Oh yeah, forgot. (DH here again.)

Easy dad dinner #1--I've been cooking this one for 20 years.

Cheese souffle--3 tbsp butter melted in a 4-cup measure in the microwave; 3 tbsp flour whisked in and nuked for a minute and a half or so; 1 1/2 cups milk whisked in and nuked for 3 minutes; remove, whisk, and run for 3 minutes more. This makes a perfect white sauce every time. This time I got over-excited and I think used too much butter and too much flour and then maybe too much milk and the white sauce set after the first nuking with milk, but it was fine. A bay leaf or three and salt and pepper is good.

Whisk in enough grated cheese. Enough might be 1/2 to a full cup of grated cheese, depending on how cheesy you like your souffle. Don't use cheddar--it melts very badly and leaks whey all over the place. I used fontina which was good but surprisingly salty. Whisk in 3 egg yolks.

Take the whites from those eggs and 2 more and whisk them up separately to shaving-cream consistency. (Julia says "soft peaks" which is fine as a technical description if you know what that is. Think shaving cream.) Fold the egg whites and white sauce mixture together gently (I do it right in the bowl I whisked the eggs in) and pour into a prepared souffle dish. Save the extra egg yolks for the pudding you'll make tomorrow.

I'd gotten away from flouring my souffle dishes, but I did it this time (butter the bottom and sides, sprinkle in some flour, roll it around, knock out the excess) and I am reminded why it's worth doing. It turns into a lovely crust all around the custardy interior and makes for more happiness for the fans of BCBs (Burnt Crispy Bits).

Cook the whole thing at 375 for 20-30 minutes, until it's got some nice toasty brown on top. Ideally it should be crusty on the outside and like custard in the center. These were perfect. I say "these" because my aformentioned over-enthusiasm with the white sauce led to more souffle than would fit in one dish so we had the dual souffle option.

With the souffle went chard from the freezer, put up by the Delight of my Life, and cooked with onions. (Caramelize the onions first, then put the chard in. They're so good they don't need anything more than that. Maybe a little cider vinegar. They'll stand being cooked for a bit, too.)

We also had carrots julienne. This is something I first had in France (dreamy look... where was I? Oh yes) but it's one of those recipes that has sort of evolved over the years. The only problem with it is getting those julienned carrots. You can sometimes buy carrot slaw in the grocery these days (I love these days) and I wouldn't disdain them. You can also get a mandoline at great expense from the French or at very little expense from the Japanese. (The teeth of ours, from the Japanese, have gone astray, so that wasn't an option.) Or you can get a julienne blade for your Cuisinart if you want to go to the trouble of setting it up and cleaning it. What you can't do is use a grater. You want matchsticks, not flat slips of carrot.

So this time, with the souffle in the oven and nothing to do for ten minutes, I julienned by hand. Cut your carrots to 2" lengths; cut those in half and put the flat side against the cutting board; make thin lengthwise vertical slices of those; stack up the slices and slice lengthwise again to make matchsticks. Pretty much fun on a slow day. I worried my matchsticks were too thin, but hah, that's not happening.

Finish with a enough olive oil and good mustard to coat the carrots thinly.

So that's it. Even the dad, who's a slow cook, can do that in 45 minutes from a standing start. And the four of us gobbled up one whole souffle and half the other in a sitting.