I dedicate this post to my sister-in-law Kate who lurks on the blog, and who just yesterday was telling me the next time she´s at my house she´s going to watch while I make my beef stew, because she wants to figure out what my secret is.   My beef stew is excellent.  It´s not fancy; it´s not fussy.  It´s so easy to make I´ve never bothered to write the recipe down. When the Big Cheese is out of town I´ve been known to eat it three times a day.  I make it all winter long.

So as a public service I decided to write down my recipe, although I´ll give credit where it´s due and note that it´s based on a recipe for boeuf bourguignon in my mother´s 1951 Joy of Cooking.  All amounts are approximate and it´s not an exact science.  I´ll stick to the bare bones and put my nitpicky details at the bottom for people who care.  Bon appetit.

One package (1 – 2 lbs) decent well-marbled beef, I use beef tips*

Two spoonfuls bacon grease** and some crumbled bacon, if you´ve got some

One handful flour

Three medium or two large onions, yellow or white

3 or 4 medium thin-skin potatoes (I use red or white and leave the skin on)***

One bottle red wine****

1. Cut the beef into bite size pieces and dust them with the flour, coating them.

2. On the stove, heat 1 spoonful of bacon grease in your big Dutch oven or stew pot.  Toss the floured meat in there and brown it.  Take the meat out and put it on a plate.

3. Chop up the onions.  Using the same pot, put the other spoon of bacon grease in there and add the onions.  Cook them, stirring occasionally, 10 – 15 minutes until they cook down and caramelize a little.

4. Put the meat back in.  Add your bottle of wine and any seasoning you want (I use salt, pepper and rosemary).  Add crumbled bacon if you have some, 3 – 4 pieces is good.

5. Put the lid on and bake in the oven at 300 degrees for two hours.  Chop up your potatoes into smaller pieces like the meat and add those.  You can throw in some chopped carrots too if you want.*****  Cook another hour.  Et voila.  Serves 6 – 8. 

 Further Notes:

*I get that the point of a long slow-cooking beef stew is to use cheap stew meat, but at least where I live, beef tips from Trader Joe´s don´t cost much more than stew meat from the grocery store, and the meat is more tender and flavorful.

**I keep bacon drippings in my fridge, but you can cook some bacon and throw it in there too.  I´d write the words “leftover bacon” but there´s no such thing as leftover bacon.  Obviously you can skip the bacon grease entirely and use olive oil, but it doesn´t taste the same.

***Or you can use little new potatoes, halved.  Volume-wise, the meat, potatoes and pre-cooked onion are about equal.

****Most wine-based stew recipes call for x amount of wine plus water (the Joy of Cooking recipe is ¾ wine to ¼ water.)  At some point I decided, why not use a whole bottle?  I generally use a decent bottle of cabernet – not top shelf, but not utter crap, either.  If you wouldn´t drink a glass, it doesn´t belong in your food.

*****If you want basic 1950s American-style boeuf bourguignon, leave out the potatoes and carrots, add some sliced mushrooms, and serve it over buttered egg noodles for a fun retro meal that dinner guests plow into.  If you want to add more vegetables and diversify your stew, that´s dandy too.  I don´t add them until the last hour because I find they get a bit soft for my tastes.

PS Here´s a link to Ina Garten´s somewhat similar recipe which gets rave reviews, although I have my doubts about the frozen onions (one commenter found them squishy).  Maybe I´ll try the tomato paste and cognac next time.

Illustration: my father´s drawing on the inside cover of my 1951 Joy of Cooking, rebound several times.  My father gave it to my mother, who literally couldn´t boil an egg.  It makes me smile every time I see it.

March

The start of the year signals my gardening obsession returning. So, all my seed packets have arrived and at some point I’ll log them onto an Excel spreadsheet (the only opportunity I allow myself for super-nerdy listing – those vegetables and flowers need a schedule dude). And I have a stack of raspberry canes, asparagus crowns, strawberry plants, and other bits and pieces arriving over the course of the next two months.

