I drank a cup of hot water and sweet lime juice and watched news and soccer on TV and prepped red onion, and spinach and cream cheese for Suzette, who made a Gravad Lax omelet. I also squeezed 10 naval oranges and filled two glasses with fresh orange juice.
At 10:00 I went to the back yard and helped Suzette plant the gardens with seeds. She had gone out before breakfast to till and prepare the beds. We planted three raised beds and two triangles in the formal garden and finished at around 1:00.
I toasted two slices of rye bread and covered one with Jarlsberg cheese and red onion slices and the other with sour cream, red onion slices and pickled herring. I melted the cheese covered sandwich in the microwave and melted the cheese and softened the onion.
I drank a cup of hot tea with the sandwiches.
Suzette went shopping and I lay down for a nap and awakened at 4:30 when Suzette returned.
While Suzette rested I rode about 40 minutes on my bike the short route north to Central and south to Marquez and back home.
When I returned Suzette was hungry, so we decided to make dinner. Suzette said we needed to use the fresh head of red bok choy she bought at the farmers market yesterday. I said we needed to use the two thawed pork steaks and zucchini I bought last week at El Super for $.33/lb.. We decided to make a stir fried dish. What was interesting about this dinner is that Suzette has learned how to stir fry Chinese food, so we had a more equal division of labor and the prep and cooking went much faster. I sat at the table and Suzette handed me prepped onion, ginger, garlic, pork steaks, bok Choy, and zucchini, while she sliced mushrooms and opened a can of sliced water chestnuts and heated peanut oil in the wok and made a seasoning sauce of oyster sauce, Chinese rice cooking wine, soy, sesame, red chili garlic paste, and sesame oil. We generally use the four bowl method. In one bowl I put the minced garlic, ginger and sliced pork. In a separate bowl I put the diced zucchini and the thick white stalks of the bok Choy and in a third bowl diced poblano pepper and onion and the green tender bok Choy leaves in a fourth bowl.. Each bowl has a different cooking time so to have everything have the
same texture they must be cooked either separately or sequentially. Suzette cooked the onion and poblano separately first since it needed the must cooking time.. Then she cooked the meat, garlic, and ginger, and the added the zucchini and bok Choy stems and mushrooms and water chestnut slices. Finally she returned the cooked onion and poblano chili to the wok and stirred and turned everything to mix and cook everything together. When all the ingredients were almost fully cooked she added the seasoning sauce and when everything was fully cooked and the seasoning sauce slightly thickened she added the green bok Choy leaves.
Suzette heated PPI rice in the microwave and then cups of sake and we were ready to eat.
All the ingredients except the green leaves in the wok
 |
| The addition of thecseasoning sauce |
The addition of the green leaves
I made a cup of green tea and Suzette made a scotch from the new cache of spirits she bought at Total Wine today. I buy most of the wine we drink every day ay Trader Joe’s and Costco. We buy all the more unusual wines and most of the spirits we drink at Total Wine because they have the best selection and prices on spirits. For extra special wines, I usually go to Jubilation or Total Wine.
Increasingly I buy more special wines at Trader Joe’s because TJ’s has begun carrying better wines at lower prices, including their silver and platinum private label wines, which are exclusive premium producers wines bottled with TJ’s own label.
After dinner we watched some Stanley Cup Playoff hockey and then the two new Masterpiece Theater productions, Les Miserables, and Unforgotten and Suzette made dessert plates of carrot cake from last night’s meal at Zinc with a scoop of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream.
We went to bed at 10:00 after a full day of activity and two wonderful meals
Suzette also washed all the laundry today and made the bed with clean sheets.
Bon Appetit
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