Cooking as therapy

Some of you reading this have mentioned that I must be feeling better now because I've started cooking again. A month-long cold had slowed me down quite a bit. From my point of view, the fact that I'm busy in the kitchen is the reason my santé is improving. Cooking keeps me going and the resulting food is nourishing and comforting. Here's a photo of the lasagna I made yesterday, ready for the oven. When it came out of the oven I was too busy eating it to stop and take more photos.

Today's project is a French classic called canard aux navets — duck with turnips. I know there are people who don't like the taste of turnips, but I'm not one of them. I'll cook the duck (cuisses de canard) in the air fryer, and when it's nice and brown I'll braise it with the diced turnips in a pan on the stove.I'm also going to serve it with some cassoulet beans. Pictures tomorrow...

A 'shroomy weekend

It all started when I went to the supermarket late last week. In the produce department, I saw trays of nice mushrooms. I thought, "why not?" and bought one. When I got home with my groceries, I realized we already had a bag full of mushrooms in the refrigerator. I needed to cook mushrooms over the weekend, that was for sure. I didn't want to see them go to waste. (This was about a third of them.)

The first thing I thought of was tomato sauce with pasta. Nothing fancy, just tomato puree from a jar with'shrooms, carrots, onions, ground beef, bay leaves, and red wine. That would make some hearty cold-weather eating, as well as some good leftovers for the freezer. It didn't take long to chop up all the vegetables and to wash and slice a good quantity of mushrooms. I made that on Saturday.

Yesterday, Monday, I still had an abundance of uncooked mushrooms. At the supermarket, I had also picked up a tray of veal stew meat, just because it had caught my eye. In France, that's called blanquette de veau because it's a stew made with crème fraîche (lightly soured cream) along with onions, bay leaves, carrots, mushrooms, veal broth, and white wine.

I just needed to make a white sauce (une béchamel) with butter, flour, water, white wine, cream, and the veal broth I had already made by simmering the veal with the vegetables in a pot on the stove for a couple of hours. Now we have leftovers of both tomato sauce (lasagna today?) and of blanquette for later this week. We're eating it with tiny elbow macaroni instead of rice. These are our idea of wintertime foods.

Recent photos

I don't think I ever showed you how the roasted red bell peppers came out the other day. They aren't the plumpest peppers I've ever found, but they taste good. I saved the liquid they produced and "dressed" the red pepper flesh with it, adding a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Picking all the seeds out didn't take too long.

This is a stir-fry of chicken breast meat, broccoli, red bell pepper, and onion that I made the other day. It was delicious and very colorful. I'll make it again (maybe with shrimp).

Looking west along the road where it passes our house. It's nice having the hedge beautifully trimmed. The south-facing windows you see are glass-block windows that we had solar-powered blinds installed over because in summer, on sunny days, the windows get so hot. We hope the white shutters will reflect some of the sunlight and heat away from the house.

Sunrise yesterday, 15 Feb. 2025, in a view of the neighbors' property taken from our kitchen window. Predictions are for sunny skies all week!

The shutters, the house, the yard, the neighborhood...

We enjoyed a rare sunny day yesterday, with an afternoon high temperature of about 50ºF. As a result, there was no cloud cover overnight, and this morning the temperature outside is just below freezing. The good news is that we're supposed to have another sunny day.

Above are a couple of shots of our house and some of our new shutters. They are solar-powered roll-down shutters. Push-button shutters are great.The black strip on the top left corner of each window is the photovoltaic converter that sends power to the shutters. On the right just above is a shot of our back yard, with its linden tree, two apple trees, and a garden shed that is slowly being taken over by ivy. I took the photo yesterday afternoon. No fog for a change...

Above left is a shot of the north side of our house, with its small window into the loft space over the living room (with the big window) and with, now, a new solar-powered shutter upstairs.

This is a photo of our Blois neighbors' house-in-the-country. It's just across the street from our place. The neighbors are supposed to be here this weekend but so far no sign of them. I hope everything is okay.