March 30, 2016 Lunch – Vinaigrette, Dinner – Mapo Dofu

March 30, 2016 Lunch – Vinaigrette, Dinner – Mapo Dofu

I met Aaron, Amelia, and Ioanna at Vinaigrette for lunch.  Aaron ordered a ½ sandwich and salad, Ioanna and I ordered the Frisée, which is a classic French Salad with frisée, lardons, and a poached egg with a sweet French seed mustard vinaigrette.  Ideally the sweet mustard vinaigrette mixes with the warm yolk and the bacon fat from the fried lardons for a luscious dressing.

  The Frisée Salad

    Aaron's toting salad sandwich and salad

  Amelia's salad with grilled artichokes

  My kale, Apple juice and lemon spritzer

Amelia ordered an Omega salad with spinach and bacon plus grilled artichokes.  

Amelia also ordered a carrot, soda water, turmeric, and fresh ginger spritzer.  I ordered a kale, Apple juice, and lemon spritzer.  I liked the refreshing flavor.  There was a light touch of kale in my spritzer, which was mostly soda water and a goody amount of Apple juice.

I wanted to go meditate at 6:40, so a little after 4:00 I started prepping Mapo Dofu. I chopped 1/2" onion, two pork steaks, 1 T. Ginger, 1 T. Garlic, 1 eggplant, 15 stalks of asparagus, about 1/3 lb. of sugar snap peas, ¼ lb. of green chili, 6 or 7 fresh shitake mushrooms, 2 baby portobello mushrooms, 1 T. Wood ear, and 19 ounces of tofu.  

I first sautéed the onion, pork, garlic, ginger in 2 T. of peanut oil with 2 tsp. of garlic/chili paste.  Then I added the eggplant, mushrooms, asparagus, and sugar snap peas.  Then I added enough chicken stock to cover the ingredients and added the tofu, 1 T. each of Chinese Rice Wine and soy sauce and ½ tsp. of sesame oil.

I the covered the wok and went to meditate.  I invited Todd, the other meditator to dinner.  When we arrived home at 8:30 I heated the PPI rice and chopped a green onion and we served dinner.

Tonight I did things a little different.  I cooked the Mapo Dofu for two hours, which created a lovely natural sauce I chose to let the sauce stand on its own, without thickening

Mapo Dofu the way I make it is a perfect one dish dinner.  

I drank hot green tea with dinner.

My compulsion to eat dessert is somewhat under control these days.

I ate a second helping of Mapo Dofu instead of dessert.

As an afternoon snack I ate a couple of candied apricots.

Bon Appetit 

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