Joys of Cooking

Many things make the "art" of cooking especially gratifying: pleasing your taste buds, pleasing your guest's taste buds, successfully achieving a difficult result...others are less obvious; finding you have just the right ingredients already in the fridge, discovering a new, delicious sauce combination by accident...and my favorite today: filling the entire house with inviting, mouth-watering scents and using pristine cookware!

On a lazy, rainy Sunday, I was looking for a meal that would make for an extra challenging and enjoyable afternoon of cooking.  Beef Bourguignon?  Done!  This time I would follow Julia's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" recipe to a T—hours of prep and all.  I wish I could somehow capture the aromas wafting around our apartment; fresh rosemary and thyme mixed with carmelizing cippolini onions, bacon, fresh pepper and wine...it's warmth and coziness in the form of food.

I must say, cooking with our new cookware makes the experience about doubly delightful.  Our knives are so sharp and adept, I was able to peel 25 cippolini onions in record time.  The giant le Creuset dutch oven John bought me for Christmas last year is a much better suited size for the 3 lbs. of beef.  The All Clad sautee pan is about as even a skillet as ever, allowing me to leave the onions carmelizing with herbs for 50 minutes without trouble.  We even have prep bowls to store chopped garlic and thyme!  And enough mixing bowls to set aside the bacon, meat, onions and mushrooms separately and sanitarily!  Oh, such joy of cooking!