Bœuf braisé au vin rouge...

...avec carottes, échalotes, et champignons. That's what we're having for lunch today. I made it two days ago, and this will be our second meal out of it. Since I used red wine, you might call it bœuf bourguignon, or estouffade de bœuf. Beef stew with red wine, in other words. Usually, beef stewed with carrots (bœuf aux carottes) is made with white wine in France.

Anyway, I won't call it « bourguignon » because I didn't make it with burgundy wine. Instead, I used a bottle of Côtes du Rhône red. I bought a case (12 bottles) of the wine a couple of months ago, and then I immediately went back to the supermarket and bought another case because it was so good. It was on a special sale and I'm almost ashamed to tell you how little I paid for it.

I'll tell you anyway — less than $3.00 a bottle in U.S. terms. And it had won a gold medal at some wine show in Lyon in 2016.

Off subject: I was just listening to a report about "veggie burgers" on Télématin. It's something new here, I guess. I've made veggie burgers a few times, myself. The report says that French people are gradually diminishing their consumption of meat products. In 1998 per capita meat consumption was at 94 kilograms annually. Now it's down to 86 kilos a year. I haven't looked up the statistics for the U.S.... but with all those hamburgers and bacon that Americans eat... At least one Wikipedia page shows that Americans eat more meat than French people do (though the figures don't match the ones given on TV).

After a video report showing how veggie burgers, called « steaks végétaux », are made and what they contain, the discussion turned to the term « steak » in this context. It's not a steak, the people on the show agreed, because a steak is meat. It's a galette. That's an all-purpose term for cookies (galettes bretonnes), puff-pastry cakes savory (galette de pommes de terre) or sweet (galette des Rois), pan cakes (galettes de sarrasin) , or even Mexican tortillas (galettes de maïs). It will be interesting to see what term for "veggie burger" might catch on in France. The concept is not yet clear, so neither is the terminology.

Okay. What I made included vegetables but it also contained a lot of meat. Both beef and pork, because I cut up a chunk of what we might call "slab bacon" and added it for flavor. In French that's called lard or poitrine, and it is fumé(e), or smoked. And I put in a whole bottle of red wine for about 1.5 kg of meat, plus the carrots, onions, shallots, and mushrooms. It was right good and I'm looking forward to lunch. Often these kinds of  "simmered dishes" or plats mijotés are better re-heated and served the second time.