For those waiting with bated breath, our vegetarian French Onion Soup was a resounding success.  T made a beef broth that took about 10 hours to cook, which required us to take a leap of faith that our ancient electric stove wouldn’t suddenly combust during the night whilst said soup simmered.  The broth was added to Julia Child’s Soupe a l’Oignon recipe (see Recipies), which was validated by the fourth helping of our most carnivorous carnivore friend (you know who you are).  In the meantime in our OTHER kitchen, the vegetarian one, the one with the sleek granite countertops, and the Wolf six-burner gas range, T sliced the myriad of root vegetables with Kasumi knives and simmered turnip, carrot, onion, celery stalks and herbs in a cobalt blue Le Creuset French Oven, to perfection.

As you might already suspect, that kitchen exists only in our dreams; nevertheless, T pulled off a deeply rich and flavourful vegetarian French Onion Soup, which got the most positive reviews.  To be fair, everyone enjoyed the beef broth and this Guilty Vegetarian can vouch for its tastiness, but it was saltier than the veg even though there was no extra salt added.  Was it the complex myriad of flavours in the veg that gave it that edge?  We may never know.

In addition to the delightful company of great friends and way too many children, there was cheese. Ah, cheese.  The thing that keeps me from being a vegan and adds a lacto- to my ovo-, which in contrast I could do without.  Let us not forget the cheese and the influence of cave-aged Gruyere with a decent broth.  I’ve never had the cave-aged before and had to ask, do they really age the Gruyere in caves?  Why, yes they do. Gruyeres are aging in caves as we speak!  Makes me feel for the cheese. I get to age out here, with all the rights and freedoms of a Canadian, but over there in Switzerland there are Gruyeres trapped in caves and just sitting around, aging.  In caves.  (But, like everything else Swiss, they’re neutral and don’t have to go to war, thankfully).  It’s got a little bit of the strength of a parmesan, but creamy.  The cheese, not the country.  Very nice!

In addition to supplying the Gruyere, the Liberty Village Cheesemonger recommended a Le Tomme Haut-Richelieu in response to my request for a Quebec Oka which they didn’t have, so it shared our cheese board with other remnants of our cheese-buying impulses:  a lovely 3-year aged cheddar, some Kerry Gold Dubliner, a goat/sheep’s milk brie and a surprisingly tasty Balderson’s double-smoked 1-year-old cheddar.  It may not be cheese science but it worked just fine.

Last but not least, I finally took the plunge and used the blender to puree the hummus after lamenting the yard-sale-ing of my little Oscar micro-food processor many, many years ago.  Since then I’ve struggled with our Braun hand-held mixer, which is messy and imprecise causing me to fantasize about the non-existent but super-deep and narrow splatter-free bowl that went the way of the pteradactyl.  I threw the canned chick peas (Eden brand – the only food that’s sold in bisphenol A-free cans) in with some fresh lemon juice, garlic cloves, salt, pepper and tahini.  I can’t say the blender saved the day entirely since it was still pretty messy and I had to blend it in two batches, but the hummus was oh so creamy.

As I write this, our delightful little devil-child is sporting back and forth between the front door and the back, doing her best Japanese horror movie impressions – aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-, thankfully leaving out the strange neck and elbow contortions that would add another developmental concern to our adoption aftermath.  But then she smiles her sparkly smile and all of my dread washes away. Which is nice.