December 13, 14, 15, and 16, 2020

 December 13, 14, 15, and 16, 2020

I have spent the last three days reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, this month’s book club selection. Thanks to Peter for loaning it to me for several of those days.

It is wonderful to get back to blogging.  I will be concise.  

December 13. Lunch - Houng Thao Dinner – Pasta with Pork Confit and marinated Artichoke hearts.

We took Suzette’s Helen Blumenschein painting of mummy cave in Canon de Chelly and her recently purchased Bernique Longley painting titled New Mexico Woman to Michael’s at 11:00 so she could get a 70% discount on a frame.  We had discussed getting Vietnamese food for lunch and specifically wanted the flour sheet dish served at 2000 Vietnam.  I called 2000 Vietnam but it was closed, so I checked Houng Thao and it was open. I asked if they had the flour sheet dish and the lady said, “we do not.”  I decided to order Stir Fried Noodles and ordered one order with beef and one with pork. The noodle used in stir-fried noodles is about 2/3 inch wide so a very substantial noodle. I asked that they put lots of mung bean sprouts in the vegetable mix and ordered an order of four fried egg rolls, which are served with lettuce leaves, slices of cucumber, oriental basil, cilantro, and Vietnamese fish sauce.  We drove to Houng Thao on Juan Tabo and waited in the parking lot and called to tell the lady we had arrived.  Buying Vietnamese take-out is like a drug deal.  You drive up to the door and they come out to your car and you hand them your credit card and try take it and run the card payment and then bring you back your food with your card and the credit card charge and you drive off with your food.  We drove home and ate the fabulous Vietnamese 

food with a beer.  We did not finish all the noodles, so I put the boxes of leftover noodles in the fridge. Houng Thao is one my two favorite Vietnamese restaurants with 2000 Vietnam.  In fact it is a bit mote upscale

  

  

 

 

 

  

We made a pasta dish for dinner.  Suzette made her normal white wine and cream sauce after sautéing 

onion, tomato, marinated artichoke hearts and some of the Pork Confit we made last week.  Unfortunately, I had not refrigerated the articles and they may have gone bad and the pork Confit was made with a terrible cut of pork that became very hard to chew.  

      You probably know by now that I have a very finicky gut and when it senses displeasure with what I have eaten it fires it straight out the other end of my system, which is what happened with the data dish.  We rarely throw anything away, but we threw the pasta dish and the pork Confit in the trash.

 December 14, 2020  Lunch – Miso Soup  Dinner – Garlic Eggplant with Swordfish and Mushrooms I 

have been trying to perfect miso soup lately.  Today I made it with the usual ingredients: dehydrated 

 dried seaweed, tofu cut into 1/3 inch cubes, a heaping T. of white miso, a couple of mushrooms sliced 

thinly, the leaves and a bit of stalk of celery, and green onion sliced thinly. Today I decided to add a whisked egg mixed with a tsp. of soy and Aji Mirin.  If you wait until the soup reaches a rolling boil  before adding the egg it will cook when it hits the liquid and turn into small particles that are usually referred to as a cloud. I do not recall if I added noodles, but I usually do.  I sprinkled thinly sliced green onions on top as a garnish. The result was delicious.

  Dinner was wonderful also.  I had been marinating a cubed swordfish steak in sweet chili sauce, soy, and Chinese Cooking wine for several days hoping to make swordfish Shish kebabs but when Suzette said, 

“We have an eggplant, so I would like to make my favorite Chinese dish, Garlic Eggplant (from Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking) and add Mushrooms, Napa cabbage, and the Swordfish to it. I made rice and 

then peeled the eggplant and cut it into 2 ½  to three inch strips resembling fried potatoes, which Suzette fried in a small quantity of peanut oil.  Suzette made the seasoning sauce by combining soy sauce, rice vinegar, Chinese Cooking wine, oyster sauce, and cornstarch.

 

 After the eggplant strips were cooked, Suzette stir fried onion and garlic in the wok and then added the cubed swordfish and sliced mushrooms.  In a few minutes Suzette added the seasoning sauce and when the liquid in the wok began to thicken Suzette served the dish over rice.  We drank beer with this meal.  The eggplant was a little flaccid, but the mushrooms and swordfish were delicious additions to the dish.

We drank beers with the dish.  

December 15,  2020. Lunch - Bologna and goat cheese salad. Dinner – New Recipe, sautéed scallops with a lime and cilantro melted butter sauce over rice.  

