Beef Bourguignon, or How I Spent My Summer Hurricane

The nice thing about a hurricane is that you know pretty well in advance that it's coming. It's not like a Tornado that just decides to drop out of the sky, throw your belongings into the next county and bid you a good day. I have experienced three tornadoes. Two were far away, but I got to watch them drop. The third was spent in the shelter that is the Alabama Shakespeare Festival stage...

Shouldn't all shelters be theaters? What a nice idea.

Back to the hurricane.

Irene came for a visit. A couple days before I thought it might be a good idea to stock up on some things... supplies for a good batch of ice cream (see previous post) and something warm that I could cook all day and have lots of leftovers.

I am not a recipe kind of guy. Having grown up in a kitchen and spent many years working with food, I'm pretty good at faking it. (Reason #1 why it took a lot of work to learn to bake. There's no faking in baking... I just made that up. Genius.) So, I glanced at a few recipes and played with it a little and... well, let's just say it was a happy hurricane.

I know it's not hurricane season, but it's getting cooler and here's a great recipe to share with your family. Turtle loved it. The Missus did, too. My kid is pretty open and adventuresome when eating. At 18 months, he appreciates a good Beef Bourguignon.

So, here it is.

This recipe makes enough for 4. (Or two and a half with leftovers.)

Ingredients

 For the stew

2 pounds boneless stew beef, such as chuck or sirloin tip, cut into large chunks. I went with a good grass fed cut from a trusted butcher.

1 tablespoons pork fat or olive oil, plus more if needed.

You're only going to use the following veggies to flavor your stock and your meat. This is not the time to impress with your knife skills.

1 carrots, peeled and halved

1 onions, peeled and halved

2 cloves garlic, just crushed

1/8 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 bottle red wine

2 cups beef stock

1 bouquet garni (made from bay leaf, parsley stems, and thyme sprigs)

For the garnish

1/2 tablespoon olive oil, plus more if needed

3 to 4 slices bacon, cut into lardons

(Lardons are a French bacon. You can buy them cut into cubes or strips. I got some fantastic locally produced thick cut bacon, trimmed them into small strips and used half for this recipe and froze the other half to use in all kinds of dishes. Who doesn't like bacon. the way the French use it is amazing. Rather than downing five or six strips on a Sunday morning, they use a little in darn near everything. Brilliant.)

20 baby onions, peeled (this takes time and is a bit of a bugger, but totally worth it. Baby onions are also known as Cocktail Onions or Cipolline.)

12 ounces mushrooms

Directions

Remove the meat from the refrigerator and bring to room temperature, about 20 minutes. Do not skip this step.

Heat the oil in a large casserole. Working in batches, brown the stew meat well on all sides, removing as you go.

Don't toss all the meat in at once. You want to brown the meat, not steam it. Small batches. Brown it all the way around. Trust me.

When the meat is done, cook the carrots and onions in the same pot until tender and lightly golden. Add the garlic, and cook one minute. Add the flour and cook, stirring for 2 minutes. Toss it all into the crock pot. Pour over the wine and the stock. Add the bouquet garni. Put your browned meat in the pot, cover, and cook that sucker all day long, until your meat is very tender.

If you are using an enameled cast iron dutch oven or a pot that can go from stovetop to oven, or don't have a crock pot, pre-heat your oven to about 325 and do everything in just one pot. Put everything into the oven until your meat is very tender, about two hours.

While the meat cooks, prepare the garnish: Heat the oil, in a pan and brown the bacon, and remove.

Add the onions and cook until browned all over, remove. Finally, brown the mushrooms, and remove. Deglaze the pan with 1/2 cup water, reduce, and then pour over the garnish. Set aside.

When the meat is done, remove it from the pot. Strain the stock, discarding the vegetables. Pour the liquid back into a pot, and boil until thick enough to coat a spoon. Return the meat to the pan and add the garnish. Cover, and simmer until the onions are tender and the flavors have blended, 10 minutes. Adjust the seasonings. Serve.

Pair these with a good potatoes, some brussell sprouts sauteed in garlic or whatever veggie floats your boat and dig in.

A nice home made black tea ice cream and warm brownie is always a good way to end the meal.

Words, words, words

I am a man of words. 

I love words and have been known to use them often...

This is a polite way of saying I can talk your ear off.

But Turtle has been saying words.  Not just babbling, words.   I know by this point they should be able to say a certain number of words, but it's surprising nontheless.  He's done a variety of animal sounds for months, things that he and The Actor's Wife do during bath time.  Our favorite is the dinosaur and the dog.  We can't decide if the woof woof sound is the cute part, or how hard he works to get his face into the position to make the W sound. 

