December things

As I've said, December is our food month. It starts with leftovers from the Thanksgiving gigot d'agneau, which sometimes becomes a shepherd's pie but this year we turned into a lamb curry. The hot, spicy curry helped burn off some of the chill of our extremely wet start to winter. Then the weather got weirdly warm, with morning temperatures around 12ºC and daytime highs up to 16ºC.(See the ºC-to-ºF conversion table on the right.)

That's springtime weather and called for a big salad (above) for lunch a few days ago — escarole, red beets, bacon, boiled eggs, cubes of cheese, raw mushrooms, a mound of duck rillettes, toasted croutons and toasted walnuts, and a garlicky vinaigrette dressing. You might call it une salade campagnarde.

It all leads up to Walt's birthday dinner of steak au poivre, which we made yesterday. Walt said he wanted to try filet de bœuf, which is supposedly the tenderest cut of beef. He went out and bought a pound of filet, and we cut it into thick slices and cooked it fairly rare. The sauce is a lot of cracked black pepper, a lot of crème fraîche, and some Dijon mustard, calvados (apple brandy), and veal stock. I wish I had sliced one of the steaks before I took this photo.

December is also a good month for spectacular sunrises — providing they aren't hidden by low clouds. Scenes like the one below, the view from our kitchen window, often only last for two or three minutes, so you have to keep your camera close at hand and ready to go.