I did not eat any breakfast so when it became necessary to
meet Nizar to discuss the land in California, I called him around 11:00 and he
said we would need to go to lunch early because of a doctor’s appointment with
his wife at 12:45 p.m. So I drove to Café
Trang but was run into by a car turning left from the right lane at Buena Vista
and Coal. Thankfully, the damage from
the hit was light only breaking the front right headlight, so I still made it
to Café Trang ahead of Nizar, who arrived about four or five minutes after me. We each ordered our usual; Nizar ordered
chicken soup with vermicelli rice noodles and I ordered No. 21 Pho with rare
beef and beef meatballs. We had a good
meeting. It seems that large hedge funds
are vying with each other to acquire leases on telecommunication towers and we
have one on our land in Green Valley in California that they want, which may
allow us to sell our lease and pay off most, or all, of our mortgage on the
land. Yeah!
As I paid for the meal I noticed beside the cash register a posted
newspaper article listing the best oriental restaurants in Albuquerque that had
awarded Café Trang first prize for Pho that made me feel even better about my $7.50
medium bowl of Pho.
After lunch I went to Ta Lin to buy a few things. There was fresh Atlantic farm raised salmon,
so I bought a 1 lb. steak ($5.95/lb.) from a large king salmon. I also bought a bag of baby bok choy (now $1.39/lb.),
several nice looking shallots (now $1.49/lb.), two fresh ginger root stems
(still $.99/lb.) and a package of brown beech mushrooms ($1.79). Unfortunately, what I really needed was
peanut oil and its price has gone through the roof. I finally decided upon a 5 liter bottle for
$43.85. Yuuch! I bought it anyway, because
I would not know how to make Chinese food without it.
Suzette chose not to drive to Santa Rosa because of the
winter storm forecasts and she returned from her trip to Edgewood and Moriarty
to market the upcoming quilt show in Santa Rosa at around 4:00, which is when
Willy returned from work. Suzette had not
eaten lunch and was hungry so she heated the PPI Scallops in chayote,
tomatillo, and Mexican squash stew with the last of the PPI Bulghar rice. Suzette said that it reminded her of real
Mexican food, so I tasted the dish and it was wonderful, creamy from the pureed
tomatillo with great squash flavor.
Willy toasted Kommisarbrod and spread peanut butter and
honey on the toast for a light snack. I
joined him and had one also.
Neither Suzette nor Willy was hungry or wanting to cook dinner,
so at 8:00 p.m. after a fascinating PBS Nature program on the cleverness of
crows, I decided to make a light dinner.
I saw that we had PPI rice, so I decided to make a light stir fried dish
like I used to make when I lived alone from 1971 to 1975 in Fort Worth. I used to section and freeze individual
portions of meat and make a pot of brown rice once a week and buy fresh
vegetables as I needed them; ginger, onions, and garlic not so often and other
vegetables fresh every few days.
I realized that is what I had done at Ta Lin today. I had bought fresh baby bok choy, ginger and
shallots and mushrooms. So I minced two
shallots, 1 Tbsp. of fresh ginger, three cloves of garlic and cut up three baby
bok choy, separating the white portion from the green and putting the white
portion with the shallots, ginger, and mushrooms. I then deboned about 3 Tbsp. of frog leg meat
and put it with the green leaves of the bok choy.
Then I heated the wok with 1 ½ Tbsp. of peanut oil and a
dash of sesame oil and put about ¾ cup of rice in a pasta bowl and heated it in
the microwave, which was a bad idea, because the soft earthenware bowl cracked
from thermal shock. I also heated some
water.
When the oil was hot I added the hard ingredients and stir
fried them for a few minutes until they began to soften. Then I added the green leaves and frog legs
and added 1 Tbsp. of rice cooking and 1 ½ tsp. of mushroom soy and stirred the ingredients
and covered the wok, so things could steam.
I fetched the heated rice and brewed a cup of green tea with the hot
water from the kettle and then ladled the stir fried dish over the rice. I had not added any thickener because there
was so little liquid in the dish that it held together quite well. If I had wanted to make a saucy dish I could
have added more liquid such as chicken stock and then thickened the dish with cornstarch,
but that was two additional steps that I did not care to take, because speed
and ease and fresh was my goal tonight.
I was full after eating about ½ of the dish, so I put the
rest in the fridge for my morning breakfast or lunch. One of my favorite dishes is to make a kind of fried rice egg foo young by
adding egg to fried rice and a stir fry dish, which is aided by the lack
of a thickened sauce. The beauty of this
dish was that I already had the first two steps completed: the fried rice with
the stir fried rice so I only had to add the egg whisked with a little soy and
cooking wine for a quick delicious egg foo young. The beech mushrooms are fun to cook because
they hold their shape and are small and give the dish a beautiful appearance
with small mushrooms sticking up everywhere.
I lived on this type of diet for several years and was in
the best shape of my life, so I recommend it; especially for a professional
person with a demanding work schedule living alone.
Bon Appétit
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