I will whisk, as long as i don't have to let go of my LOLLIPOP
I will whisk, as long as i don't have to let go of my LOLLIPOP, originally uploaded by Seitvonzu.
We aren't French... well, i might be very remotely french-- just about as much as any person of western european decent ...but , no, we aren't French. I barely remember my 3 semesters of college french, which is extremely embarassing. i've never been to paris, or france in a more general sense.
but i'm ABSURDLY attached to july 14th :)i don't know why, but i started celebrating bastille day in college and ...well, i've mostly carried on the tradition of making a grand French fuss smack in the middle of july! there have been exceptions, but this year was not one.
I didn't remember early, so i didn't have tons of time to prepare our feast or special crafts or prep lucy. I basically remembered because I was listening to NPR during a store-bought ice/library drive through run, and there was a promo for their "midday" show which was going to be all about bastille day! i was all "oh crap, when is that?" and then i heard "celebrate with us tomorrow..." oh good. still time.
so i came home, read to lucyloo (llama llama books you will be the death of me!), and got on the internet to do some research. i thought we'd just do crepes and call it a day...but all the savory crepe recipes i could conjur up seemed like they required lots of ingredients or were fiddly. then i found this:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=451742
quick coq au vin! perfect!
so i printed the recipe, got some assistance with side dish ideas (thank you muchly friend) and resolved to head out bright and early to the grocery. when lucy woke up i told her it was bastille day, taught her to say "vive la france!" and said we were going to "cooking school." le cordon bleu doncha know? i explained that the first lesson was about gathering ingredients...she talked about it the whole way to the grocery store. (she would not however humor mommy by singing "frere jacques" and i didn't even ask about alouette-- she's not a performing monkey, afterall)
we drove to wegmans which is a million years away (really about an hour give or take, depending on traffic...it was rainy-- so we took right around an hour getting there). there was a debacle-- i locked lucy in the car. this was a massive fail on my part, but at least it wasn't a billion degrees, she had her water/snack and she was safely buckled still.... wegman's called 911. there were TWO firetrucks. it was overkill. i was MORTIFIED.
we gathered our stuff, had a lovely lunch, and did a quickie trip to trader joes....by the time we'd dealt with the wegman segment of the journey, mommy decided that we better get a backup dessert at trader joes, in case crepes were a disaster. (this has happened to me a couple times, i use cookinglight's basic crepe recipe which is very very good, but well, sometimes crepes don't cooperate) in the mean time i forgot the nutella. i can get that locally, at target even, so not too bad....but good thing we had the back up ;) this just means we're having crepes tomorrow or the next day.... i love them for breakfast. or really anytime. mmmm.....crepes.
here was the end result of our happy wanderings/cookings:
french baguette and st. andre triple cream cheese
quick coq au vin (with organic chicken and local carrots)
roasted red potatos (local from the farm share)
haricot vert (i had local beans, but i had to go with the super skinny ones from trader joes-- it was a holiday afterall!)
and to end things "chocolate mousse" (aka, tjs' belgian chocolate pudding) whip whipped cream.
i had wine while cooking and sparkling wine with dinner and dessert. it was an epic feast. we ate late and booboo was a little grumpy. i'll encore the whole thing, possibly for lunch tomorrow and she'll love it. i'm sure. dan loved it. i loved it. big success.
vive la france! i can't wait for next year-- i think i'll start planning earlier though... maybe i'll go back to juliet child, but this was truly fantastic for a "cheat."