Turtle follows directions, he understands words:  he grabs his shoes when asked, he can understand what you ask of him and will have a response to it, he know all his body parts.

But today.

Today! 

Magic. 

He pointed to my eye and said, "Eye."  Then to my nose, "Nose"  Which he's said for a while, and it really sounds like "No, no, no, no..."  He pointed to my ear and said, "Eah."  He stuck his hand into my mouth and said, "tfffftffttff" which I can only assume means "teeth."  Then a very short time later he made a chomping clearing of the throat noise accompanied by the sign for cookies with both hands.  It was the noise cookie monster makes when he eats cookies. 

Turtle was clearly communicating.  And it blew my mind. 

Enroll your kids in the NYC Imagination Library!

We got this information from a friend and over the last few months Turtle has been getting books sent for free via the NYC Dept. of Education.  Socialism at work.  Yeah!

New York Parents, the information is below. 

The NYC Imagination Library is an initiative of the NYC Dept. of Education. The goal is to promote the development of emergent literacy and language skills that are important for every child's success in school by encouraging all NYC parents to read aloud to their children from birth until age five.

Just enroll your preschool child (age 0 to 5 yrs) in the NYC Imagination Library and a new, carefully selected, age-appropriate book will be mailed each month in your child's name directly to your home.  Books will begin arriving at your home six to eight weeks after your registration form has been received, and will continue every month until your child turns five.

Enroll at: www.nycimaginationlibrary.org

Your child will be eligible for this program as long as you live within the five boroughs of NYC.

A Sunday Project

On my way from the gym Saturday morning, I noticed a small white rocking chair in the window of our local Salvation Army.  I have been wanting to grab some kind of chair for our little man to sit in, but paying $75 bucks to Pottery Barn Kids for a tiny chair seemed a little much.

So I ran home, grabbed the wallet and made my way back to grab this ten dollar gem.

The name written on the back of the chair was a girl's... exactly the same as Turtle's sans one single letter.

It was a sign.

I brought it home with some books I grabbed for Turtle.  I put the chair on the floor and he immediately ran to it, grabbed it, moved it to a spot and climbed into it with a book.

Sunday morning, I grabbed sandpaper, a drill and new screws.  I sat on the curb, took the rocking legs off, sanded the chair, put some glue into the legs, reattached the rockers with brand new screws and wiped it down.  Tomorrow, I'll paint it while A.V. is putting him to sleep so it can dry all night, ready for him to sit in by Tuesday morning.

At the moment, it's in a corner with Elmo, Kermit, Roarie the Raptor and Jacques comfortably seated between it's now smooth and sanded arms.

Ice Cream

I am an avid maker of ice cream.

It all started with a trip to Berthillon in Paris.  If you are planning a trip to Paris I would suggest going to the Ille St. Louis and grabbing a glace at Berthillon.  (Go to the original on the main street.  First stop at the small shop across the street, just wide enough for a Smart Car, and have some samples of Foie Gras and Rillette.  Then grab a glace.  I highly recommend the ginger praline, but you can't go wrong.)

If you are not planning a trip to Paris, you now have an excuse.

Needless to say, I became obsessed with ice cream, and having Turtle reach an age when that might be a nice little treat, I wanted to make something he could eat, something pure, something with few ingredients that people have been making forever.  The kind of ice cream my parents would make in the backyard in Salt Lake City, Utah when I was a kid, pouring the rock salt into the machine, working the hand crank.

I have been working from David Lebovitz book, The Perfect Scoop.  His recipes are straightforward and easy.  It's ice cream the way it's always been made:  Philadelphia style with milk, cream, sugar and your flavoring, or the traditional French style with egg yolks added.  And the ice cream is wonderful.  His salted caramel is brilliant and I'm a huge fan of his Black Mission Fig Ice Cream.

I also own a copy of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer.  She may have the most brilliant and intriguing recipes I've ever seen.   We're anxious to try her Grape Hibiscus Frozen Yogurt, her Chamomile Chardonnay Ice Cream, Scarlet & Earl Grey Ice Cream, Kona Stout Ice Cream, Roasted Pumpkin 5-Spice Ice Cream, Young Gouda Ice Cream with Vodka-Plumped Cranberries, and a Bangkok Peanut Ice Cream that has the spicy notes of a good Pad Thai.

These flavors keep me up at night, mouth watering as I dream about their ice cold goodness.

