Menu #3..."wow, wow, rich & heavy," moaned sister 2

I suppose, given the number of eggs and the amount of butter, it should have been obvious that this was going to be a heavy meal. In France, a number of non-French mentioned that they found French cooking heavy, and I wasn't sure what they meant because I wasn't experiencing French food as particularly heavy. Until tonight. Maybe I'll just have a gallbladder attack to spite myself. Or a coronary.

In terms of technique, the dishes were very straightforward, though I continue to struggle with the sequencing with so many steps and multiple courses.

In terms of the food, the diners liked the egg dish starter which they described it as tasty and "interesting" though I thought it was dull. White eggs, white onions, white sauce...bland. However, it was good practice with Bechamel sauce, one of the "Mother" sauces of France. On the other hand, the diners didn't care for the veal shanks bourgeois (I substituted beef ribs.) They thought it was dull, a cover-up for a poor cut of meat. They didn't even think it was very "french." I liked it, though. I thought it could be adapted very easily as a technique for a lot of meat stews, We served it with wild rice so the Vegetarian would have something to eat, but I wondered if potatoes might have been better; The other diners pooh-poohed that idea vigorously. I believe the term, "meat and potatoes," was used in a pejorative way. I missed fresh and green at this meal.

But the chocolate mousse...we all agreed that was divine! Today was the Husband's 60th birthday. We had lunch at the St. Paul Grill with his family and returned to our house for cake and presents. Instead of cake (which we cooks won't reach until lesson #5) I made the chocolate mousse (it is pictured here, half devoured.) It was easy to make and fantastic. The chocoholics considered it first rate, high praise indeed. I wasn't able to find a pastry bag in the desultory shopping that I did, so I used a cookie press. Not perfect, but worked well enough.

We had extraordinary wines tonight. In honor of his 60th birthday, The Resident Oeniphile brought up a couple of bottles of wine that he bought when he was a young whippersnapper: a 1970 Château Giscours, from the Margaux region and a 1973 Château Margaux. We had a third bottle of a California pinot noir for comparision. I'll have to let him write his own observations in the comments section because I drank almost no wine (too much rich food for my blood today.)

So, overall, in the Midwest, the opinion was that lesson #3 was a good menu for techniques, had a fantastic, killer-chocolate dessert, but too much butter and too many eggs for people concerned about their weight or arteries. Or people concerned about weight AND arteries.