Beef Bourguignon/Beef Burgundy

This meal just makes me feel fancy. Is anyone a Julia Child fan? Or have you seen Julie & Julia?

That movie is kind of what I have been doing recently - working my way through recipes and writing about it.

I have not found one cookbook to fully work through, though. We have tried keto, low carb, low calorie, and intermittent fasting in the past four months, so our dietary needs have changed.

This is a Julia Child recipe with a twist. It is in a crock pot! 

This saves a lot of time and still feels just as fancy.

I made Jared this dinner because I traveled a lot this month and wanted to fix him a nice meal before he only saw me in passing for a bit because of October craziness.

It was delicious. We both liked it.  I hope you like it as well if you try it.


Ingredients:
1.5 lbs boneless beef round steak, cubed
1 oz package dry onion soup mix
2 cups mushrooms, sliced
1 small onion, chopped (about 1/2 cup)
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup beef broth
1/2 cup red wine
10 .75 oz can of condensed cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
1 package of egg noodles, prepared

Instructions:
In a 5-6 qt crockpot, add in your cubed steak.
Sprinkle with dry onion soup mix. And the mushrooms, onion and garlic.

Pour wine, broth and Worcestershire sauce into crockpot. Top everything with cream of mushroom soup. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-7 hours or HIGH for 4-5 hours.
Serve over egg noodles.

Frisee, Hazelnut & Goat Cheese Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette

You may notice from this picture that this is not frisėe, but I made this French salad anyway with what I could find locally. International recipes can sometimes be hard to replicate here, but I just do the best I can to review recipes for my readers. Recipes are just guidelines, anyway.

For the vinaigrette, use a mason jar with a lid to shake it up.

This is another Savor recipe.

For the salad: 

• 3 bunches frisėe, trimmed and washed
• 1 Granny Smith apple, julienned (I did not do this to my apple because I already had two cut fingers from this week.)
• 1/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted and lightly crushed (I could not find these at the supermarket, either.)
• 1/2 cup goat cheese, crumbled

For the vinaigrette:

• 1 shallot, minced
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste 

Serve immediately. 

Asparagus with Mock Hollandaise Sauce

I read Reese Witherspoon's book earlier this fall, and this was one of her recipes. Reese sure does know how to entertain and how to cook (or at least has good recipes for it).

I wanted to try this one out. It was good, but I think I will save the hollandaise sauce for the steak. I wanted to see what it tasted like with asparagus, but I do think they both taste better separate.

Check it out for yourself, though.

Ingredients:
2 bunches thick asparagus spears, trimmed
2 tbsp kosher salt

Sauce:
1/2 stick butter
freshly grated zest of 1 lemon
1 cup mayonnaise (Hellman's and Blue Plate are my favorites.)
1 tsp Dijon mustard
freshly squeezed juice of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp salt
pinch of cayenne pepper (I used more than a pinch.)

Directions:
1. Fill a large saute pan with water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the asparagus and salt and cook for 6 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and drain the asparagus. Immediately transfer the spears to a bowl of ice water to shock them and lock in the bright cool color. When cool, drain again.

2. Melt the butter and add the lemon zest. Set aside. In a food processor or blend, blend the mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper. Slowly drizzle in the melted butter a little at a time to incorporate. Taste and adjust seasoning.

3. The asparagus may be served at room temperature or reheated in the saute pan filled with simmering water for 1 minute. Drain and arrange on a warm serving platter. Serve with the sauce.

Serves 6 to 8

Summer Salad

Summer may be "officially" over, but I am still cooking like it is not as long as it is a hot as it is outside and the produce is still in stock.

Note: we did get a reprieve from the hot weather last week when a tropical storm and a cold front came at the same time. It started blazing up again in the last few days, but some more thunderstorms moving through can either cool things up or just get the local bridge shut down for high winds. We will see.

Anyway, back to this salad.  It is fine to serve without a dressing. It is colorful and makes you feel good about eating your veggies. I tried to cut it down because the recipe is for 6 servings, but we still ate on it for multiple meals.

Ingredients:
6 ears of corn, cut from ears, raw
2 cucumbers, diced
4 peppers (red, yellow or orange), diced
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 bunch fresh dill, chopped
1 bunch fresh basil, chopped
8 ounces feta, crumbled
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Combine all ingredients and adjust the herbs and salt and pepper to taste. The flavors get better after a couple of hours, so you may want to let it sit for a while after preparing before serving.

This is another Savor recipe.