The ingredients of her ice cream base keep me up at night, as well, but for an entirely different reason. Instead of making a custard with egg yolks, she uses cream cheese, cornstarch and corn syrup.

When I pick up a carton of ice cream, I rarely see a list of four or five ingredients.  It's typically a list of things I wouldn't chose to put into my body, let alone my child's body.   And by the time Turtle is ready for more than a taste of Dad's ice cream, I hope to have the skills to whip up a batch with ease.

It's the list of garbage on the back of ice cream cartons that led me to want to find a simpler, purer way of making ice cream.  Great ingredients, local organic milk, raw sugar, free range eggs...  Cornstarch and corn syrup are not on that list.

Now I should add here that Jeni uses milk and cream from local, small dairies, she finds the best ingredients, sourcing vanilla from Uganda and highlighting local, independent farmers and small purveyors of the most incredible chocolates.  She is sort of everything I aspire to be as a person who cooks and everything in a person whose business you want to support.  I kind of love her and want to go to Ohio just to visit her and spend a day in her kitchen...  I just have a personal dislike for corn syrup, cornstarch in my ice cream.  

This weekend I decided to try one of Jeni's recipes, just to see what the difference was in the respective ice cream bases.  We made a chocolate sauce with coffee, cocoa and chocolate.  Simple enough.  We then added cream cheese, which turned it into a thick chocolatey paste.  We made a cornstarch slurry, then we made the base of milk, cream, sugar and corn syrup.  It looked similar to the base of David Lebovitz simple ice cream base.  I added the cornstarch to thicken it.

I tasted it and it was definitely different.  It had a definite vanilla taste, although no vanilla had been added.  It also tasted like toasted marshmallows and caramel.  Again.  None of these ingredients had been added... only two tablespoons of corn syrup.

We added this to the chocolate cream cheese mix and chilled it.

This process took me nearly three times as long as just mixing milk, cream, sugar and the flavoring for the ice cream. It wasn't hugely labor intensive, just a lot of steps.

This morning we put it into our ice cream maker and the flavor was terrific, a wonderful blend of chocolate and coffee. It did seem to freeze and expand faster than the other bases, but in the end, it still had the same texture and consistency.  We froze it and there wasn't a noticeable difference in texture.

The taste blew my mind.

And now...  The decision comes down to what I want to feed my family.  I got into this ice cream game the same way I make most food decisions, I eat something pure, wholesome and fantastic, become obsessed about it, find out how to make it and work to perfect it.

Corn syrup, cornstarch and cream cheese were not on the list of preferred ingredients for my ice cream.  I'm going to stick to a basic base of milk, cream, and sugar.  I will steal her recipe ideas, however...  She's a flavor genius and while I prefer the Lebovitz base, she's got amazing flavors.  I guess my ice cream will be a hybrid, the best of both.

And I will eventually make a Bangkok Peanut Ice Cream that Turtle can eat.

Be original or don't bother.

 On my niece's recent trip to NYC, we went on a hunt for shoes.  We'd gotten her excited to get a pair of TOMS. My wife got her first pair of TOMS and absolutely fell in love with them.  She does not buy shoes.  She hates buying shoes.  She would rather, nay, insists, on going somewhere to buy the cheapest shoes she can find that are guaranteed to fall apart within months than go spend the kind of money that would get her a pair of shoes that last forever.  It's just how she is.  She also has very small feet and we have a hard time finding shoes that fit.  So, TOMS have been a godsend.  Inexpensive, small sizes, they fit, they're very tough and well made and they have true heart behind what they do.

If you don't know the story of TOMS, Blake Mycoskie, owner and founder of TOMS traveled to Argentina and his during his visits he continued to see and meet barefoot children  As the company website explains, he set up his generous business model, one free pair of shoes to a child for every pair sold, because of this experience.

So, this brings me back to my niece.  We walked into a store, looked at the TOMS and my wife said, "I love mine.  They have carried me through the streets of New York, the cobblestones of Amsterdam, walked the sandy pathways of the Tuilleries and the gardens of Versailles.  I have worn them playing with Turtle in the park and running orientation at Hunter College.  I'd like a closet full of them."

My niece, not realizing that the price tag for a pair of TOMS in NYC is the same as the price tag in SLC, balked.

Then she said, "I can get BOBS for cheaper."

"What the hell are BOBS?"

So, I started checking into BOBS.

They're Skechers. 

