And on Day 3 of BA week, things were good

I decided it was only fair to revisit the couscous and vegetables for lunch today, and after some fridge-mellowing (for it) and two full nights of sleep (for me) I'm willing to upgrade the review to: good, but still not nearly worth the effort.

Entirely worth the effort, on the other hand? Provençal-style short ribs with crème fraîche sour cream mashed potatoes. Yes, I did just insert two different accents only to then strike through them, that's how much I care about the total experience of you, the reader. At any rate, nice save, Bon Appétit!

When I was first flipping through the cookbook I realized that it was not going to be possible to make it through a whole week without at least a small dinner party, as there were too many super tempting recipes that required an unjustifiable amount of meat/time for just the two and a quarter of us. So we rounded up a handful of suckers friends to join us last night. (You are so going to regret my picking up that particular bit of HTML, I'll tell you that right now.)

The pictures turned out a little weird and old-fashioned looking, but I guess that's pretty appropriate for this meal, so I'll go with it.

It's 1959 in this picture, and I'm okay with that.

Pretty tasty stuff, but it was a combination of ingredients that was bound to be good, so I don't even feel like I can take much credit for it. Erica's cooking tip of the day: put a crapload of butter and sour cream into some potatoes and they will taste fantastic! You're very welcome!

I will admit to a bit more finessing of the lemon curd ice cream with blackberry swirl and blackberry sauce, because I find custards a little tricky sometimes and I was pretty proud of how this one turned out.



I never get a decent dessert beauty shot, but you get the general idea. Overall a successful meal, I would say.

I tried to figure out a way to snark on how adorable and flirty Anna and Cash were being, but I'm sorry, sometimes things are just cute and there's nothing I can do about it.

"Hi, I got you this oversized novelty flower."

They spent some time playing an amazingly well coordinated game of only-one-smile-at-a-time.

"Cheese!"

"Okay, now you go. Good. Good."

"You're looking away, right? We are rocking this."

It occurs to me as I prepare for yet another small round of hosting that I am forever saying "Please excuse the state of the house" as though there are extenuating circumstances keeping it from its normal spotless condition when in fact I should just tape a sign to the door that says "Please still be my friend even though I am not a good housekeeper." If I ever learn to cross-stitch, that is going straight onto a pillow.