neotoma

Yesterday I have greenygal, ellen_fremedon, temve, el, and A Person To Be Pseudonymed Later over for the French Cassoulet. I had made Ligurian Foccacia the day before.

I had bought the pork butt at the farmer's market, and the duck legs, smoked ham hocks, and the French Country sausages at Butcher's Alley. I deviated from the recipe by replacing the white wine with Crab Apple Verjus from Lindera Farms -- 1/2 tablespoon instead of 1/4 cup; and I used a 5 quart dutch oven instead of the smaller 3 quart the recipe called for.

ellen_fremedon brought a bottle of red wine, temve and el brought a Moroccan spice cake (with orange butter) and a Manny Randazzo King Cake that Tem's work had sent, and A Person To Be Pseudonymed Later brought blood orange Italian soda. I brought out the French macarons from Lovely Macarons (earl grey, cherry almond, hazlenut chocolate, and strawberry cheesecake).

While we were talking before dinner, I mentioned that the dyer for Twisted Fiber Arts, which went under due to the pandemic, had set up as Fairy Godmother Dyeworks and is doing some of the colors again. And I brought out two of the hats I'd made out of Twisted Fiber yarns.

ellen_fremedon went "You have 2 hats!" because as it turns out, she kept thinking she was misremembering what color hat I had as I kept switching them and while they both were made on the same pattern and have purple, one is purple-to-green and the other is purple-to-orange. So I've apparently been accidentally gaslighting my friend for a few months because of that.

Oops

We also decided we are definitely going to find an Italian bakery that sells sfogliatella and have another gathering on St. Joseph's Day in March (which falls nicely on a Sunday this year).