Now, I've bought and owned a few pair of Skechers.  They usually last me about six to nine months.  I've had them fall apart, had the entire sole crack in half, had the leather split and blown through the sole of the last pair in less than five months.  They're not exactly cheap, but not expensive.  They're typically less expensive knock offs of much more expensive shoes.  Their Shape Ups are a great example.  a $70 version of the $200 MBX shoe.  (Not that I'd be caught dead in a pair of Shape Ups.  I envision the platform shoes Tom Cruise wears any time he works with an actor over 5'10".)

But to knock off, almost exactly, a great simple shoe and a great concept seemed a little cynical to me.

Stealing the concept was the only way they could get people to buy their TOMS knockoffs.  Why buy them for $2 less if you weren't going to have the same kind of philanthropic element.  BOBS has partnered with Soles4Soles, outsourcing their philanthropic program.  Very different from TOMS where the philanthropy is the core of their entire business.

Now, I'm fine with a shoe company making a profit, fine with them ripping off designs.  If you want to buy a pair of BOBS, fine.

But the the absence of an original idea... that irks me. 

TOMS built their entire company around an idea that every child in the world deserved a pair of shoes.  BOBS cynically stole that idea to make a profit; because it was the only way it could compete.  TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie has said he hopes more companies follow suit.  But what BOBS did was to produce an inferior replica of TOMS product, appear to make replicate their concept and then claim it's less expensive.

By $2.

It's a rather transparent bit of chicanery.  One can but wonder what they were thinking.   Big, unoriginal corporate monster steals an idea from a small, smart, compassionate company.  Again.

So, to you, to my niece (if she reads this) I say, go get yourself a pair of TOMS. Spend the $2, bet a better product, know you're doing some good in the world.

To Skechers I say, please figure out what you really stand for as a company, as a brand, and do something philanthropic around that.  Do something unique.  Be original. 


To read more about the TOMS/BOBS... thing...  there are some articles here and here and here.

If you have barely worn shoes to drop off, you can find a soles4soles location here or donate.
(thanks to digitalmomblog for this info.)

A teachable moment

This is a teachable moment.  It's about respect, quelling your own selfishness and knowing that rummaging through someone's skivvy drawer is wrong. 

First, this plea.

When someone (me) offers you a warm recently vacated dryer for your clothes (the clothes you've left sitting in three washing machines nearly 3 hours while people waited...) do not then open a dryer in use, pull out someone else's clothes and put yours in, insisting that you have to use it since it's "closer."
Closer to what? It's two feet away from my proffered warm empty one.

And when I tell you your behavior is selfish and disrespectful, don't come back with, "Don't lecture me about respect. I'm a very well educated woman!"

Obviously you can guess this was my afternoon encounter.  This woman in her late twenties actually tossed out, "I'm a very well educated woman!"  Oddly enough she looked quite a bit like the internet sensation by the same name.  

I decided she needed to go back to school. 

"First, miss, your clothes have been sitting in three machines since I got here this morning.  Done.  Sitting.  Waiting for your eminent return for over two and a half hours.  Other people waited ever so patiently for washing machines while your clothes sat untouched.  Not one person made a move to remove them from their home.  The clothes you see now, finishing their drying cycle, are the clothes washed by people waiting for you to empty your machines.  Second, I just offered you two machines that are empty and warm, a third empty above them ,and a fourth will be empty in... well, however long it takes for me to reach in and do it.  That's four empty dryers for you to use, not two feet from the one you are emptying of clothes that are not yours.  If this establishment were packed and all the dryers were in use and the woman whose clothes you are now fondling had simply left them in there for, say, two and a half hours to languish, you may be well within your right to ask the attendant next door at the bakery for assistance in removing those clothes and setting them aside.  As it stands, those clothes have a couple minutes left on the dryer and the woman has been punctual, as have most of us today, about getting her laundry.  Therefore your actions are selfish and you obviously lack respect for other's things.  AND THIRD...  You have stated that you are okay with people taking your items from the washing machine (if only we'd known) or the dryer.  Most of us are not - in the same way we are not okay with you rummaging through our underwear drawers.  I would not be comfortable with you going through my underwear, nor would I be comfortable with you going through my wife's panty drawer or my son's pajamas.  And the fact that you are doing that very thing right now with this woman's items is uncomfortable to me.  The fact that you are doing so while she is not around, unaware that you are essentially rummaging through her lacy frilly things is actually creepy and I believe criminal in several states and more than a handful of college campuses.   This is the kind of basic lesson I hope my one year old has already learned:  respect other people's things... and don't be a creep.  Oh... and you're lucky my wife is not doing laundry today because she wouldn't have given you this little lesson, she'd simply rip you a new one, you inconsiderate twit."

And that is a teachable moment.