was slicing those shallots and garlic and storing them as you see above, in my refrigerator.  Does that look like a tight seal to you?  Nooooooooo……..

Every food item that went into my dinner on Monday night was fresh and the meal was delicious.   But I’ll tell you what… it was really difficult for me to get past my head and my nose that kept telling me that some smell was assaulting my senses.  Thank goodness nobody else was affected and my dinner party was thrilled with April in Paris!

It’s now been 3 days since the offensive bowl left my fridge and things are just getting back to normal, smell-wise.  I did have to toss a few other loosely wrapped items in the fridge that very quickly absorbed the garlic-shallot flavor (read: onion-flavored grapes, strawberries, & cinnamon-raisin bread).

A couple of helpful hints, so that you can learn from my mistake…

1. Keep one of these odor-absorbing items in your fridge at all times:

• open box of baking soda
• cup of white vinegar
• cup of fresh coffee grounds
• cup of oats

and

2.  Wrap your stinky chopped shallots, halved onions, sliced garlic, etc 2-3 times, tightly, with Saran wrap and then enclose in a ziploc freezer bag.  Or better yet, put them in an airtight plastic or glass container in the fridge.

Aren’t you grateful for all of my foolish mistakes, so that I can tell you all about how to avoid being such a dufus like me?!

 

In love with love.

Unhappy with herself and therefore unhappy even when she should be happiest.

Too many romance novels.  Depicting love as forever passionate.  Forever awaiting the perfect situation, the man who loves passionately, who’s rich and cultured.

Horrible to her husband.  Terrible how she persuaded him to operate on a club footed man when he’d never performed a surgery, just in the hopes of him becoming someone of interest and rich.   Sad and pitiful how devoted he was to her and how much she loathed him and was disrespectful to him.

Indifferent to her little girl.  Only merit to any of this character’s ponderings is when she prays she won’t give birth to a girl because she feels as though girls are trapped/restrained by convention and men are free; to love, to seek adventure, to choose their destiny.  “A revenge for all her past helplessness.”

Woe is me!  I’m so unhappy!  It’s everyone else’s fault! My life coulda, shoulda, woulda if only I’d been treated fairly…  I’m the victim!  Men are to blame!  Nobody understands me!  Nobody gets it! Who cares about your feelings; we’re talking about me!  I don’t deserve this.  I deserve more.  Why is this happening to me?  Why does bad luck follow me wherever I go?  When I get what I want, why am I still unhappy?

Oh puke!  This woman is repugnant!  She is such a martyr and so selfish and delusional; believing that she’s been wronged and blaming everyone else but herself for her misery.

I find it infuriating that the synopsis of the book mentions feeling sympathy for the human frailty of Madame Bovary.  Give me a break!  She’s not frail when she seduces her 2 lovers; she’s cunning and manipulative and seeking satisfaction in passion and riches.  She’s not frail when she spends money she knows her poor husband doesn’t have to pay back; she’s self-centered and shrewd when she gets power of attorney from her husband to squander what money he does possess.

When reality catches up with her and her lovers grow tired of her and she has recklessly spent every last cent and lost everything, only then does she “appear” frail.  But still, she is “the victim” and in her mind her life has never gone as she deserved and she will not live as it is and decides to, again, think of only herself and kill herself.

Leaving behind a bereaved husband who finds out about all of her infidelities and wrongdoings and dies young of a broken heart, leaving behind a little girl who will be ruined in poverty forever.

So I made French Fries last night (Mmmmm!) and used about 1 cup of canola oil to fry them in.  What to do with all that oil when you’re done?

Such is the dilemma…

Do I throw it all away? 

Ouch!

Can I reuse it?

Yes, you can!

Don’t throw it away!

Strain the oil into a jar, to catch any pieces of food.  Put the lid onto it. Store in a cool, dry place for up to 2 months.

And reuse!

You can reuse it up to 3 times, before you’ll want to switch it out for fresh oil.

Who knew?  Well, now you do!

Such a simple concept and yet I have mistakenly ignored this blatant truth for….forever!

The rule of thumb, the simple truth, is that you should not refrigerate the majority of your fruits and vegetables.  Doing so compromises the integrity of the flavor of the food.

Sure, you may be able to preserve your apple a lot longer in the “crisper drawer” of your fridge, but I promise you it will taste much more like a cross between the shallots and lemon in the drawer than a Granny Smith.  Yech!

Store ’em like ya find ’em.  If they are out on a shelf in the middle of the produce aisle, with absolutely no refrigeration, like the bananas, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, pineapple, kiwi, oranges, etc, than they belong on your counter when you get home.

If they are on the cooler shelves, then you can by all means refrigerate the fruits and veggies. But be sure to use them relatively quickly so that they do not take on the odors and flavors of whatever else you have stored in your fridge.

To avoid the fridge flavor absorption, try repackaging some of your foods before storing them in there.  Take your berries out of their original container, line the bottom of a tupperware with paper towels and repackage them in here, with the lid tightly fastened. Wash your lettuce, dry it, and repackage it with a paper towel to absorb excess moisture, in a ziploc baggie.  Wrap up your herbs in a paper towel and stick them in a ziploc bag, as well.

