Flat 493 doesn’t own a guillotine but loves cooking to a theme, so happy Bastille Day, y’all.

— French Bistro Salad via the Spruce Eats. Not gonna lie, our (fairly new!) non-stick pan did not heat evenly. It was still fun to attempt fried goat cheese, one of my favorite restaurant treats.

The base of our salad was all fridge staples, including a homemade Dijon-based vinaigrette we already had on hand. Doesn’t get easier than that, even with slicing, breading, freezing, and attempting to fry the goat cheese for on top.

— Chicken in a Cream Sauce. The original plan for dinner tonight included cognac. Which we we forgot to buy. We ended up mainly using this recipe, but started with two saddening slices of bacon in the fridge based on other recipes I read. And because bacon. Since we were just cooking for two, we used a pack of bone-in chicken thighs, dusted with some smoked paprika and a red wine salt and pepper with rosemary from a grinder we got who knows when.

As I don’t do onion, we added diced fennel to the bacon and chicken fat, plus all of of the wrinkly cremini mushrooms hanging out in our crisper drawer. So as not to buy fresh herbs that we would then have to try to use up before they died, we used a dried bouquet garni mix; no measurements, just vibes.

Our cream was a combo of the heavy stuff we bought for this meal and the half-and-half Hampton had luckily just restocked for his coffee. It seemed like a lot, but I guess I didn’t sear the chicken hard enough because it took much longer to simmer to temp than expected so we ended up not at all sad for all the liquid.

Because we wanted all the veg, we didn’t strain the sauce as instructed before finishing it with the lemon juice and nutmeg. We did take the chicken out and sat it under the broiler for a minute to crisp up.

We served this glorious sauce and moist/crispy chicken over Trader Joe’s frozen mash loosened with super flavorful stock leftover from a recent dried bean meal and zhuzhed up with TJ’s Everything But The Leftovers and Fiery Honey Mustard powder from an old seasonal pack. The hint of heat and umami were a perfect foil to the rich sauce.

While we keep fighting for equality, at least there is fried cheese, bacon, and cream sauce.