November 1, 2019 Lunch – Chirashi Donburi at Azuma Dinner – Dia de Los Muertos Dinner at the Greenhouse Bistro

November 1, 2019 Lunch – Chirashi Donburi at Azuma  Dinner – Dia de Los Muertos Dinner at the Greenhouse Bistro.

I started the day with the usual yogurt, milk, tropical fruit salad and granola.

This was a special day in the Market it was up over 300 points or 1.1% and my portfolio was up over 1.4%, so I decided to celebrate a bit.

I worked until 10:30 and then ran errands until noon and drove to Azuma for my favorite sushi lunch; Chirashi Donburi selected slices of Sashimi on a bed of sushi rice with some seaweed salad, shedded Daikon and slices of omelet.  I always drink green tea with it.

Here is a picture of the dish.

I usually only eat half, so I stretch the $14.99 dish for twelve pieces of seafood into two meals, plus I have a VIP card (which anyone can get) that provides points equal to 10% of the ticket amount that can be accumulated and applied to pay for future meals. Let me simply say it is the best value for the best sushi I know of in Albuquerque.  I always order the same cuts of seafood from the same sushi chef and usually put a $1.00 in his tip jar which seems to encourage him to use extra attentiveness to create a lovely plate of food. My favorite selection is 2 pieces each of salmon, aji tuna, octopus, and super white tuna and 4 pieces of yellowtail.

Here is the box that I took home filled with 1/2 of my lunch.

After lunch I drove home to deposit my PPI sushi in the refrigerator and then at 2:00 drove to the building to meet with the new prospective tenant and his food service partner.

They like the building but it looks like a six month slog to get the necessary permits from the city and state to open a dram shop in the location.  We are left with the unpleasant prospect of trying to agree who will suffer the lost revenue or rent for that period of inactivity.

At 3:15 I drove to the Center for Ageless Living for a 4:00 massage and the dinner with Suzette.  Tonight was the first evening meal created by the new chef, Tania.  Tania is of Puerto Rican descent and trained at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute.  The tables were decorated with two craft projects made by the elders and staff, flower arrangements with marshmallows decorated with skeleton faces and paper tubes around which toilet paper is rolled painted and dripped with colored wax to look like a candle in which a battery electrified votive light was placed to look like a candle.  Have you ever thought, what can I do with the leftover toilet paper tubes? Charming.

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The menu was a three course meal.  The first course was a thick pumpkin soup creamed with apple juice and garnished with fried tortilla strips and decorated with a swizzle of crema.  I loved the slightly sweet rich pumpkin flavor. The pumpkin was a special sweet cooking pumpkin raised locally.

The entrée was black chicken mole served on a bed of Mexican rice served with a slice of baked chayote and three warm corn tortillas.  I really liked the dish. The creamy dark mole with the chicken and the lovely Mexican rice with peas and carrots and tomato was delicious rolled into a corn tortilla. Suzette drank a bottle of Estrella Jalisco beer, a light Pilsner,  and I drank lemonade with dinner.

Everyone in the restaurant was raving  about dessert, an icebox cookie in the shape of a skull delicately decorated with a skeleton face in icing and a cup of thick , gritty, sweet  Mexican cocoa.  We bought the cocoa in a specialty chocolate shop in Pazcuaro two years ago.  It was excellent cacao raised on a plantation in southern Mexico.  It  must have been roughly ground because there were bits of cacao bean left on the cocoa, which gave it a nutty crunchy texture.  The sweetness of the cookie’s icing and the sugar in the cocoa and the caffeine were quite invigorating.  We walked the labyrinth that had been set with Christmas lights and sat beside a brazier set with a wood fire and drank our cocoa for several minutes as the sun set and the air cooled.  A lovely quiet moment after a relaxing massage and a lovely dinner.  I could get used to this.

The buzz from dinner and dessert fueled my drive home, such that I enjoyed the 40 minute drive.

I got home by 7:00 just in time to watch Rachel Maddow.  Suzette stayed to help clean up, so she arrived about 30 minutes later.

We both watched the PBS weekly news program at 8:00.

The thought I have about eating at restaurants is it is wonderful for at least five or six salutary reasons. It provides one access to new and different ingredients one would rarely find one one’s own, such as the premium cacao from one of the premier cacao plantations in Mexico that we drank tonight or the beautifully fresh raw fish I ate for lunch.  Second, those ingredients are processed and converted into exciting delicious dishes at the hands of skilled chefs.  Third, fourth, fifth and sixth, we, the diners, are relieved of the burdens of gathering, processing, cooking, and cleaning up and eliminating the waste. I think that is why the food services industry is so highly developed.  It very efficiently meets one of the most basis needs for human survival, food.  At its best it excites the senses in lots of ways…

Bon Appetit