May 31, 2021 Lunch - Sautéed Smoked Pork Cutlet with two eggs over easy, and two toasted bagels spread with cream cheese. Dinner - Roasted Chicken stuffed with Tarragon and lemon slices, with Artichoke Barigoule and Rice

May 31, 2021 Lunch - Sautéed Smoked Pork Cutlet with two eggs over easy, and two toasted bagels spread with cream cheese. Dinner - Roasted Chicken stuffed with Tarragon and lemon slices, with Artichoke Barigoule and Rice 

I ate some blueberry yogurt with 1/2 of a sliced banana and a small handful of fresh blueberries for breakfast.  Then at 10:00 I rode to I-40 on the bike trail and back.  When I returned I had an appointment and was feeling weak so I got in bed and ate three fig newtons and rested until almost 2:00, when I made a high protein and carb lunch.  I sautéed a smoked pork cutlet and cooked two eggs over easy with a slice of sweet onion and a cup of green tea.

  Suzette came home while I was eating.  At 4:00 we drove to Lowe’s  and Walgreen’s where I bought a travel bottle and dental floss.

When we returned home Suzette stuffed a whole chicken with lemon slices and tarragon she picked in the garden and roasted the chicken while I rested until 7:00 and then chopped onion, garlic, and fennel, and removed four artichoke hearts from the leaves while Suzette chopped two carrots for the Artichoke Barigoule dish we intended to cook for dinner.  I also put a bottle of White Cotes Du Rhone wine into the fridge to chill at 3:00 (Trader Joe’s $5.99??). Suzette went to the garden and picked a handful of fresh thyme and I stripped the leaves and flowers from the stems and Suzette added the thyme to the Barigoule with a bay leaf.  We did not have parsley.

Here is the recipe we used. 

https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-artichokes-a-la-barigoule-french-braised-artichokes-with-white-wine

Willy arrived at 7:30 as Suzette was sautéing the Barigoule ingredients in the wine and then added chicken stock and removed the vegetables and reduced the liquid to a thin sauce and poured that over the vegetables.  I carved the chicken and Suzette heated the PPI rice and put a small pile of rice on each plate.  I then lay a piece of chicken on the rice and Suzette spooned the Barigoule vegetables beside the chicken.

Willy poured glasses of wine and we had a lovely meal.  The barigoule tasted better with the freshly steamed artichoke, but I think it would taste better with an uncooked artichoke heart, so I am still in search of the illusive best rendition of the recipe.

We watched an Anthony Bourdain episode on winter food in Iceland from his No Reservations series and then Willy left and I went back to bed.

I awakened at 11:00 feeling much better and blogged this blog installment.

Bon Appetit

May 30, 2021 Brunch - naked eggs Benedict with roasted vegetables. Dinner - Grilled Hamburgers with Fried Cassarecce pasta with broccoli and pesto and sautéed Mushrooms, shallot, and red bell pepper.

May 30, 2021 Brunch - naked eggs Benedict with roasted vegetables. Dinner - Grilled Hamburgers with Fried Cassarecce pasta with broccoli and pesto and sautéed Mushrooms, shallot, and red bell pepper.

We walked in the Bosque this morning to the two lakes at 7:15 this morning while it was still cool.  On the second lake we saw something we had never seen before; two baby wood ducks and two baby Canadian Geese swimming with their parents. We were too late to see the beaver, apparently.

When we returned to the car our right rear tire was flat.  This led to a series of events that consumed the rest of my day.

We locked the car and walked home. Suzette checked her watch and mentioned that we had walked 1.6 miles by the time we returned home, which is new record and shows physical progress.

We decided to eat brunch before dealing with the tire.

Suzette wanted to try poaching eggs in vinegar water.  Since we had good Neighbors Mill multigrain bread and smoked pork cutlets, Suzette decided to prepare something akin to eggs Benedict without the Hollandaise sauce.  The dish was hugely successful.  In a separate skillet she sautéed some of the PPI roasted vegetables including, onion, potato, and Brussels Sprouts from last night’s meal with a pork cutlet and toasted half pieces of bread.  She then cut the cutlet in half and placed each half cutlet on a half slice of toasted bread, added vegetables and finally two poached eggs.  I also ate another slice of bread with peach jam.

Here is the result.

After brunch I turned my attention to the tire.  I called AAA and Suzette drove me to the car to meet Casey from Santa Fe Towing, who expertly replaced the blown tire with the spare from the trunk after inflating it.