But my current big focus, and I don’t know why, is dahlias. Like my grandfather before me, I can’t get enough of them. They’re totally unscented, earwigs clamber all over them and cause non-chemical hippy types like me no end of pain, aqnd their leaves are as dull as ditchwater, unless you happen to have a cultivar with that fashionably dark quality. But their flamboyant 70s glamour  always thrills me. They were the talk of the allotment last year, and everyone wanted to know what I was growing. Well, everyone is a bit of hyperbole, but there you go. I’m boasting.

So, in the spirit of summer, here’s some borrowed images of a few of my current favourites:

Lover Boy, image courtesy of dahliabarn.com

Downham Royal, courtesy of Sarah Raven

Rip City, courtesy of Amazon

Jocondo, courtesy of Arrowhead Dahlias

Chat Noir, courtesy of Sarah Raven

Pontiac, courtesy of Sarah Raven

New Baby, courtesy of Sarah Raven

I’m growing about 50 varieties. I know – I’m excessive.

And in the spirit of managing excess, alongside a desire to spread the love (I celebrate seventeen years with Matthew today), I’m clearing out a few of my perfumes that, though loved, are now never worn. You don’t need to send anything in return (although gifts are most welcome…): this is more to clear out some space, freshen up, tidy the bathroom.

The bottles I have to give away are as follows:

Eau d’Italie Bois d’Ombrie 100mls hardly used;

L’Artisan Parfumeur Dzing! 50mls  – about 70% full;

L’Artisan Parfumeur Voleur de Roses 50 mls – about 70% full;

Hermes Rocabar 100mls – about 85% full:

Patricia de Nicolai Vetyver 30mls – hardly used.

Leave a comment if you’re interested in a bottle, alongside wild promises of gifts in return. The wild promises will be dutifully ignored and bottle winners selected entirely at random. I’ll let you know in two weeks time.

Lee

I have a confession.  Natural perfumes tend to not do it for me (hanging head and scuffing feet).  Not because they lack artistry or creativity, but it is the ingredients that tends to not set with  me very well or seem a little muddied.  One exception has been Strange Invisible Perfumes. Now I have another exception, Soivohle’, formerly Liz Zorn perfumes. 

 Tobacco & Tulle – From the website, ” tobacco and tuberose absolutes with natural animalic and botanical musks.  Contains cruelty free hyrax tincture, beach harvested ambergris, also contains a touch of green oakmoss.”  I adore this scent. From the moment I uncapped it and sniffed until I had worn it around a while.  There is a tobacco/oakmoss intensity, sharpened by the ambergris on the open, musky and veering to the skanky.  It’s sharp, acrid, but the tuberose just rolls around in there, adding depth and not really softness – maybe just gives all of those pungent notes a good landing area.  The pungent, almost acrid feel smooths out into a great earthy tobacco scent.  It is interesting, hardcore and beautiful, everything I want my perfume to be.

Grand Canyon -  Notes of orange flower, citrus, spices, herbs, myrrh, black pepper and laurel.  A spicy citrus on the open, underlaid with the herbs and incense.  It is made as an homage to the Grand Canyon, and the laurel and herbs in this make it at time to smell like that gorgeous desert air, but like you have one of those spicy cinnamon  orange  things mixed in and some smoky incense being burned over the horizon.  It is completely snuggly and warm and lovely.  March and Marina have reviewed this in the past and liked it, and I’m in the same camp.

Underworld -  Notes  of vetiver, balsams, jasmine, rose, smoky leathery base.  Vetiver, leather and balsam. If you like your vetiver and/or leather served up earthy and smoky, this is your scent.  It is not as green as Guerlain’s Djedi on the open, but it has a similar feel, that rough vetiver.  As it dries down, the floral notes and a spiciness pushes through, softening it.  One of my yoga teachers makes us strengthen to get into a pose, then keeps telling us, as we are breathing hard to soften something – your ears, your fingers, your eyes.  Strength and softness held in tension.  That’s Underworld, and it’s simply gorgeous.

Well, so far, I’m not finding anything I hate or even am indifferent to, and I’ve got several more samples to go through next week!  So I’m a fan now, and I think more of you would be too if you tried them. So!  Yes!  Let’s give away a set of samples on these four.  Just drop a comment, and you’ll be in the drawing.

The winners of the set of Omnia Profumo samples are:  Ninara Poll and Nika.  Just click on the Contact us on the left and send me your address and what I’m supposed to be sending you.

