Posted by Loulou on Feb 15, 2014 | 1 comment

Squash ready to brown in a hot oven.

Oh, boy, mama’s cookin’ boeuf bourguinon for guests tonight (and tomorrow’s lunch!) and my little salivary glands are workin’ overtime!  It’s really simple or at least it looked that way to me—she chopped up some meat and some carrots and some onions and browned them all in olive oil and butter (the meat was in small cubes and tossed with flour, salt and pepper in a big brown bag—maybe some paprika in there, too) and put them in a big old casserole by Le Creuset and poured a whole bottle of red wine over everything and then some meat stock that she always keeps on hand and then she put it in the oven at 165C or 300 F (because I can see the numbers on the oven from where I sit watching all this action) and then when it starts smelling really good after about an hour and a half, she put in some mushroom caps that she had browned in butter with a little Cognac sloshed in at the end (stand back when you light it—I ran like a bat outta hell when I saw that inferno on the stove), arranged nicely on top of the stew and put it back in the oven for half an hour and tonight she’ll serve it with potato purée or baked butternut squash or rice, ’cause she hasn’t decided yet and besides there is a first course of ceviche of scallops—scallops chopped small and mixed with sweet onion, grated, cilantro, lime juice and olive oil—on litte baby lettuce leaves (which do not interest me at all!) and after the  stew, a tarte tatin for one of the guests who loves it (and papa!) and if one of these visitors does not put a little of that stew in my plate, I’m not gonna play that kazoo with songs I’ve practiced for weeks and weeks, so they had better keep an eye out for me twisting and turning around under their little guest feet!

The magic apple-peeler-corer-slicer that mama has fun with to make her tart.

Moving right along…

And there it is!

This gets turned over and you see apples in a nice design.  I helped with this…

One bite, okay? Just one bite.

I’m salivating all over my pillow…