My French Food experiment (Part 1): Along with “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” as my guide

I have a bit of a problem. I collect cookbooks and then I don’t actually USE them to cook with. I read them like a book from cover to cover and then they go to my cookbook shelf rarely to be seen again. I am a digital girl and I am sad to say that I enjoy digital copies of newspapers, magazines, recipes, but not books... I was determined to change my ways and start using them.


There were a few key pieces of motivation I must admit. The first is that I finally sat down to watch the recent movie about Julia Child & Julie Powell (the one with Meryl Streep & Amy Adams in it). I thoroughly enjoyed it, the story, the acting, everything. From my interpretation the movie’s “lesson” (in very basic sense) was that if you are sad or bored then do something you love. Julie and Julia loved to cook and eat. It made them happy. It makes ME happy too. I lost my cat of 15 years last week and I was very sad and really didn’t have any motivation for much of anything until I watched the movie.

Watching the scenes of both actresses’ eating everything not only got my stomach rumbling it also got me excited to get into the kitchen. SO off I went to visit my collection of cookbooks. Staring at me was of course "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". I have NEVER cooked anything out of this book. Have you seen this book? Have you LOOKED at the recipes? I mean they are loooong…not to mention the format at first glance is kind of confusing to me. I was not brought up with recipes written out without a top list of ingredients so you can quickly see what you need to get or even if you like the ingredients in them. However, I was motivated and up for a challenge, and I have a big project coming up for a job I am working on which will not allow for much time in the kitchen the next couple of months. SO on Monday night at 8PM I sat down with this rather large cookbook and was determined to cook for an entire day from it…breakfast…lunch…and dinner (can you tell I am a short term thinker).

Since I was eating 3 meals in one day (which I very rarely do) I needed to make sure Mr. B and myself could handle it so I picked recipes that were somewhat light, or so I thought. I also had visions in my head of the food in the movies and wow did the food stylists make it look so freakin good! I mean how many of us remember that chocolate cake scene???

The menu:
Breakfast
Oeufs a la Fondue de Fromage (Poached Eggs on Canapes with Cheese Fondue Sauce)
     Canapés-Croutons (Plain or Sautéed bread rounds)
          Beurre clarifie (clarified Butter)
     Oeufs Poches (Poached Eggs)

Lunch
Soufflé Au Fromage (Cheese Soufflé)

Dinner
Sauce Vinaigrette (French dressing) with butter lettuce & Fleur de Sel
Filets de Poisson Bercy aux Champignons (Fish Filets Poached in White Wine with Mushrooms)

Dessert
Reine de Saba (Chocolate and Almond Cake)
     Glacage au chocolat (Chocolate –butter icing)

When I finalized the menu for the day I then went back to try and figure out what I needed to purchase at the store at 7AM the next morning. I literally needed FIVE items. I keep a pretty decent pantry but I was really surprised. I mean, count the recipes above…NINE! I imagined I would be searching all over creation for ingredients. BUT if you think about it, the book was published in 1960 based on true French food. They didn’t have the internet so they could easily source ingredients but they did have FRESH ingredients to cook with.

Jusqu'à ce Soir…Until tomorrow…