 Willy gave us a Harry and David food box for our birthdays in July/ August with several cheeses, 

salamis, cookies, and crackers.  We took it on our dark sky trip for Suzette’s birthday in August.  Several salamis were left uneaten, so today when I decided to make a fresh salad for lunch I chopped an opened salami into quarter circles and added it to my salad of Romaine lettuce, tomato, radishes, croutons and 

goat cheese.  I also toasted bread and spread goat cheese on it.  We buy the California goat cheese at 

Costco because it is the least expensive and is delicious.

We had not discussed nor had we thawed anything for dinner until 4:00 when Suzette arrived. I suggested scallops because they are easy to thaw quickly and Suzette agreed.  After a cocktail and a bit of watching the news Suzette found a recipe for Sautéed scallops with a lime, garlic, white wine vinegar, cilantro, butter sauce.  It was essentially a glorified Mojo de Ajo sauce.

I chopped garlic and cilantro and Suzette cleaned and chopped fresh spinach.  Suzette then salted and peppered the scallops and sautéed them and heated some of last night’s steamed rice in a Pyrex baking dish covered with Saran in the microwave.

Suzette them made the sauce in a skillet by toasting the garlic in butter and then adding the chopped 

cilantro, lime juice, and a dash of white wine vinegar.  The result was a zesty garlic citrus flavored sauce that Suzette poured over the scallops she had laid n a pile of warmed rice.

We drank a bottle of German Reichard Rose ($4.99 at Trader Joe’s ). The 100% Pinot Noir wine was wonderful with the zesty Scallop dish.    

Suzette kept saying except for the ocean I feel like I am in 

Puerto Vallarta.  It was an amazingly fresh tropical citrus sauce with that Mexican seafood vibe that draws us to Mexico’s Pacific Coast again and again.  Perhaps being denied the opportunity to go to PV made this taste of Mexico so much more endearing.

 

 

December 16, 2020  Lunch – IKONIC Coffee Shop.  Dinner – Sautéed Mushrooms with PPI Boeuf Bourguignon and Roasted Potatoes

Today we drove to Santa Fe to pick up PPE for The Center but it turned into a shopping spree of sorts.  We first drove to the basement of Yuen’s Tony Anaya Building on Cerrillos  and loaded 420 N95 masks, five boxes of gowns and 200 face shields from the NM Department of Health stockpile.  Stephens Consignment was across the street so we drove there after we called Aaron Payne to make an appointment to see an Ed Garman painting he had shown in his Daily Christmas circular he had shown that morning.  It was a beautiful painting that seemed to me to evoke elements of the Transcendental Painting  Group, of which he was a member and the California hard edge school of the 60’s and 70’s.  I loved it the minute I saw it on my computer screen that morning and thanked God for the rapid increase in my portfolio that would allow me to purchase it.

But first Stephen’s.  Suzette saw several items that she thought we should buy, none of which were particularly expensive, a double candelabra with rings of crystal prisms hanging from each candleholder

, a jack of linked wrought iron hooks used to hang meat such as four quarters of beef or venison or for hanging baskets of plants if you are Suzette, and a set of 10 place settings of silverware with wooden handles made by the German Henkel Firm, sort of its take on Scandinavian modern steel and wood silverware.  We loved the silverware immediately and realized we needed a newer nicer set of everyday silver.

After loading our new purchases we drove to Aaron’s new gallery on Lena Street, which has become a really hip area.  We loved his new airy well lit gallery. After a bit of haggling I bought the painting, especially after I learned it was owned by Tiska Blankenship, the former Manager of the Jonson Gallery at UNM.  What became even more interesting was that she said she bought it from Peter Eller, but Peter did not seem to remember that fact today when he was over and I asked him.

After buying the painting we loaded it and walked across the street to the IKONIC coffee shop. I immediately liked the place when we saw a fellow roasting coffee in a 50 lb. roadster near the front door.  We ordered lunch to take out although there was a patio because the day was cold and there was no sun on the patio.  We took or David Bowie card on a stand holder given to us to identify us across the street to a table in the sunlight.  Soon our lunch was delivered a vegetarian cauliflower, broccoli, and thin rice noodle coconut milk green curry based soup for me and a patty melt with a small salad for Suzette.  We enjoyed 

our lunch and will return if we are in the area.

    

We drove home and rested until dinner.

Suzette decided to make a light dinner out of the last bit of Boeuf Bourguignon and roasted potatoes.  She sliced about 1 ½ cups of portobello mushrooms thickly and sautéed them  in olive oil until the edges browned.  Then she added the PPI Boeuf Bourguignon and Potatoes from a prior meal and heated everything together and then plated it.  

   

I opened a bottle of Trader Joe’s 2017 Platinum Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from Oakville in the Napa Valley.  The wine was really delicious, as was the rich mushroom dish.  We are trying to eat less, and this dinner was perfect.  

Bon Appetit