I then drove to Firestone Tire on Coors at 11;30..  They recommended leaving the tire to be repaired, because I mentioned that I might be going to a Santa Fe.

When I returned home Suzette informed me that Santa Fe Art Auction was closed, so she worked and packed for our trip to Mexico while I read and napped until 2:30 when I decided to eat the PPI Pho soup. from Peter’s Thursday lunch with the rice and noodles left in it and the addition of 1/2 of the PPI sautéed duck breast we had cooked Friday night. I heated the soup and cubed duck in a soup bowl for about 4 minutes and then added the fresh cilantro, oriental Basil and mung bean sprouts that came with the soup and then heated the soup for an additional 50 seconds to cook the mung beans and herbs a bit.  The result was delicious and surprisingly my tummy accepted the warm highly flavored soup without objection.

While I ate my soup we discussed our dinner menu and Monday night’s dinner with Willy and decided on hamburgers with a Caprese salad and frying the PPI Broccoli  Pesto Pasta for tonight and roasted chicken for Monday night with artichoke Barigoule, so we went through our freezers and thawed a bag with about 2 lb. of ground beef and with some effort pulled a whole chicken out of the garage freezer to thaw.

At 3:30 I called Firestone to find out about the tire and they told me the tire was not fixable because the sidewall had cracked open and I would need a new tire, so I drove to Firestone and waited for them to replace the spare with a new tire.  Finally, at 4:30 I paid for the new tire and drove home.

When I arrived home the wind was blowing and I decided to prune the roses in the back yard and fill vases with the roses still in full bloom or blooming rather than allowing the wind to ravage them.

Among the blooming roses I cut were three Mr. Lincolns, four Don Juans and two Tropicanas.  Here is one of the vases.

At 6:00 we began to consider dinner.  I went to the garden and picked four sprigs of tarragon and five or six chives and two invasive sprigs of mint in the tarragon.  When I returned to the house I made my first mojito of the summer, since Suzette previously had made mint syrup and opened a bottle of soda water and we watched the news.  

Finally around 6:30 we got serious about fixing dinner.  Suzette formed two large hamburger steaks and grilled them on the outdoor grill and melted a slice of provolone on each and started sautéing the PPI pasta dish in a skillet on the stove.

I sliced five large mushrooms, 1/2 shallot, about 2 oz. of red bell pepper, the five chives, the largest sprig of tarragon, and two cloves of garlic and sautéed those ingredients in our new non-stick skillet that Suzette fetched and helped in heating the butter and olive oil.

I then manned the stove to flip the pasta and mushrooms and add sherry to the mushrooms while Suzette watched and flipped the hamburgers and added the slices of cheese to melt in the outside grill.

While the pasta and mushrooms were cooking I fetched the fresh basil leaves I picked yesterday that Suzette had not used to make pesto, a Roma tomato, a sweet onion, and Suzette fetched a package of fresh mozzarella cheese slices for me.  I sliced the Tomato into six slices and when Suzette brought the hamburgers in, she helped me assemble small individual Caprese salads on each plate as she plated the hamburgers, fried pasta, and garnished the hamburgers with the sautéed mushrooms.  Finally she deglazed the oil left in the fried pasta skillet with balsamic vinegar for a quick warm balsamic dressing that she drizzled onto the Caprese salads.  Here is the result.

                                                                Suzette’s 

                                                                   Mine

This is what I call a quick and easy meal, but I believe it is among my favorite meals.  I never thought to fry PPI pasta until I met Suzette, but now I love it fried in the manner she did this evening in olive oil.

Since I grew up eating hamburger steaks for dinner, I have always loved them for dinner and have followed the French Cuisine tradition of saucing a meat dish, but have adjusted my thinking to the healthier choice of garnishing hamburgers and steaks with sautéed mushrooms lightly sauced with sherry instead of a preference for the heavier and less healthy French Béarnaise sauce of my youth and middle age.  

The interesting dichotomy in our individual cultural backgrounds re-appeared again when it came to picking a beverage to drink with dinner.  Suzette chose a bottle of beer honing to her German heritage and I opened a bottle of 2011 Faustino Rioja Reserva (Costco $7.99?.) and drank a glass of Spanish red wine in accordance with my family’s preference for French and Spanish cuisine accompanied by wine with meals in my youth.

After dinner we watched the Denver Avalanche crush Las Vegas 7 to 1 in their Stanley Cup playoff match and I ate a bowl of chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce and rum and sipped a cognac to digest dinner.

We were tired and went to bed at 9:30, but I awakened at 3:00 to blog this blog while drinking a glass of mint flavored water to help settle the heavy beef dinner.