Lemon Dill Soup

So this did not turn out quite like a soup because I tried to cut it from 6 servings to 3. I should have left more broth in the recipe, but it was still so delicious with great flavors. I still recommend it. If you try to cut down the recipe, keep all the broth in. This did not last long at our house because it tasted so good.

When Jared came home, he thought I cooked jambalaya. I told him that no, that was not it but a good guess and I did not want to tell him what it was supposed to be until after he tried it because it does not look like it should be. He still liked it. What's cooking without kitchen mishaps, anyway?

I got this from the Savor book I read recently. Thank you, Interlibrary Loans and author Shauna Niequist.

Ingredients:
2 c. chopped onion
1 c. chopped celery
1 c. chopped carrots
olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 c. chicken or vegetable broth
1/2 c. brown rice
2 c. chicken, cooked and shredded (optional)
1/4 c. juice from fresh lemons
4 sprigs fresh dill, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Sauté the onion, celery, and carrots in olive oil until soft, then add garlic. Add broth and rice, and allow rice o cook most of the way through. Five minutes before rice is cooked through, add chicken (if using) and lemon juice and dill. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Book Review: Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve

I read this book to better understand the lives of the Chinese students I teach. I only see them in their homes at night, but there is a whole world of experiences they have not during our 25 minute classes.

My first thought was, "Wow, I do not know if I could have sent my child to a Chinese school." I am a big proponent of people having the choice to raise their children how they see fit, though, and I was intrigued.

The author does have Chinese roots. Her parents were raised there, and her husband spent his time in the Peace Corps there. So first off, it would be different for her to send her son to a Chinese school than my non-Mandarin-speaking self.

And her son, although half white, could blend a lot better than other immigrants could.

I braced myself for what I thought could be really shocking and keep me up at night. I made sure I only read it during the daylight when I had plenty of time before I went to bed in case it gave me nightmares, but it was not nearly as bad as I imagined.

The worst atrocity against the boy was being force fed eggs. Okay, some parents in America do that, too.

It opened my eyes up to a school system quite different from my own experience in American public schools.

Instead of individuality and innovation, conformity and blending in are valued in this system.

If you think our testing is intense, read this book and see how competition and testing rule these children's lives in China.

I had read about Tiger Moms in Asia, but if you put it in context of the sheer magnitude of the mountain these students have to climb to get into good schools and universities to acquire good jobs, it makes more sense. Plus, if you only have one child, which this has changed in time some, you have more time/attention/money to invest in that one child. Of course you would want your one child to be the best. Then, if you and your spouse are both only children with a filial piety society, you  might have both set of grandparents in the house with you - so SIX adults are investing in this child to make it great. I have to admit the whole grandparents being right there thing is something I do admire because I grew up next door to my grandmother with my other grandparents just a few streets away. It is nice to have that intergenerational relationship.

There is bribery and corruption, which I was not expecting, because I try not to assume ill intent with others.

The government is working hard to reform education and make it more Western in some ways. Changes can be slow, but the author did find that some of the aspects of this education system were beneficial. And it makes sense with the sheer magnitude of students in some classes for things to be different in China.

The author interviews educators and teenagers going through the big testing phase in their lives. I personally liked the part that talked more about her son in preschool/early elementary years than when she went off on her field trips. I think those parts could have used more character development to draw the reader in because they were just brief snippets.

The reader does get a real sense of the struggle and race to achieve when the stakes are high. It did make me grateful that my own personal race to achieve was more internal than external.

Do you ever think about who you would be in another time/culture? I could not vividly see myself immersed in this system because it seemed so foreign to me. I reflected on the American educational system, and nothing is perfect. But as always, I believe that everything that is wrong with America can be fixed by what is right with America.

I now more fully understand the educational system in China, and the teacher/student relationship. I appreciate learning more about my Chinese students' lives.

Let me know if you read it.

hot dip

Chips and dips are my favorite snack foods. Sometimes I like the dip more than the chip, and I like to load up a chip with dip. Scoop chips are great for that. This is a quick dip you can throw together from stuff you might have already in your fridge. I had the ingredients already so I tried it out this weekend.

Ingredients:
1 c. mayonnaise
5 tbsp margarine (melted)
2 c. shredded cheddar Jack cheese
1/2 chopped onion
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/3 c. jalapeno peppers, chopped (Use fresh ones instead of pickled ones. I did that once, and it tasted too much like pickled relish was in the dip.)
Cajun seasoning to taste (I used the Hot Slap Ya Mama.)

Directions:
Mix mayonnaise and margarine until smooth. Add onions, celery, peppers, cheese, and Hot Slap Ya Mama Cajun Seasoning to taste. Refrigerate for one hour. Serve with crackers or chips. Enjoy!