Saturday morning I was all in a panic because I really, really wanted a biscuit- and there was no shortening in the house. Fortunately, A New Way To Cook came to the rescue with its shortening-free rosemary biscuit recipe. While it's not a Biscuit biscuit, it is quite tasty and just right for breakfast.

However, since we had such a healthy breakfast, we had a butter soaked meal. Jeff's parents came over and we had poulet saute aux herbes des provence (AKA chicken with the world's butteriest hollandaise sauce) and pommes Anna (a butter soaked potato cake). And a salad. And oh, man, was it good. Pommes anna kills me with its incredible deliciousness.

Then, Sunday, we had an early evening party, so we had a big afternoon supper as our main meal- the Carbonnade from the current Cook's Illustrated over some buttered egg noodles. It's basically beef and onions cooked forever in stock and beer and it is so, so, so good. It also gave me a chance to use my new Most Favorite Kitchen Gadget: the E-Z Roll Garlic Peeler.. Y'all, this is one of the most useful $8 items you can have. I'd put it up there with tongs on the scale of kitchen usefulness, and I could not survive in a kitchen without tongs. It peels garlic! Like magic! It's easy to use and it works. I may have added more garlic than the carbonnade recipe actually called for, due to my zeal for peeling garlic and chopping garlic. I can't say that it hurt the stew one bit, though.