{"id":4945,"date":"2018-07-26T15:20:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T15:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/?p=4945"},"modified":"2026-01-15T18:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T18:19:08","slug":"fete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/?p=4945","title":{"rendered":"F\u00eate…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our word for today is f\u00eate. It’s French for celebration. Posting about bread, or at least grain, yesterday, had me thinking about festivities. I equate festivities with food. Or, maybe, it’s food that makes things festive.<\/p>\n

Lunch, with a baguette from Jules, our French patisserie around the corner, and some cheese is always a celebration, especially in summer when we eat in the garden. At lunch, we discuss dinner – I know, I have trouble losing weight. This summer we have had lunch and dinner in the garden almost every day. What could be more festive?<\/p>\n

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Needless to say, I grow vegetables, as well as flowers, in the garden. This year my aubergines, I’m sticking with the French for eggplant, have produced their deep purple fruit early and I have had ratatouille for dinner often. Scented with fresh basil, this saut\u00e9 of tomatoes, garlic, onion, courgette, and aubergine is, in itself, a f\u00eate.<\/p>\n

My husband is a “foodie.” He cooks Boeuf a la Bourguigonne, Coq au Vin and Cassoulet<\/a>. I may love Italian food, but I revere French. My brother-in-law read Escoffier<\/a> and gave me a copy for Christmas one year. I may never make all of the 200 or 300 sauces in the book, but I can dream.<\/p>\n

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Both Italy and France treat food as a celebration more, I think, than other countries. There is a certain spareness to Scandinavian cooking, a blandness to British and a hodge-podge to North American. Somehow, pork and beans is not the celebration of taste that Cassoulet is.<\/p>\n

That being said, we often have a festive meal of BBQed ribs, or tacos and secretly, I would love to make Boston backed beans. My husband turns up his nose at the thought. He says he doesn’t like molasses, but he gets me to make a sauce with molasses to go with salmon, often. Hmmm.<\/p>\n

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I freeze batches of pesto to celebrate summer in winter, however, I have never really found a dish that celebrates winter in summer, except, maybe, ice cream. We have to have festive meals in winter because winter is long, and dark and cold. I make soups and stews interspersed with dishes of clams and mussels. I make paella and curried lamb shanks. We walk to Cumbrae’s, a celebrated butchers on Bayview. I gaze at the beef carcasses in the window – not your average window dressing, but just fine for a butcher. We salivate over steaks and chops that are two or three inches thick and I fondle the bottles of olive oil at $40.00, $50.00 or more.<\/p>\n

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The only product I buy in Cumbrae’s except for their exquisite frozen pastas and delicious meat pies are soup bones – chicken or beef. At $1.59 a pound they are the cheapest product in the store. You have to ask for them, though. They are never displayed. I buy five pounds at a time and then go next door to the Italian fruit and veg shop to buy the biggest carrots, celery and onions I can find, for my mirepoix, my soup flavouring.<\/p>\n

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Then, I spend all day cooking. It’s a ritual. Every F\u00eate, of course, has it’s own ritual – a marriage, a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentines, Pancake Tuesday, Canada Day, people arriving, people leaving, retirement, new job, a raise.<\/p>\n

We celebrate the feats in our life with feasts. Bon F\u00eate!!<\/p>\n

The pictures? Why, food of course!! Except for the picture of the empty plate. I took it at Bofinger in Paris in 2014. My brother-in-law took us there for lunch one day. I had raspberry soup for dessert. Something else to make.<\/p>\n

Have a satisfying day!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our word for today is f\u00eate. It’s French for celebration. Posting about bread, or at least grain, yesterday, had me thinking about festivities. I equate festivities with food. Or, maybe, it’s food that makes things festive. Lunch, with a baguette from Jules, our French patisserie around the corner, and some cheese is always a celebration, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-gardening","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4948,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945\/revisions\/4948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}