Bon Appetit

A Clean Well Lighted Place

 A Clean Well Lighted Place. 

Dee, there is a direct link from Clean Well lighted Place to the Bruce Lee piece I gave you last year in at least two ways.  One is through my evolution as an art collector and the other is through Dave Hickey’s putting Texas art on the National art stage. Both started in Austin in the late 60’s.

Dave and I were both born and raised in a Fort Worth.

Both of us attended UT Austin in the late 60’s.  The difference was he was 100% into art and I was attending law school with a strong interest in art.

In those days you could take one elective course per semester and I was the only law student who took art history courses.  I took a Renaissance to Modern survey course, in which the most memorable recollection was that Farrah Fawcett was a classmate.  Then I took Modern Art, Architectural art, and finally a graduate Seminar with then Chairman Fred Weismann on “Artist as Witness”.  I am not sure I ever learned what artists are witness to. Besides law I was doing psychedelics and may have missed some of the curriculum themes.

I had bought my first piece of art in 1968, a Cape Dorset lithograph, Wounded Bear by Kanujiak I had seen at an exhibit as Laguna Gloria. I sent $60.00 to the Canadian Government agency that handled sales of indigenous art.  That was the beginning of my collecting.

I was living at College House in 1969 then an old seedy complex of buildings and apartments west of the University.  It was a hotbed for radical thinking. One of the residents was a fellow named Watson.  If I recall correctly, his first name was Ken and he was a graduate student In Philosophy.  He was definitely a leader of SDS on campus and a friend of Bill Bennett, who was also a Philosophy grad student who would come over to hang out with Ken and play volleyball with us in our courtyard.

One of the residents was a girl named Carolyn who was dating Gilbert Shelton.  I met Jim Franklin during this period and was attracted to their art work. I heard that some of their art was for sale at a new gallery named Clean Well Lighted Place at 12th and Nueces.  I was interested in buying one of their God Nose or Wonder Wart Hog or the Furry Freak Brothers.

It was 1968 or 1969 and I recall meeting the owner, who I assumed was Dave.  I wandered around the gallery for a few minutes, but only saw an original cover for Sergeant Rock for $325.00. I may have asked about the other three comic characters, but I left without a purchase. In those days $325.00 was out of my price range anyway.  I would save $20.00 from my monthly allowance of $20.00 for room, board, and a minuscule amount of spending money to have $200.00 in order to afford a one week trip to Mexico at Spring break, usually to Mazatlan.

So that was my first gallery purchasing experience corresponded with Dave’s first gallery ownership experience.

I have always collected the art of the locale in which I live.  Now that I live in New Mexico my main interest is in New Mexico artists, but have retained my interest in Texas artists.  When we visited Marfa for New Year’s in 2019 I  visited a gallery that was showing Bruce Lee’s work.  I immediately fell in love with his fresh outsider take on art and bought the piece I gave to Dee.

I think Dave’s and my reaction to art is similar.  We both love creative, well done art. 

I do not know why I did not collect the comic books.  Perhaps because I was more attracted to the T shirts which were wearable art that also made a fashion statement.  Here are a few that I wore but survived.

I have never lost my interest in art and nave been collecting since returning to Fort Worth from a one year foreign student gig in Sweden in 1970 to practice law.

I have collected ever since. Here is one by Vernon Fisher, a Fort Worth artist who I knew when living in Fort Worth associated with minimalism from the 70’s, which is the only Texas artist besides Bror Utter in my collection.  I bought it from the famous Dallas Gallery owner Janie Lee.  His work was included in a number of exhibits of Texas artists working in the 70’s.

Dave’s path and mine have kept crossing but I never sought him out. Perhaps I shall now that he has retired and living in Santa Fe.

We have had different experiences but the common thread is our love of art.

Bob

 

May 29, 2021 Lunch - Duck and Beet Salad. Dinner - Broccoli Pesto Pasta with Chicken

 May 29, 2021 Lunch - Duck and Beet Salad.  Dinner - Broccoli Pesto Pasta with Chicken

Today I awakened at 8:21 having stayed up a while during the night.

I was rested and ready to bid on art at the Santa Fe Art Auction.  Suzette wanted to bid on several lots also.

Suzette worked in the garden and then at her desk and I worked at my desk until about 10:00 when I heated the almond chocolate croissant we bought last week at the farmer’s’ market and split it with her.  I ate mine with a cup of tea and she ate her half with coffee.  I showered about 10:30 and we set up my computer in the bedroom to project the auction on the TV monitor.  There was no sound but we were connected to the auction and could click the mouse to send a bid.

