father's day extravaganza! mussels+fries+parsley aioli+french bread+strawberry granita

many years ago, we made a father's day card for our dad, promising him a "leon de bruxelles style meal". leon de bruxelles is a chain of belgian restaurants specializing in mussels, which we visited while in paris.
anyway, yesterday, we finally provided him with the promised meal. only 10 years too late. but worth the wait!
we started with this recipe:mussels and fries with mustard mayonnaise

very tasty! we doubled the recipe to serve four, but ended up with many leftover mussels. probably 3 pounds would be enough to serve four if its part of a many course meal like ours.
the recipe called for frozen french fries, but we decided to make our own.

we used this recipe: garlic fries, but halfed it.
instead of using the mustard sauce the mussel recipe called for, we made our own parsley aioli.
since this was a special occasion and we were making everything from scratch, we also had to make our own bread to go with. again, the recipe is halfed.

the first stage of baking took about 20 minutes, instead of the stated 35. also, we used about 2/3 white flour and 1/3 wheat, just because we ran out of white. french bread
all this was served with a lettuce salad.
and the grand finale...

strawberry granita
served in margarita glasses. we're hella swanky.
everything was very tasty.
and finally...

...the end!
or is it? stay tuned for our next post to see what we made with the leftover mussels.