All day I played admin to the publisher and maid to the lady of the house. We can finally begin to write, and prepare and cook the week’s prandium, tonight’s cena. KCRW is playing in the big room loudly enough to dance about the place and into the kitchen to cook. This week I’m making a cass-olé;—this is a made up dish by me, based on the French cassoulet—I’ve never cooked either before. Though I feel qualified to cook it. I’ve eaten cassoulets before and I’ve cooked with and eaten the ingredients I’m going to use for my cass-olé. This obviously will be a prandium version but seems there’s plenty of ingredients, from the larder and bought on today’s weekly sojourn to my dear Fairway.

A pr’ack for preparing cass-olé involves cutting the Fairway Cotswold on top of Triscuits. Yes, prandium girl has a weakness for them, though they haven’t come home to the larder in a few months now. Ryvita waged a swift coup on their territory.. This pr’ack is indeed a prandium. I forgot to eat earlier. The yoghurt saved me to make it this far. Ah, speaking of. Another swift coup on the larder—Liberté rode home; Stonyfield did not.

I am off to prepare some comfort pabulum—pastina. To be continued momentstarily..

Finished eating pabulum—pastina and reviewed the top three and veggie cassoulet recipes on epi. I closed the window and will not refer to them again. I almost never follow a recipe line by line or even ever very closely—the one time I did lost me a cooking competition. I write them for what I prepare and create. A lot of it’s pretty simple but think it’s evolving too. A long way from where it was about five years ago.

Cass-olé, allons..

For the cass-olé here is a list of ingredients I gathered:

Lima beans from Farm Fresh Produce soaked overnight in a bowl on the stove, skinned legs and thighs du poulet, fresh sausage with brocolli rabe, carrot, turnip, celery, red and white baby potatoes, Italian plum tomato, shallot, cilantro, chilés, maybe clove (nope), limones from Farm Fresh Produce, sel, pipercorns, cracked piper, fresh thyme (nope), bay, olio, bread crumbs from leftover baguette, aqua,..

The oven was preheated to 400°F. The cass-olé went in the oven at 1930EST and turned the temperature down to 325°F. I’ll let it cook an hour or so before checking.

Time for a quick nap before today.2 begins..

I checked the cass-olé at an hour and ten minutes of setting the timer, a few minutes or so after I put it in the oven. It looks and smells like a delicious dish. The brodo is light—tomato reddish, opaque with little bubbles—so turned the temp down to 225°F to let it develop and to let the poulet braise. It’s going to be a delightful dish. I’m going to have to share with someones. I’ll invite A, C, and G; if T weren’t a jerk we could make some DNA.

Later I will write a proper recipe for you. For now I have things to do..