Cooking
Dinner for Guests
We hadn’t cooked any recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking lately, so when we started planning a meal for friends, we thought about an old favorite: casserole-roasted chicken with tarragon. If you want to get amazing results you have to do every step the way that Julia Child says to do it. So in addition to the recipe in the old favorite book, we watched the 60-year-old TV episode where Julia Child showed American cooks how to make this dish. Back then, it was revolutionary!
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These original episodes of The French Chef are of course in black-and-white.
As you may know, Julia Child’s cooking show pretty much invented Food TV. |
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| Julia Child’s recipe recommends roasted potatoes and peas with mushrooms as side dishes. OK. |
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| Unbelievably delicious! |
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| Our guests. |
Best Breakfast
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| Another great bake by Len. |
Reading
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A bit of reading about Tokyo for a change of scene. Tokyo on Foot is a delightful collection of images.
Thanks to Emma at Words and Peace for recommending these books. |
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| Reading next: classic haiku. |
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This is not one of the best novels by Patricia Highsmith.
I didn’t like any of the tediously portrayed characters and they weren’t
quirky enough to be interesting. |
Watching Peter Ustinov’s Poirot
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We wondered why we hadn’t seen these Agatha Christie films before. Each one has an all-star cast.
They have a delightful light touch. We also watched Kenneth Branagh’s Orient Express: very heavy-handed. |
The Weather is Grim
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Woody, the Michigan Groundhog saw no shadow and (as superstition has it) said no to more winter.
I agree that winter should end, but unfortunately, Woody is only right 35% of the time. (Photo Credit)
The “weather” in our nation isn’t so great either. |
What I was doing two years ago
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| Whale watching in Baja California, February, 2023. |
Photos © 2023, 2025 mae sander
That looks delicious -- and beautifully served, too. (I'll have my post on the Julia Child exhibit in Jackson probably by the weekend.) Love her book and her recipes -- and you're right, you have to do it just as Julia says. No monkeying around!
ReplyDeleteI love the Poirot films. Those look like a fun re-watch!
I seriously want to be a guest for dinner at your house.
ReplyDeleteLooks yummy indeed! Oh, the Groundhog...!
ReplyDeleteHello, Mae
ReplyDeleteYour chicken with tarragon looks yummy. Len's ginger muffin looks delicious too. Great selection of books. Poirot movies are favorites of mine. I would like to see winter come to an end, it seems never ending. January was below normal cold. February is cold and we are expecting snow/sleet today and more on Tues/Wed. I love whale watching, great photo. Thank you for your critter post and sharing your link. Take care, have a wonderful weekend. PS, thank you for leaving me a comment.
Your chicken served with vegetables looks so good, and the books about Tokyo seem interesting. Those old movies are full of suspense, and they are movies you can watch again with pleasure.
ReplyDeleteAll the best
Sonjia.
Whale watching would be amazing! How exciting! I'm interested in the books and old movies too. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteAll the food pictures look yummy, now I want a ginger muffin, LOL! The Haiku book looks interesting as well. I hope you have a great weekend!
ReplyDeleteI love that you’re cooking Julia Child’’s recipes! I loved the film Julie and Julia and highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it.
ReplyDeleteYummy!
ReplyDeleteI took 2 recipes from her book and combined them into one, a dish I really nejoy a lot: a leek-onion quiche.
For an introduction to Haiku, I highly recommend the Essential Haiku, fabulous introductions. I talk about it here: https://wordsandpeace.com/2020/02/23/sunday-post-26-2-23-2020/
So glad you nejoyed my previous recommendations
I picked up Tokyo on Foot after Emma recommended it too!
ReplyDeleteYour chicken looks amazing! I do enjoy watching those old episodes of Julia Child on Youtube!
Have a great week
OY...your blog made me so hungry! I love love Ustinov’s Poirot
ReplyDeleteThe chicken looks wonderful. And the ginger muffin is adorable…I wouldn’t want to eat it! I agree that the weather is grim. Have a beautiful week!
ReplyDeleteHi Mae! Thanks for letting me know about my blog not letting you sign in. I’m going to change the settings to unmoderated and see if that helps. I hadn’t heard of this Patricia Highsmith novel, and your review probably explains why. Have a good week!
ReplyDeleteI can't remember the last time I had people over! Good work.
ReplyDeleteI love Julia Child! I need to cook more of her recipes. I hope you have a great week!
ReplyDeleteGreat photo of whale watching. We used to whale watch off Calif in my dad's boat ... where we had an amazing day once seeing Blue Whales quite close.
ReplyDeleteYour food looks so good!
ReplyDeleteI may get s copy of Tokyo On Foot, I have Japan on my bucket list.
What an amazing meal! I'm interested in how the peas and mushrooms cook...together? But I bet it all comes together with the gravy, chicken, and potatoes. Yum!
ReplyDeleteWhale watching two years ago looks fantastic. I'd rather be doing that right now.
@Heather — I used shiitaki mushrooms, which need very little cooking (in fact it’s easy to over cook them). So I cut them in half and I tossed them in butter in a frying pan, and then added frozen peas and heated all until warm. I can’t remember if I added any spice.
ReplyDeleteYou always make the most amazing meals. I wish I lived closer.
ReplyDeleteIf the groundhog is only 35% correct, wouldn't that mean that winter is, in fact, ending?
I will be curious how the haiku reading goes. I found I needed to read a book of haiku with something else. Otherwise, the haiku seemed to all run together.
Looks like a beautiful meal that you made for your company. We love to watch "Groundhog Day" once a year and seem to never tire of it. However, I've never really paid much attention to the actual Groundhog predictions.
ReplyDeleteThat food looks delicious and I wish I had that gorgeous ginger muffin sitting on a plate in front of me RIGHT NOW.
ReplyDeleteThat chicken looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteI made an Ina Garten recipe last night for V-Day--Roasted Chicken with Spring Vegetables. It was perfection too.
ReplyDelete