Good morning. Canada Week is coming to an end for those of us on the Food desk of The Times. I spent the other evening interviewing the Montreal restaurateur David McMillan on stage at the Corona Theater in Little Burgundy, before repairing across the street for an epic dinner at his restaurant Joe Beef with, among others, the Times journalists Ian Austen, Dan Bilefsky and Jasmin Lavoie. The Canadian mixed-martial artist Georges St-Pierre was at the next table, The Streets on the stereo above the wood stove in back, and all the deliciousness left me wanting to cook French food with a Québécois accent all weekend: to lay out some smoked trout under mustard and maple, perhaps, or sauté sweetbreads and serve them above a sauce grenobloise, with more capers than you’d think, listening to old Renée Martel songs.

But the children will balk. They were home in the slush and sleet while I did my difficult job in the snowy north, and the menu choices for the next few days will fall to them. Stew is on order, if I’m reading the mood correctly. So perhaps a big pot of galbijjim, my adaptation of Roy Choi’s adaptation of his mom’s recipe for Korean braised short-rib stew (above).

Failing that, maybe Mark Bittman’s recipe for spicy-sweet Peruvian pork stew with chiles, lime and apples? Or Kim Severson’s simple and delicious recipe for Eastern North Carolina fish stew? I suppose we could go old school if the spices are fresh enough in the larder, with Florence Fabricant’s rich, satisfying recipe for beef stew with sweet and hot paprika. (Seriously, if you make that one, sniff deeply at your paprikas before you start cooking. If they don’t have a bright, fresh scent, they’re probably dead, and you’ll need a re-up before cooking, lest the stew taste chalky and pale.) I ask, they answer.

For dessert, though: only one choice. One of the kids has been knocking down fantastic versions of Katharine Hepburn’s recipe for brownies, with a generous dusting of kosher salt strewn over their tops at the end, just after they come out of the oven. So definitely that, either with vanilla ice cream or, shades of Montreal, a maple-scented whipped cream.