Eating with Bob and Suzette: October 11, 2016 In Woodstock. Brunch - Bread Alone, Lunch – Egg on Corn Cake with sausage, Dinner – Boeuf Bourguignon, Catalan Spinach, and Walt’s and Peruvian Mashed Potatoes

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

October 11, 2016 In Woodstock. Brunch - Bread Alone, Lunch – Egg on Corn Cake with sausage, Dinner – Boeuf Bourguignon, Catalan Spinach, and Walt’s and Peruvian Mashed Potatoes

I woke at 6:00 at the diurnal shift and blogged for a while. I made tea and ate the last bite of blueberry muffin from yesterday's lunch.

At around 9:00 we walked around the property and picked some oregano.

We then went to town and Suzette and I walked around while Luke worked at Bread Alone, a bakery and café. We returned and ordered a bowl of lentil soup and a piece of poppy seed cake and a coffee for Suzette. After brunch I bought a sour dough baguette we walked back to the wine store and bought a bottle of

Then we met Luke and drove to the recycling center. He had given up his $100/month Waste Management contract for recycling and paying $.10/lb. for solid waste. After we recycled all the plastic, glass, cardboard, aluminum the cost of dumping Luke’s two month accumulation of 14 lb. of solid waste was $1.25. He became an instant convert to recycling.

We then drive to a grocery store for fresh mushrooms, spinach, and a few other items. Then we went to the Woodstock Butcher and bought 2.3 lb. of round stew meat, eggs, and Baking soda. We headed home where Suzette sautéed the two corn cakes we had gotten at Phoenicia Diner and crumbled the PPI sausage for me and the crab cake for her egg on corn cake.

After lunch we napped and at 4:30 we began cooking the

Boeuf Bourguignon

We viewed the original TV program by Julia Child which taught this recipe. It is more basic than our version. It simply braises the beef, adds red wine and cooks it for four hours and then adds braised onions and mushrooms plus a tsp. of thyme.

I minced four cloves of garlic, ½ onion, two shallots, two carrots and the leaves of five or six celery stalks. Suzette braised the beef and the deglazed the beef scrapings with 2 cups of red wine and poured that into a roasting pan. She then braised the vegetables in olive oil and butter and added that to the beef with two cups of vegetable stock. Suzette then covered the roasting pan with aluminum foil and baked it in the oven for three or four years. While the beef was baking Suzette heated water and boiled ½ lb. of small onions for a few minutes to loosen the outer skins. I peeled the skins and put them aside.

Then Suzette washed and dried the ½ lb. of white mushrooms and the portobello mushroom. I then cubed the mushrooms and Suzette braised them with a bit of oregano we picked outside the back door.

After the beef had cooked there was very little sauce so Suzette added about 1 ½ cup of water to liquefy the sauce so we could add the beurre Marie thickening, which is a mixture of softened butter and flour. We added about 1T. of beurre Marie to the sauce and then the mushrooms and onions.

Separately we peeled and boiled Walt’s White potatoes and Peruvian blue potatoes and mashed them with butter and half and half.

We had bought lovely fresh spinach at Sunfrost Farms in Woodstock. We decided to make Catalan Spinach, so I diced an apple and some onion and she sautéed the onion and apple and then added the spinach.

When all of the three dishes were ready, I poured glasses of Cantina Zaccagnini 2013 Montepulciano d’ Abruzzo red wine $17.99 at the wine store in Woodstock, rated 91 by Wine Spectator.

Dinner was wonderful, one of the best Boeuf Bourguignons I have ever tasted. The mixture of local white and Peruvian blue potatoes was terrific, perhaps the best part of the meal and the sautéed fresh spinach with apples was very refreshing.