Can we talk about movies briefly.  It seems like almost every movie this winter season has been despairing or ineffably sad in some way or another.  The big exception has been Slumdog Millionaire, which everyone should see, it really is as good as the hype, but don’t expect something big – expect something completely human and full of hope.  In the last week I’ve seen Revolutionary Road and The Wrestler. Both great films with great acting and direction, beautifully shot, and in the end, characters despair.  The Wrestler is seriously hardcore, so don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re going to see this uplifting redemptive movie that may make you cry in the end, but will leave you all fuzzy inside. That just won’t happen. Same with Revolutionary Road – it’s not a love story, and there’s no redemption in it either.  Should you go see them? Yes.  I recommend you read the book before you see Rev Road - it helps flesh out some things they didn’t have time for in the movie.  The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke is brilliant. He has an unself-conscious vulnerability that he has always had as an actor, something that draws you in.  It’s a gift most actors don’t possess, and he should win the Oscar for that performance.  He should also wear Tobacco and Tulle, easy on the Tulle.

I’ve also seen Doubt and Benjamin Button this season as well. And they aren’t full of despair, but they’re not exactly happy-happy-joy-joy flicks, but both are excellent.  You know what I really need? For “He’s Not that Into You” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic” to open in a couple of weeks so I can laugh for a change in the theater!  No, March, I refuse to go some that Mall Cop thing, even though I adore the lead actor in it.

What movies have you see, and what did you think of them?  I did notice in Rev Road, Millie had a bottle of some Guerlain perfume on her dresser – she should be wearing L’Heure Bleue - but I couldn’t make out the perfume bottle on April’s dresser.  Also, have you tried a Soivohle perfume, and what did you think? I know there is a violet one that gets high regard, is it the Domino Viole?

BTW II, who was it that recommended Gina at Blondie’s in Denver for color and a cut?  Brilliant tip. I went there today, and she did an amazing job on my hair, she is just terrific, so thank you!!!

Patty

I´m sure many of you remember when Bois de Jasmin was blogging regularly.  She was my nemesis.  There I´d be, an adult completely in control of my environment and behavior.  And I´d saunter over to her blog, read a beautifully written review of some obscure scent (new, niche, classic) and then, in a trance, head to a perfume etailer or eBay and buy it unsniffed.  She could have written a review of, I don´t know, Merde de Chien and I´d have whipped out my MasterCard.  It was infuriating.

And thus it was that I found myself frantically bidding on a vintage bottle of Jolie Madame shortly after her review.  I won it.  I waited, glowing.  It arrived. I tore open the box, popped the bottle open, dabbed (sprayed?) it on triumphantly, and … sweet mother %*#$%*)$*) why don’t you please go ahead and kill.me.now.

Jolie Madame was the nastiest, skankiest piece of liquid hell that had graced my wrist until another BdJ review made me buy Jacomo Silences (another shout-out to you, V!)  I tried Jolie a couple more times but that was all I could take.  If I recall correctly, I wrapped it up and sent it as a surprise gift to the only person on the planet who might inexplicably, conceivably like it – Bois de Jasmin.  She was thrilled, and that was that.

Regular readers have already sussed out where this is going, because I am so predictable it´s a joke.  Two weeks (?) ago I said something like, leather fragrances – love to smell them, but wearing them — meh, not so much.  But this Lancome Cuir thingummy – this I like!   Then someone mentioned Jolie Madame.  Then Louise said she could hook me up with a sample of the vintage, since she owns some, and everyone else on the planet including you and your hamster already bought up the new bottles of Jolie Madame at TJ Maxx for $14.99, so all they have when I go is Caesar´s Man and Liz Claiborne, and what is up with that?  Is it some karmic thing?

Jolie Madame is, in essence, violets and leather.  I can´t remember what the new smells like, but I´m assuming it´s a little more polite, although serviceable.  The vintage bottle Louise has is violets and leather in the sort of base that causes less … discerning people to step away quickly in alarm.  Ah, the beauty of vintage fragrances.  The top notes may have wandered off or turned rancid, but frequently what you get at the bottom is extraordinary.  Back in the day they really made some musky, animalic wonders.  Jolie Madame’s notes are gardenia, bergamot, coriander, orange blossom, jasmine, tuberose, rose, jonquil, orris, patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, musk, castoreum, leather, civet… yeah, I know.  Read those base notes and weep, whether with desire or repulsion.  To smell that in a vintage iteration is to get an obscene amount of pleasure in a smell.  I just had to give my nose three years to come around to it.