We missed the first two items we tried to buy, a painting by a female painter Suzette was interested in and a 1949 William Lumpkins water I liked.

It was an odd auction because many pieces were going for more than their estimate and other pieces were receiving no bids.   Soon a nice Dean Porter watercolor came up and there were no bids, so I made the first bid at $150.00. There were two counter bids and I won the bid at $190.00, which is less than the cost of the frame and definitely lease than the $750.00 I paid for my Dean Porter watercolor of a similar image.

Then Suzette became interested in a Joseph Imhoff print of an Adobe house.  The bidding started at $300.00 and she won the bid for $700.00.  Imhoff was a member of the Taos Society of Artists, so $700.00 seems like a steal.

Around 11:30 we decided to fix lunch although Suzette monitored the auction on her cell phone.

Lunch - Duck Salad

We picked a basket full of lettuce from the raised bed and spun it to clean it.  I cubed two tomatoes, 1/3 cucumber, two radishes, and 1 1/2 duck breasts.  Suzette composed the salads in pasta bowls and added the diced beets we had roasted several days ago and clumps of fig flavored goat cheese and made her usual,lovely balsamic and olive oil dressing that we drizzled over the salad.

I fetched a bottle of Sauvage white 100% chardonnay Gruet champagne from the garage fridge and an ice bucket that Suzette filled with ice cubes.

We took the champagne in the ice bucket and our salads to the table in the garden and enjoyed a lovely leisurely lunch.

We continue to marvel at the wildlife that frequent our garden.  Today we saw two mourning dove and a ground squirrel.

During lunch we monitored the auction and after we finished our salads, we sipped the rest of the bottle of chilled champagne.  When a beautiful tooled leather rocking chair and ottoman was reached Suzette bid on it but did not get it, so our lunch and auction experience ended. We were happy with each our purchases without any regret that we had been outbid on the pieces we wanted.

After lunch I started boiling the four fresh artichokes for 45 minutes and retired to my bed to read my new Book club book, Behind the Lovely Forevers, snd napped until 5:30 and Suzette read her new Martha Stewart magazine.

Suzette started locating snorkeling gear for our trip to Mexico.  

At 6:30 we discussed dinner and I was thrilled when Suzette said, “Let’s make a recipe I just saw in the magazine.  We have all the ingredients for it.”

Dinner - Pasta with Broccoli Pesto

Suzette threw herself into making the dish. We decided to add the last PPI baked chicken thigh and garlic scapes to the dish.

I went to the garden and picked about 1 cup of basil leaves from the new basil plants Suzette planted yesterday and about ten chives.

I diced the PPI baked chicken thigh and scapes and sliced the chives finely while Suzette made the pesto, chopped and cooked the broccoli, and then combined those ingredients with ricotta and the cooked Casarecce pasta and a little pasta water.  Suzette said the secret to making the dish creamy was the addition of ricotta and pasta water, so this is a new cooking technique for creamy pasta, instead of Suzette’s usual technique of adding heavy cream.

We garnished the dish with Pecorino-Romano cheese and chives.

I went to the garage and fetched a bottle of Kirkland Pinot Grigio and poured glasses of it.  The wine went exceedingly well with the creamy pasta and chicken.

After dinner we watched the Stanley Cup playoffs in Hockey for a while including a surprise goal by Montreal against Toronto in the second overtime to bring that series to a game 7 match to determine who advances and then a new episode of Death In Paradise while I drank a few sips of grappa and nibbled two almond cookies.  

Suzette went t bed at 10:00.  I stayed up and watched an old episode of Grantchester and then blogged at 11:00 after a very pleasant day.

Bon Appetit

May 28, 2021 Lunch - Stir Fried Rice with Grilled Beef Wrapped Shrimp, chard, and Tofu. Dinner - PPI Scallop Lasagna.

May 28, 2021 Lunch - Stir Fried Rice with Grilled Beef Wrapped Shrimp, chard, and Tofu.  Dinner - PPI Scallop Lasagna. 

Today I ate leftovers, but wonderful leftovers.  I worked through breakfast, so did not eat breakfast.  Finally, at 1:00 I made lunch.  I put the leftover rice and Grilled Beef Wrapped Shrimp left from yesterday’s Vietnamese lunch with Peter and two cloves of minced garlic in my wok heated with a bit of flavored olive oil left from last night’s roasted vegetables and added about 4 oz. of diced firm tofu.  When the mixture became hot I added, some of the mung bean sprouts, some cilantro, and the four or five pieces of green onion from the restaurant box and an egg and then a generous handful of chard and removed the tail shell still on the shrimp and cut the two bundles of beef wrapped Shrimp in half to make four generous bites.

