• Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Recipes
    • All Recipes
    • Appetizers
    • Baking
    • Beverages
    • Desserts
    • Dressings and Condiments
    • Fish and Seafood
    • Mains and Meats
    • Pasta
    • Soups
    • Vegetarian
  • Contact
    • Email
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

Harvesting Dinner

Celebrating The Everyday Feast

  • Recipes
    • All Recipes
    • Appetizers
    • Baking
    • Beverages
    • Desserts
    • Dressings and Condiments
    • Fish and Seafood
    • Mains and Meats
    • Pasta
    • Soups
    • Vegetarian
  • The Local Forager
  • The International Forager
  • Food Musings

Subscribe to Harvesting Dinner via Email - get each fresh post in your inbox!

Join 172 other subscribers

Mother’s Kitchen

p1010499.jpgThe most succulent memories often emerge from a mother’s kitchen. Well at least mine do! Have you ever picked out friends simply because their mom was an amazing cook? I am guilty of that for sure!!! Always hoping to get invited for dinner somewhere… Especially if the family was having its own traditional, French Canadian version of spaghetti with meat sauce. When I was growing up, every family ate «spaghetti italien» as it was called at least once a week. And every family had the best sauce ever, or so they claimed! Seems I was on a mission to discover who actually the holder of that title was hahaha! But really, I was always looking for food, even at a very young age! Truth be told, my mother’s cooking was the best and so was her sauce! And my mother’s kitchen was the «awesomenest» kitchen I knew of! It is where I invariably would end up being when she was cooking, under her nose and in her way! I wanted to see how she did things and what she was creating, always fascinated and always salivating! I was quite young (compared with today’s standards) when I started to pull my weight around, becoming mommy’s little helper! I enjoyed peeling root vegetables and was charmed with the vegetable peeler. Root vegetables underwent under such a fabulous transformation: from dirty, muddy tuberous plants into something absolutely divine. Oh, the magic!

I remember the enveloping smells of mom’s pot roast braising slowly on a cold and wet winter Sunday. Mom would often make her pot roasts on a Sunday. Stemmed in tradition, her own mother had herself always done Sunday roast beef dinner and my mother, wanting to recreate that special childhood memory, would almost always roast a piece of meat on Sundays. Pot roasts were frequent because the cut of meat was affordable in a time when single income households were the norm and grocery budgets were careful planned out. What a different time we now live in…

Nevertheless, cheap meat or not, pot roast dinners were always prized meals in our house! There is something extraordinary about peeking under the lid of a pot of rich hardy stew simmering slowly. Something like looking at hot red lava bubbling at the top of a crater: bubbles thick and heavy, struggling to break the surface, finally pushing through, releasing rich aromas and splatter of tiny flavour infused droplets. Served with a decadent mashed root vegetable purée, fresh bread and butter (to soak up all the sinful gravy), a pot roast can be elevated to become the king of meats!!! Oh the lure of that smell…I think I may just have to submit to the call of The Braise… It is now officially autumn after all!

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email

Memoirs2 Comments

« French Bistro at Home – Moules Poulettes
Baby Steps… »

Comments

  1. Lynn says

    September 25, 2014 at 5:35 pm

    Confession: I have never cooked a pot roast, EVER. Your descriptions has me drooling…but I am afraid of how it would turn out. We used to be a no-red-meat family, but that meant almost all chicken and turkey, and just recently my son has developed a chicken allergy. So I’ve just started branching into red meat and so far…ugh, I’m just terrible. Everything is so tough and chewy!

    Would love to see your recipe for pot roast (with DETAILED cooking instructions) and root vegetable puree. I’d TOTALLY eat that :).

    Reply
    • natseguin says

      October 2, 2014 at 6:41 pm

      Hi Lynn, I have not forgotten… Just learning how to maneuver around the site.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Welcome!

My name is Nathalie. I was born in Montreal, lived in Germany as a child and now reside in Ottawa, Ontario. I started this blog hoping to find an outlet to the many one way conversations I have with myself about food! I am passionate about everything related to cooking. My kitchen is my hobby room but I also love to explore the many merchants of edible goodness out in the world: from my home town to my travels, food is at the center of everything! Meals are planned for sustenance but also for the simple pleasure of breaking bread... If nourishment was limited to taking in a specific amount of nutrient as fuel everyday, we would not have these intricate and amazingly powerful taste buds. I hope to entertain you with tales of a gustatory nature. Welcome to my blog!

Search This Site

Find Me On Facebook!

Come join me on the Harvesting Dinner Facebook Page for a little side dish of food conversation, fun links, and shared recipes.

As well, you can join my Facebook Group, For The Love of Food - Ottawa, where we can all share recipes, ideas, and talk about all things food!

Recently on the Blog

Omelets for Dinner? Potato and Zucchini Rustic Omelet

And they lived hapily ever after Roasted Cauliflower Soup

Still Life: Art in… Muffins! Pear, Almond and Chocolate Muffins

Globe Trotting in the Neighbourhood Dining at Fairouz, Ottawa

Under Pressure! Pressure Cooker Southwestern Style Chicken

Dive Into The Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Savory theme by Restored 316

Copyright © 2023 · Savory Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.