September 17, 2017  Picnic Lunch at Los Luceros.  Dinner  New Recipe. Baked Patty Pan Squash Stuffed with Tomato and Meat Sauce and Catalan Chard

While I toasted two slices of Le Quiche whole wheat bread and spread them with goat cheese.  I put rabbit pate’ on one and smoked white fish on the other, Suzette made a potato, Comte cheese, and mushroom scrambled eggs for breakfast.

After breakfast we went to the garden and we picked chives and tarragon.  Suzette hard boiled six or seven eggs, chopped celery, and added mustard and mayonnaise to made egg salad to which I added the chopped chives and tarragon.

Suzette packed our picnic basket with a container with the egg salad, plus a. Thermos full of Gruet Tamaya Rose’, a container of Italian antipasto, a container of Kalamata olives, and one of the hearts of romaine. I toasted and buttered  4 slices of Nativo bread and added them to the picnic basket.

We drove north at 9:45 and stopped at the Santa Fe Flea Market at Cuyamungue, where I spoke to Rosa Rakovich, who used to own Rosa’s.  We then drove west on NM 502 into the Pojaque Valley, an area we had never seen before and visited several studios in open for the Art Tour.

At 1:30 we drove 30 miles further north to Los Luceros to the Harvest Festival where we sat and ate our lunch and then toured the Los Luceros State Park.  The most impressive part of Los Luceros was the Territorial period house bought and renovated by Mary Cabot Wheelwright in 1923, who was part of that group of independently minded women who moved to New Mexico in the early part of the 1900s, many of whom were artists, like Georgia O’Keefe and Olive Rush.  The walls were made of three foot deep adobe, so although it was a warm afternoon the inside of the house was cool.

Here is a picture of a fireplace decorated by Olive Rush in the large upstairs sala.

We then drove back home.  We arrived home at 5:30 and suzette rested and I watched the Cowboys lose while I opened and de-seeded the four patty pan squash we has grown in our garden.

When Suzette got up at 7:00 she filled the squashes with the meat and tomato sauce I had made with tomatoes from the garden at her Center for Ageless Living and ground beef and herbs and garlic from our garden and a couple of onions.

She then sprinkled the top of each squash with grated Parmesan cheese we bought at Costco and cooked the stuffed squash for 1/2 hour at 350 degrees.  The smaller squash was fully cooked but not the larger  squashes.  The way to know if the squash is cooked is it changes color from its original white color to a darker grey color and looses its original pulpiness.

We decided to cook chard as a green vegetable, so I went to the garden and picked a large handful and a few leaves of purslane in the driveway.

Willy arrived as I was picking the purslane, so I stopped and came in and cooked the

Catalan Chard.

I melted 2 T. of olive oil in a large skillet and sautéed 1 diced medium gala Apple and then added ¼ cup of piñon nuts and sautéed until they turned golden brown.  Then I added ¼ cup of dark raisins and sautéed them briefly.  Then I added the about 12oz. of de-stemmed and cleaned and dried chard cut into bite sized pieces and the purslane leaves and reduced the heat and stirred them in and covered the skillet with our wok cover to cook and wilt the greens.  After a couple of minutes they had cooked and we were ready to eat.

I opened a bottle of 2010 La Principe Delaguardia Crianza from Navarra, Spain (Trader Joe’s $5.99).  The wine had strong tannins that were not fully integrated into the wine, which is characteristic of younger Tempranillo wines.  It was okay but not one to rush back to the store to buy.

We enjoyed dinner while we watched the heart rendering beginning of the Vietnam War series on PBS about the French conquest, administration,  and war of liberation fought by the Vietnamese against the French.  Catalan Chard is one of Willy’s favorite dishes.

Bon Appetit