Around 10:30
a.m. we fixed bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches with the new package of bacon
we bought at Costco yesterday and the organic greens we bought at Costco last
week and the lovely large tomato Suzette bought at the Farmers’ Market last
week on slices of nine grain sandwich loaf bought at Pastian’s Bakery a couple
of weeks ago and drank Bloody Mary’s in the garden.
After the
Cowboys won their game against the Cardinals, I made a noodle soup around 2:15
with Japanese Soba noodles, tofu, seaweed, red onion, beef meatballs, Lebanon bologna,
shredded Napa cabbage, Pho seasoning and Brown miso and then rode ten miles to Montano and back.
We had invited
Ricardo over for dinner; at around 6:00 he arrived with a string bean casserole
and a bottle of Clines Vineyards’ 2012 Zinfandel from California’s Lodi Valley.
A couple of
days ago I had chopped the ingredients for an onion, tomato and cucumber salad
with a large cucumber and a handful of heirloom cherry and grape tomatoes
Suzette bought at the Farmers’ Market last Saturday and an onion from Pro’s
Ranch Market, now under new ownership and named Los Altos Ranch Market (5 lbs.
for $.99),
Suzette returned from work at around 4:15 and at 5:30 we went to the kitchen to start prepping dinner.
I added Trader Joe’s European Style yogurt (Trader Joe’s $3.19
for 32 oz.), 1 Tbsp. of olive oil, salt and pepper and four cloves of garlic pressed into the sauce, the zest from one lemon and 1 Tbsp. of lemon juice, and
¼ cup of chopped fresh oregano leaves from our garden to the Tzatziki mix and
put it in the fridge to chill and coalesce flavors. By 6:30, when we served dinner, the tzatziki
had stiffened and integrated flavors.
We cleaned
out the refrigerator today and Suzette had taken out a bowl of fresh figs we had
picked from Terry and Nancy Lamb’s bush and the rhubarb and strawberry compote Suzette
made a couple of weeks ago and since they were both soft, Suzette decided to
use them to make a cobbler, while I was fixing the
tzatziki.
When Ricardo
arrived at 6:00 we opened the bottle of Cline 2012 Lodi Zinfandel and poured
him a glass and then put his string bean casserole into the microwave to heat.
Ricardo made his string bean
casserole with lovely haricot vert string beans from Trader Joe’s, strips of onions, green
and yellow bell peppers and lots of herbs like turmeric and cumin, giving the
casserole a rather middle eastern flavor.
After a few
minutes of conversation, Suzette put the lamb chops onto the grill. The lamb chops were small and relatively
thin, probably due to a new person cutting them in Costco’s meat department,
and did not take very long to grill. By
6:30 we were ready to eat.
Suzette
plated three dishes with lamb chops and string bean casserole and I took the
Tzatziki out to the garden table under the gazebo by the pond. Suzette turned on the fountain in the pond
and it gurgled as we sat and ate as the late afternoon shafts of sunlight streamed
through the garden. Soon after we sat
down to dinner, Cynthia called from her house in Arundel, Maine to say hi to us and
Ricardo put her on the face time feature of his phone and we had a conversation
with her that lasted about 30 minutes. Cynthia’s
neighbor, Bill, had fixed her a dinner of fresh lobster ravioli. Ricardo walked around the garden and showed
Cynthia views of the garden filled with cosmos in sunlight.
A little later Cynthia called again and we attempted to show
Cynthia the moon light in the garden and talked a bit more about the lunar
eclipse due to occur early Wednesday morning. If felt as if Cynthia was really part of the dinner party as we talked with her and nibbled our dinner.
After a few
minutes Suzette went into the house to remove the cobbler from the stove. A little later, after dinner Suzette filled parfait
glasses with the fig and rhubarb cobbler and vanilla frozen yogurt and I opened
a bottle of Harris 2007 Late Bottled Vintage Port I recently bought at Trader Joe's for $12.99.
We enjoyed glasses of it
and talked until around 8:30, when we all became tired and were ready for bed; so Ricardo loaded up his pack with the PPI string bean casserole and a lamb
chop and he rode home.
It
was a fun evening of simple good food, cooked a minimum of effort
and a really great telecommunications experience that allowed us to include Cynthia
as part of the dinner party even though she was actually in Maine. How fun!
Bon Appétit
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