Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! We enjoyed some treats from Athens Bread Company.



Ben got my flowers!



And Cheryl got me a unicorn mask!!!! Best mother-in-law ever, best Valentine's Day ever.



Sparkles and bunnies! Happy Love Day!

French cooking club

Emily hosted this month's cooking club, and the theme was French! Somehow, in all these years, we have never done french!



Emily started us off with an apéritif, a Kir Royal! A Kir is crème de cassis topped up with white wine or champagne.



Watching the cocktail magic! Valaree was in town, so she joined us for the evening. It's always a treat when we have Valaree at cooking club!



Cheers!



A Frenchy by the fire.



We enjoyed some appetizers by the fire. Radis au beurre, which is simply radishes with butter inside! You dip them in salt right before you eat. So simple, but SO delicious. Petites tomates, and canapés de saumon fumé sur concombres.



Toasts with Pâté and cornichons (little tiny baby pickles!! so cute!).



Nancy made a Pissaladière, an onion tart with anchovies and olives.



We had to seriously pace ourselves, because there were still five courses ahead of us.



Emily telling us a bit about the French hors d'oeuvres.



Baguette, of course! From Athens Bread Company.



Yumi coming up with a strategy for cooking her fish.



Whatever the strategy was, she nailed it! This was the fish course, and it was a steamed sea bass with a dried porchini saffron broth, topped with fried leeks. The broth was delightful! The fish was cooked perfectly.



Each course is served with a different wine. This was served with a Vouvray.



Lots of wine.



The next course was plat principal. The main course! We had Pommes de terre persillées (literally apples of the earth, parsleyed)...



Baked spinach made by Valaree...



And Boeuf Bourgignon. The famous Julia Child's recipe!



Bon Appétit!



The next course was Salade. Yumi made this, and it was butter lettuce and arugula as the base, with sugar snap peas, apples, and almonds, with lemon/honey dressing.



Emily has an amazing old French cookbook, L’ART CULINAIRE FRANÇAISE copyright 1950.



Then there were still more courses. OMG. Time for the cheese course! We had St. André triple crème, Bleu d’Auvergne, and Berner Alpkäse (Swiss, not French)



And finally for dessert, Nancy made Crème brûlée. It was perfection.



Our beautiful bilingual hostess! We had a lovely time in France for the evening. Au revoir!

Happy birthday, Vana!

Tonight we celebrated Vana's birthday eve out at Vana, Joe, and Jasper's house! The whole family was there, and we feasted on pulled pork sandwiches, salad, tofu, baked beans and potato salad. With blueberry and key lime pies for dessert. We had a super fun time playing bowl of nouns! The only unfortunate thing is that the only picture I got was this one of the beans:



Happy birthday, Vana!