I made beef stew on a Wednesday because it is my daughter’s favorite and she’s had some mean girl trouble at school. When she was in preschool I used to bring pink-frosted Magnolia cupcakes for pickup. That led to some whining on the part of other parents but I didn’t care. If your kid was nicer, maybe I’d bring one for her, too.
The stew was a surprise, so I ordered from the butcher between patients, and then ran to the market on my break. The butcher’s girl didn’t bat an eye. She just handed me the smartly wrapped cubes of stew meat and I hurried home to get it in the oven before soccer practice ended.
Really it’s boeuf bourguignon from The Silver Palate cookbook that I’m making, but I’m not pretentious enough to think I can actually pronounce it properly. I had a friend who was that pretentious, American, fully American who was determined to own a good portion of the rest of the world, too. She is Italian by heritage so she owns Italy and its vast array of delightful foods. Her husband is from Asia so she has a lock on that cuisine, as well. And her sister lived in Paris years ago so that’s how she owns France and gets to pronounce French words with a heavy, put-on accent like that SNL skit where all the native Spanish speakers drop into a heavy accent when they say “tor-tee-YA” and “chimi-CHANG-ga.” Only this former friend isn’t a native French speaker and still she says boeuf bourguignon with the invented guttural bark of her imagined French compatriots. I wouldn’t call my beef stew “boeuf bourguignon” anyway because her husband said some terrible things about my daughter.
The stew took a long time, as stews will, so we didn’t eat til almost 10 ‘o clock. My daughter filled herself on bread and butter or baguette and beurre until the timer beeped. I finished it with parsley and it was delicious. Of course it will be even better tomorrow, which is what we all say when our stomachs really can only handle a usual portion even if it took forever to make and is truly delectable. Not unlike Thanksgiving dinner.
I think she slept well that night, my daughter, so the stew did what it was supposed to. Tomorrow, if necessary, we’ll have cupcakes for dessert.
***
Jessica Ciosek is currently working on a novel. Her short story appears in the “Mothers” issue of Minerva Rising.
