Pot Watching

My husband spent Monday afternoon cooking beef bourguignon, a recipe he's cobbled together from Julia Child's classic version and his own online study of other approaches. He picked and chose what made sense to him, and then he got out his lovely orange cast iron Dutch oven and he began to chop and mix and sear and brown and run back and forth to the store, adding and adding ingredients to the pot until his strew was bubbling happily, and all afternoon he would raise his face into the air to test the aroma and he would say, "Ahhh, it just changed again."

Meanwhile my daughter was in our bedroom with her friend from school, studying biology, both of them lying on their stomachs or sitting cross-legged on the king size bed, laptops open in front of them, drilling each other with note cards in hand. And every so often she would wander out to the kitchen to check on her dad's progress and to talk cookery with him, until finally at 7 p.m. everything was ready. We all brought out bowls and spooned in the exquisite brown stew rich with mushrooms and bacon and carrots and pearl onions and the most tender beef I have ever tasted and after we ate the meat, we sliced crusty bread to soak up the broth and really, I should have taken a picture but I was too busy enjoying myself and I didn't think about recording how sumptuous it looked when I first opened the pot until it was halfway done.

Willow had the presence of mind to take a picture.