I ate two slices of toasted French Baguette smeared with cream cheese and garnished with thinly sliced red onion and Gravad Lax with green tea. A lovely change of pace.
A went to a podiatry appointment that was cancelled at 1:1:30 and then to Trader Joe’s where I bought a baguette, two bottles of 2011 Vega de Origon Terra Alta Gran Reserva 40% Syrah and 60% Grenache ($5.99 and rated 3.7 by Vinvino) and a bottle of 2017 Amcay Malbec Reserva from Argentina for a Willy (Vinvino rates this bottle a 3.2) ($7.99) plus four boxes of Liquor filled cherry candies for Christmas gifts for clients.
I then met Aaron for a dim sun lunch at Amerasia. We ordered spicy pork rice, steamed buns, fried dumplings filled with beef, a steamed dumpling filled with beef and water chestnuts, and a fried scallion pancake. Each small plate is $3.90. The table service is like every other dim sun restaurant I have been to; a server pushes a cart to your table filled with an assortment of items to chose from. Both Aaron and I love this restaurant.
After lunch I drove home and worked until after 4:00, when I rode the short loop to Central and then to Marquez and back home. This avoids riding under a bridge where the snow may still make the trail slick.
When I returned home I watched some of the business news on TV. The exuberant multi-day rally that preceded Thanksgiving has changed to a murky, tweet fueled decline in the Market of about 2% yesterday and today. Sadly, the President still seems to believe that tariffs are an effective means of economic diplomacy and good for America. He is still the bully when it comes to trade. Wharton should revoke his degree.
Willy came home around 6:00 and Suzette at 6:45, after a Costco shopping run. After she rested with her usual after work Cocktail we started cooking. Willy had eaten the last of the Turkey and dumplings before going to a meeting at 7:00, so he was not hungry.
Suzette and I had decided on the menu in the morning, grilled steak, oyster dressing, and steamed asparagus. The fun part of the menu was combining the remaining 16 oz. jar full of oyster stew with the bowl of baked dressing from Thanksgiving to convert a dried out bready dressing into a moist oyster dressing. I cut up the dressing into as many pieces as I could so the milk and butter of the oyster stew would permeate all parts, leaving it in the Soufflé dish in which it was baked. I added the oyster stew and cut each of the three oysters into fourths and mixed everything together to distribute the liquid evenly. Then I covered the Soufflé dish with Saran and heated the dressing in the microwave on the sensor re-heat setting for four minutes or so. The result was a mixture of firm and gooey dressing, which was very appealing.
Suzette sautéed the steak in a skillet with butter, a couple of crushed cloves of garlic and a tsp of fresh thyme and snapped and steamed about 20 stalks of fresh asparagus I had bought at Smith’s last Tuesday for $1.47/lb.
I opened one of the bottles of 2011 Vega de Origon and poured glasses.
When the steak was cooked to medium, Suzette lay it on a cutting board and I sliced it. Willy had returned home and joined us for dinner. We served ourselves slices of steak, stalks of asparagus and spoonfuls of oyster dressing buffet style. This was a great meal prepared with a minimum of effort, because we had all the ingredients readily at hand. Suzette had thawed the steak out in the morning.
After dinner we sipped the rest of the wine with Belgium chocolates.
A fun evening of dining.
The big news today was the delivery of the House’s Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry report. The report included phone logs of Rudy Giuliani with calls to the White House and Parnnas. Lawrence O’Donnell had the Harvard Psychology professor who had written the book with 37 other professors on Trump’s psychological make up to analyze Trump’s statements made in England today. His conclusion was that Trump has a very primitive ego which lacks empathy of any kind. Not really a surprise.
Bon Appetit
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