Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread
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What is a roux and what in the world are we talking about? For more, please follow me over your early morning orange danish du kos.
Update: I just got an email informing me that a very generous angel just purchased a live time subscription for me. Thank you very much. Your kindness and generosity is truly overwhelming and I am so very grateful to whomever you are. Thank you very, very much!!!
Many recipes for sauces and gravies often begin with the words "first you make a roux." This is especially important for many Louisiana Cajun recipes, but it is a basic technique in cooking.
So what is a roux? Basically, a roux is a mixture of flour and fat, either oil or butter. This mixture forms the thickening base for gravies or sauces or even soups. Depending how long you cook it, it will be a white roux, or a blonde roux, or even a brown roux. A white roux is the base for the classic French bechamel sauce and is the one I most often use in cooking. However, for Thanksgiving, when my husband smoked a turkey, there were no pan drippings from which to make a gravy. So I made a brown roux as a base for the gravy made with chicken stock. Our neighbors with whom we shared Thanksgiving dinner raved about my "turkey" gravy.
But this diary is also about another roux. Earlier this year, we lost both of our springer spaniels, one to old age and a beautiful young girl to congenital kidney disease. To fill that void, in October through ESRA, we adopted a female liver and white springer spaniel named Gidget about whom I wrote a diary. At the time my husband picked up Gidget in Mississippi, he saw a scrawny young male dog that he instantly took a liking to. My husband told the lady who was fostering Gidget that when "skinny boy" became available for adoption that we would be interested.
"Skinny boy" was approximately a year and a half old when he was picked up by animal control in a small Louisiana town outside Baton Rouge. He was found severely neglected and tied up under a house. The shelter in that town was known to be a high kill shelter, so the volunteer from the ESRA came and rescued him. Unlike Gidget who had been surrendered by her owner, not much was known about "skinny boy" including his name.
Because he is a very dark liver color, "skinny boy" was named Roux and placed in a foster home until his adoption. His foster father made an incredible video about Roux, but we already knew he was for us.
I cannot say enough about the amazing people who volunteer in these rescue groups, and in particular the foster families. They donate both time and money to ensure that the dogs they rescue will be placed in loving homes with Forever Families. We are so very fortunate to have Roux and Gidget as part of our family. Here is our official "Happy Endings" ESRA photo. I am petting Roux and my husband is holding Gidget whom we adopted in October.
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