Running with Julia!

Our theme dinners with the Mr. & Mrs. Wine Guru have been going along deliciously!!  One of our summer dinner themes was recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking (by none other than...Julia Child).

We choose recipes that we could actually pronounce...well almost...

Our dinner was set for 6:30, and preparations began the day before.  The Wine Gurus spent the day before searching and scavenging, making friends with butchers, and driving around town!

Hubby and I didn't have to run around too much, but we started preparing at 10:00 am - a full 8 hours before our dinner!

Here's everything we used...half the day was spent cleaning up!!

So, lets translate...Coquilles St. Jacques, better known as scallops (we thought ham and cheese sandwich at first...wrong!)

Braise Aux Choux Rouges...braised red cabbage.

Stuffed Beef Rollup - amazing how it sounds the same in English - no, I forgot the French name.

Reine de Saba - Chocolate Almond cake.

We began the evening with name tags, in French of course.  Google translate is the best...amazing how wonderful "bite me", "shut the #$#$ up", "my cat is crazy", and "I am a ham sandwich", all sound in French!!

Braised red cabbage

Stuffed Beef Roll-up!

By the time we were all done cooking, here's what the cookbook looked like!  Don't you love that look...a well-used cookbook!

Our assessment of the evening was:

1)  Scallops (the one thing I didn't get a picture of) were fantastic and worth the time.  These we would make again.

2)  Stuffed Beef Roll-ups - not so much...meat stuffed with more meat...not worth all the time.

3)  Braised red cabbage - uh...just ok...not worth the 4 hours of braising.

4)  Chocolate Almond Cake - oh yeah!! Totally worth the 30 minutes of beating, and the 2 different kinds of chocolate being melted over a double boiler, and the slicing of each tiny almond (not really).  This is a phenomenal cake - very spongy, not too sweet, really, really, good!

Here's to you Wine Gurus (aka The Evil Ones)!  We always have a fabulous time with you!

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope you're having fun cooking this season as well!