Another food prompt!  Yay!

Market tomoatoes

Al fresco dining

When the girls were growing up we adopted a “divide and conquer” mentality.  One of us would cook dinner and the other would get the kids in the bath, or the laundry sorted so we actually had clothes the next day.  Maybe packing lunches or walking the dog or helping kids with homework… You know.  The grind.  Cooking was always a task.  A chore, routine and rote.  Our meals were plain, simple and in good quantity.  The idea was to get as many days out of one pot of spaghetti as possible.  Tacos became taco salad or nachos the next day.

I always admired Scott’s brother and his wife.  They are true foodies.  While they were just as busy parenting as we were… more so because of the added tasks that sheep, goats and a small farm offered, they held on to that.  After feeding the kids a healthy meal and tucking them in, they would then prepare an elegant dinner. I think they cooked as a form of relaxation and entertainment, unlike Scott and I, who eventually ended up in front of the TV with our feet up even if for only 20 minutes.  I am guessing they are the exception rather than the rule.

The kids got older, more independent and we started to experiment with cooking.  The first real “bug” we got for cooking was in France. Scott and I had spent some time touring around Italy and were meeting his family in a large farm house in France that we had rented.  We got there first and were to have dinner ready.  Inspired by the delicious Italian cuisine we had experienced we walked from our house down the little country lane to the market.  We got everything needed to make bolognese.  The prettiest tomatoes you have ever seen, fresh vegetables selected by hand from baskets outside a quaint market front, crusty bread from a boulangerie, rich red wine grown in the region. A love was born in that market in Sablet.

It was pretty early in my Smartphone days, but I actually looked up a recipe on my phone and we went with it.  It was my first experience with recipe blogging which I find both wonderful and terrible.  Often I do not have patience to read about someones summers spent with a grandmother making this particular apple pie.  I want to just cut to the recipe dammit! But then again, there is nothing I love more than a well written blog that sucks you in for twenty minutes reading about a stranger’s summer spent with a grandmother.  I think it is all dependent on how much time I have. So back to  bolognese.  It was a pretty wordy blog, but well written and explanatory.   I found that recipe again a few years later and it was my very first Pinterest Pin.  And many, many bolognese meals later, it is still the best.

Long story short, and to get to the prompt…. There Scott and I stood.  In that kitchen in France, low beamed and wide planked and prepared a lovely meal together.  He chopped the onion finely, and I julienned the carrots perfectly.  We drank good wine and looked out the low windows over the rolling vineyards and were perfectly happy.  We ate that meal with family outside on a warm, warm night in the South of France and from that night a hobby was formed.

The recipe has been updated, here it is.  Do yourself a favor and do not use a slow-cooker!  BOLOGNESE RECIPE

The house we stayed in Sablet found on homeaway: SABLET FARMHOUSE