I’ve done very little cooking this week – should I feel bad?  And I discovered I am less productive when I have hours of time on my hands.  I had very good intentions of making ‘Julia’s’ Boeuf Bourguignon for dinner today.  I braved the grocery store yesterday with the masses of people shopping like they would be snowed in for weeks to get my provisions (have I used that word before?  do I say it too much?).  The weather forecast went from calling for 6 inches of snow to 18-24 inches of snow for today.  Yeah!  A whole day forced to be at home – which is difficult, for those of you who know me – and I would be so productive.  I made a big breakfast, but we got started a bit late as my daughter is prone to sleeping in until 10am on the weekends.  I had been up for four hours at that point, full of coffee and shaking like Tweek from South Park.  Not very helpful when you then try to cook bacon, pancakes, and scrambled eggs while talking to your mother on the phone about roasting pans and Christmas dinner menus.  I had no motivation to do anything after that except watch the snow and more back episodes of Big Bang Theory.  Around 5pm I decided it was too late to attempt the stew since I do have others to feed besides myself.  I ended up cooking some hazelnut-crusted chicken breasts with a raspberry sauce.  I also learned that coarse sea salt doesn’t really melt properly after only being in the oven for 20 minutes.  SQ, on the other hand, loved the salt surprise in the chicken crust.  I also need to figure out a way to get the crust to better stick to the chicken.  It kept coming off in pieces while I was browning it in the pan.  It tasted delicious, but it wasn’t as pretty as I had hoped.

The BIGGER news is that I am now the extremely proud owner of the mac daddy Cuisinart food processor!!!  Even if no one else is reading this, my husband is, and he drove all the way to Williams-Sonoma on Wednesday to buy it for me as an early Christmas present.  I did spend some time today pulling it out of it’s packaging and petting it.  Now I have a really nice, gently used, two-year old 11-cup Cuisinart food processor that needs a good home.  I could post that on my Facebook page, but I need to make sure it’s new owner will care for it the way I do.  Why am I talking about my kitchen tools like they are pets?  Probably because it’s after 11pm and I really need to go to bed.  I will make the Boeuf Bourguignon tomorrow – my first attempt at Julia’s version.  Wish me luck.