Biff...Berff...Boof...Beef Burgundy

Kitchen Help...why do dogs lie RIGHT
in the path we are next taking?
How do they know?

It's a good thing being able to pronounce French food correctly isn't a prerequisite to being able to cook it well.  If that were the case, even with two years of HS French, I'd still be scuttling around in my kitchen, tripping over the dog, trying to get it right.

Yesterday we hosted a round dozen of people, including Charlie and Grace, to a French version of Oktoberfest...which in that case would be OctobreFest, or something like that, wouldn't it?

The Ingredients

Actually, it was more of a muli-cultural event. The Beef Burgundy (I gave up on pronouncing and spelling the French name for it!) was French, the wine was from New Zealand and WA State, the beer was from our friend here in Everett (made by him and Delicious with a Capital D!), the bread was from Seattle, the veggies were from Costco (very multi-cultural! I mean, isn't Costco everywhere?), the noodles were Dutch from Montana (who knew?), and the dessert was Italian, with French and NW touches, and a dash of California thrown in.



The King of the Castle (see photo of him eating Biff...Boof...Beef) enjoyed it, although he did ask later whether I had used butter or olive oil to sear the beef.  I was happy to tell him, "Both!"   I even practiced Multi-Cultural Searing. That seemed to satisfy him.

The King of the Castle eats hearty.
Notice the Kitchen Help hanging around for scraps.

I have to admit that from the shopping to the eating of the Beef Burgundy, I had a lot of fun.  If you ever want about two solid days of cooking with a big payoff at the end, make this dish according to a real recipe for it, not just throwing stuff in a dutch oven or crock pot.  It is worth the work and wait.  And most definitely make it the day before - not only is your life exponentially easier on The Day Of, the beef tastes SO much better the next day!

Grace isn't sure the food is up to
her demanding standard...

Erin claims it tastes even better later .  I have to take her word for it, since she had a big bowl of beef with noodles at about 8 PM on the Night Of the Day Of.





On the wall in our living room, we have a wooden sign that says "Family-Faith-Friends".  And I would add "Food".
Our Oktober/Octubre/October Fest in a nutshell...thanks, Family and Friends, for a great Fe(a)st.

Any event is a party with these guys!