Asparagus is always sitting in a bath of water at the grocery store, so mimic this at home.  Tomatoes are also usually found in the center aisles of the produce section, which are not cooled.  So, I usually keep mine out on the counter and they taste so much better.

The only advice I’d give on storing your produce on the kitchen counters or your kitchen table is to make certain that it will not get any sun.  Unless you don’t mind limp, wrinkled asparagus!

 

 

Oh goodness does this dish ever signify Spring!  It is so light and fresh and divine.

Let the savory adventure begin!

As every beautifully cooked savory dish should, this one starts with the combination of 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in the bottom of a skillet, over medium-high heat.

Add 1 pound peeled shrimp.

Season with about 1 teaspoon of salt and

1/4 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper.

Lower the heat to medium-low and add 2 cloves of minced garlic and

and 1 bag of frozen peas, thawed.  Cook for 1 minute.

Add 3/4 cup of crème fraîche and about 1 tablespoon of fresh basil leaves, cut into narrow ribbons.

Cook another minute.

Cook a 12 ounce package of fresh linguine pasta, grab it straight from the boiling water with tongs and stir it into your sauce.  (Don’t be overly concerned about getting some of the pasta water into the sauce.  This only makes it more luxurious, as the starches from the pasta that ended up in the water now help to thicken the glorious sauce! Mmmmm!)

Mix well and season with another 1/2 teaspoon of salt & pinch of pepper, taste and add more if necessary.

Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Serves 4.

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

 

 

So tasty and really knocks the socks off those you serve it too!

This recipe has a few steps to it, like a lasagna, however the payoff is incredibly worthwhile.

Let the savory adventure begin!

Cook 1 pound of ground beef and

1 large onion, chopped, in a large skillet, over medium-high heat.  When beef is browned, drain.

Stir in 4 cups of homemade spaghetti sauce (see link to my sauce recipe!) and about 10 ounces of fresh, thinly sliced, cooked mushrooms.

Heat to boiling.  Add 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper.

Pour 1/2 of the  meat sauce into the bottom of a greased 9 x 13 inch pan.

Spread evenly.  Set aside.

In a large bowl combine 1/4 cup of freshly shredded Parmesan cheese,

1 teaspoon salt,

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper,

1 cup of freshly shredded mozzarella cheese,

a 15 ounce container of ricotta cheese,

and 1 package (10 ounces) of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed between paper towels to drain.

Spread cheese mixture and meat mixture to the edges of 12 cooked lasagna noodles.

Roll up; cut roll in half to form 2 roll-ups.

Place cut sides down in beef mixture.  Repeat with remaining noodles and cheese & meat mixtures.

Cover entire pan with remaining 2 cups of meat mixture.

Then send it over the top by sprinkling the top with another cup of the freshly shredded mozzarella cheese!  Soooo cheesy and delicious!

Cover and bake for 30 minutes.

YUM!

Servings: 8.

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

The French use Creme Fraîche to impart delicious flavor to both sweet and savory dishes. And does it ever!

It is a bit difficult to describe its taste.  It is somewhat like a fresh sweet cream, but with more body to it.  It is like a rich custard…delectable.

And easy to make yourself, instead of spending exorbitant amounts of money for the small amount usually needed in a recipe.

Start with 1/2 cup of dairy sour cream.

Add 1/2 cup of heavy cream to the sour cream.

Whisk together until

thoroughly blended.

Pour into a jar with a lid, cover it and let it stand in a warm place (like your kitchen counter is fine!) until thickened.  Approximately 12 hours.

Stir well with a spoon.

Refrigerate, covered, for 36 hours before serving.

May store in refrigerator for 7-10 days.

Servings = 1 cup

Wonderful to whip up as easy pan sauces, lovely over seafood or chicken, or sweeten a bit to serve over fresh fruit or desserts.  You’ll never be able to get enough of it once you’ve tried it!

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

Treat her like gold!

Ask her what she likes to eat for dinner.  Frozen pizza ok?  Do you like pepperoni?  Soda?  Treats?  Have them stocked in the house for her when she comes over to babysit.

Tell her to feel free to watch whatever TV she wants.

Tell her to make herself at home.

Make her LOVE babysitting for you and your kid(s).

Make it easy for her.  Tell her that the most important thing is that your kid(s) is alive when you come home at night.  Tell her that if your kid(s) give her a hard time she has permission to stick them in front of the TV.

Make sure that she feels comfortable reaching out to you throughout the night if she has questions or concerns.

The last thing you want to do is take your babysitter for granted or take advantage of her.

Pay her well.  Pay her extra if you come home in between hours. (So if you pay $10/hour and you leave at 5 and come home at 10:30 pm, pay her as if she stayed till 11 pm, or $60.)

Your child’s life and safety and happiness are what you live for.  They are the most important thing in your life.  Therefore, the babysitter is in charge of the most important thing in your life.

Handle her with care, so that she handles your babies with care too!