After a few minutes when the egg was cooked to firmness I ladled 1/2 of the mixture onto a plate and ate it greedily.  Although hot and delicious this part of the meal I would characterize as eating to live because I was tired from a lack of sleep last night and hungry from lack of breakfast.  Having satisfied my hunger, I then reheated the last half of the mixture and drizzled it with hoisin sauce and cilantro leaves and enjoyed the gooey hot flavor of the ingredients with a cup of green tea. This part of the meal was much closer to living to eat.  

After lunch I waited until 2:00 to see how I did in the Market.  I was flummoxed when the gains for the day should have been two or three times higher than the actual difference between yesterday’s totals and today’s.  That has happened before when I tabulated the numbers several hours after the close because one of my accounts reflects actual market activity and in highly volatile after market activity the totals can move away from the closing prices.  Yesterday was one of those days when I recorded the total several hours after the close.

Earlier in the morning I talked to Willy, who is following the market and especially the crypto market, about the collapse of that market in relationship to the US equity market.  He agreed with my theory that this week when concerns about inflation have abated and the sovereign debt market has started back down, with the 10 year treasury bill rate below 1.6% and with the reopening in the US underway and corporate earnings up, that money is flowing out of sovereign debt and crypto currencies and back into the equity markets.  Of course Elon Musk and the Chinese governments actions and perhaps the brightening prospects for a sovereign digital currency have probably also helped dampen the froth in the crypto markets.  Willy then explained to me the Reddit/Robinhood buying pressure pushing up AMC and GameStop and Beyond Meat.  He said that those coordinated investment services look for stocks that are heavily shorted by hedge funds and start buying those stocks to create a short squeeze for the short sellers that forces them to cover by buying the stock at a higher price, thus causing them to lose Billions of dollars. Willy’s assessment was reported in the business news recently, that the run up in prices in the stocks favored by Reddit influenced buyers may have cost the short sellers as much as 10 billion dollars.

Willy felt some satisfaction that the short sellers are getting hammered. I am satisfied that I am sitting in stocks that are not part of that fight.

After lunch I did my banking and returned home by 2:50 and lay down and napped until Suzette awakened me at 4:00 to get ready to go to Santa Fe Art Auction reception from 5:00 until 7:00.  We drove up and examined the the items offered in the auction and especially the two or three pieces we were interested in bidding on tomorrow. We each nibbled one of the cups of fresh fruit offered and Suzette was discussed when she ate one the offered cold pork sliders.  I was a little less disgusted when I ate a cold corn muffin smeared with a strawberry topping.

After the viewing we discussed dinner and decided to drive back home and eat some more of the PPI Scallop Lasagna.

When we arrived at 7:45 we were hungry and we immediately cut squares of scallop lasagna and popped them into the microwave.  Suzette took a Modelo Negra and I poured out the rest of the chilled Mohua New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, which is one of my favorite wines.  Soon we were eating lovely creamy lasagna.  This eating experience qualified as both eating to satiate hunger and living to eat because it was impossible to not notice how delicious the scallop lasagna was.  It was creamy from lots of ricotta and mozzarella cheese and full of scallop flavor from the scallops sautéed in thyme, chives, and onion, plus full of cooked chard for a green leafy tart vegetable flavor that balanced the heavy cheese flavor and the fishy scallop flavor.  We loved this dish the second time better than the first time we ate the night we made it and have enough left for another meal.

After dinner I ate some chocolate and some chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup and Kahlua and a sip of Calvados.

We watched a not very good Jennifer Aniston movie on Netflix and went to bed at 10:30.

I awakened at 4:30 to write this blog and then went back to bed to get a little more rest.

Bon Appetit 

May 27, 2021 Lunch - 2000 Vietnam takeout. Dinner - Sautéed Duck Breasts with a Maraschino Cherry Cream Sauce and a Brussels Sprouts, onion, Potato, and garlic scape casserole

May 27, 2021 Lunch - 2000 Vietnam takeout. Dinner - Sautéed Duck Breasts with a Maraschino Cherry Cream Sauce and a Brussels Sprouts, onion, Potato, and garlic scape casserole 

Some days I eat to live but most days I live to eat.  Today was of the latter variety. Thank god.