The weird part is, this particular vintage bottle goes all wrong on Louise, although her others are fine. I won´t describe it further, in case you are eating breakfast, but it´s the sort of vaguely organic smell that would have you sprinting for the liquid Tide on the double.  So it was win-win all around – I bought her bottle, which smells great on me (if I do say so myself) and she got a little cash out of the deal to spend on makeup.  Which she did (and have you seen those new Lancome glosses?)  And then we all sat down for a cuppa joe in the basement of Saks and lived happily ever after, The End.

PS  This time of year always gets me down a little.  I spent last night watching The Women (the original, not the recent remake) — speaking of Dames!  And the clothes!  Those gowns by Adrian!!  And I love that the nail polish they’re wearing is … Jungle Red.  And perfume even has a role, what more could I want?

Jolie Madame ad trademark, courtesy of wipo.int; Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, The Women

March

An Italian company, Omnia Profumo, has four new scents that are now available at Luckyscent.  $135 for 125 ml, which is a better price point than most lines are coming in with recently, so I’m greatly encouraged before I even sniff them.  It occurs to me that the higher the price point on the perfume, the higher the expectation is.  So if they are at $1 a ml’ish range, I’m happy to just let them be perfume and not works of art.  Price prejudice?  Sure.  We all expect more from a Laboutin shoe than from a no-name brand shoe we picked up at Nordstrom’s on sale.

Ambra has notes of Orange, bergamot, geranium, incense, lavender, patchouli, vanilla, labdanum, opoponax, amber.  This is a very nice, dry, incensey amber, just a little heavier on the amber on my skin than the amber, and the vanilla dusts some softness in it that keeps it from being in the way-harsh amber territory.  This is one of the few ambers I can wear and wear happily.

Granato has notes of Jasmine, hawthorn, lilac, geranium, rose, gardenia, orange, nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon stick, white thyme, anise, cedarwood, patchouli, sandalwood, vetiver, white musks, vanilla.  This has a thymish open, which sorta fools you into thinking this is something else a little more boozish maybe, but, no, it is a rich, spicy floral that keeps shifting long into the drydown and never quite settle.  Nicely complex and dark, it’s my favorite of the four by just a little

Madera has notes of Vanilla pod, caramel, Madagascar vanilla, peach blossom, wildflowers, tobacco flower, coconut, white musk.  This is an amazing caramel scent, and I despise most caramel scents in perfume because they never get it quite right  This one skipped over that one note that grates on my nerves, the sugary one, and lets the vanilla, muscs and peach blossom add the sweetness.  It veers a little more toward the vanilla after it’s been on a while, but more in the vanilla pod category than the sugary vanilla.This one is cuddly perfection.  Gourmand lovers will adore it, but it has a lot to offer anyone who likes a caramel vanilla scent.

Onice has notes of citrus, anise, lavender, licorice, peach, pineapple, rose, nutmeg, geranium, hyacinth, jasmine, ylang, mint, sandalwood, musk, cedarwood, amber.  Very green on the open when I expected a lot more fruit in there.  Luckyscent notes the smell of celery, which I completely agree with, it smells like very lush celery.  It stays light and green wood on me, and I never really get any of the licorice, fruit or floral notes except as a soft background.  It’s not my favorite of the four, but I can’t help but think that this would suit me perfectly on a hot summer day.

Overall, I liked this line and especially like that they have a reasonable price point.  Granato is probably the most complex and interesting of the four on me, but I do have a yen for the caramel Madera.  Let’s do a set of sample give-away on this. Just drop a comment, and I’ll draw one or two names out on Thursday as winners of the four-sample set.

Question to ponder – what do we now consider a reasonable price point per ml for perfume?  Is $1 a ml still it, or are we revising upwards?  Or downwards? And how much more do we expect when we’ve paid $200 for 50 mls?

Patty