I remembered when we visited the Cro Magnon decorated caves in the Vezeres region of the Dordogne River Valley in France being told that the inhabitants had awful tooth decay because the main part of their diet was the abundant black walnuts that had high concentrations of acid.  When the dentist told me I had several cavities two days ago I realized they were caused by the huge amount of nuts and granola I have been eating,  so as of yesterday I gave up granola and nuts and started gargling with a fluoride mouth wash.

My teeth feel cleaner and better after two days.

So this morning I ate blueberry yogurt with blueberries and sliced banana without granola.

I went to an appointment at 10:15 and then a podiatry appointment at 11:30, after which I drove to Trader Joe’s and bought two bottles of cognac and nine bottles of wine and a container of artichokes.

I drove home and arrived at 12:50, just 10 minutes before Peter arrived with lunch.  To my surprise he had bought two excellent entrees, a pho soup with noodles and a grilled duck leg quarter and one of 2000 Vietnam’s signature dishes, grilled marinated beef wrapped shrimp on rice.

Since I knew we would cook duck breasts for dinner, when Peter offered me the choice of dishes I chose the beef wrapped shrimp.

Peter loved his duck and noodles with soup and I loved the beef wrapped shrimp.  I made us glasses of Vietnamese iced coffee and after lunch I set up the computer and fetched the almond cookies and chocolate cookies and refreshed our iced coffees before we zoomed with the book club at 2:00 to discuss Washington Square by Henry James. 

The meeting was an engaging and lively discussion with many interesting critiques expressed.  It was the book club’s first Henry James novel and almost everyone was impressed by this work by one of America’s greatest authors.

After the club ended at 4:00 and Peter left I checked my portfolio and was pleasantly surprised that it increased .23% ion a day when there was pressure on the big tech stocks.  The increase was helped by gains by Moderna and AirBNB.

Then I tried unsuccessfully to host a zoom meeting for the zen Group, but thankfully Sandi was able to connect us through a prior meeting log in and Dennis, she, and I were able to meditate.

Suzette arrived while I was meditating and after we finished I removed the package of four duck breasts from the fridge and put a bottle 2012 Signaroues Cotes du Rhone produced by Pierre Henri Morel (Total Wine $14.99 less 20% in 2015).

This is the smoothest Cotes du Rhone I usually drink. If I had unlimited resources I would buy Chateau Beaucastel for $110./bottle with a blend of all 13 approved blending grapes, but for me this $15.00 bottle with a blend of four or five grapes is good enough to give an indication of the complexity of good Southern Rhone reds.

We agreed to roast Brussels Sprouts, onion, potato, rosemary, and garlic scapes.

I cubed the potatoes and onion and de stemmed the tough end from each Brussels sprout and sliced each in half and lay those ingredients on a bed of garlic scapes and rosemary sprigs in a 9 x 13 inch Pyrex baking dish.  Suzette pre-heated the oven and then tossed the vegetables with salt, pepper, and olive oil, covered them with a sheet of aluminum foil and placed them in a 350 degree oven and baked them for 45 minutes covered and then 15 minutes uncovered.

Suzette then sautéed both sides of the four duck breasts Bobby Flay style weighed down with a skillet filled with water.  

She then poured off all the duck fat except for two T. of fat and added two T. of flour and whisked it for three minutes to make a roux.  We then added port, maraschino Cherry juice and a dozen maraschino cherries, wine, honey, and finally water to create a Cherry cream sauce.

I opened the wine and when the vegetable casserole was cooked I sliced 1 1/2 breasts and plated 5 slices of breast on each plate and we served ourselves spoonfuls of the roasted vegetable casserole and cherry cream sauce, and Suzette poured the wine.

We took our plates and glasses of wine out to the table under the gazebo to enjoy an al fresco dinner.

Soon we noticed that the Coopers Hawk was sitting on the top of a telephone pole by our yard waiting for us to finish dinner and leave the garden so it could drink from the bird bath.

At 8:00 we returned to the house as the sun set in a golden glow to watch a new episode of Midsomer Mystery.  We sipped the rest of the wine and then cognac and cookies.

At 9:30 Suzette went to sleep and I stayed up to see one of my favorite episodes of Endeavour, a PBS Masterpiece Theater Mystery presentation.

This one is a favorite because the plot tracks the libretto of an Italian opera, but within the framework of a British police mystery.  The production quality is also first rate.

At 11:00 I blogged until 12:30 under a sugar, food, and alcohol induced head of steam.

I love days like this.

Bon Appetit