December 22, 2024 Brunch - Harvest Restaurant at Indian Pueblo Center. Dinner - Roast Duck and Spinach Couscous

December 22, 2024  Brunch - Harvest Restaurant at Indian Pueblo Center. Dinner - Roast Duck and Spinach Couscous

I ate a Chocolate Croissant with a cup of green tea while a watched Everton against Chelsea that ended in a 0 to 0 tie and Fareed Zacharia.

Then at 8:45 we drove to the airport to pick up Billy and Elaine.  We then drove to the Indian Pueblo Center and ate brunch in the Harvest Restaurant. The food was excellent. Suzette and Elaine ordered blu corn griddle cakes (three large pancakes with nuts and seeds imbedded in the dough.  Billy and I ordered blue corn enchiladas (three rolled enchiladas stuffed with cheese and garnished with meat and red chili on a platter with a wonderful salad with fresh cherry tomatoes, a pile of fresh Calabacitas with lightly cooked zucchini and yellow squash, and corn kernels, and a pile of cooked pinto beans. It was the best plate of enchiladas I had eaten in a long time p, mainly due to the sides.

After lunch we inspected the gingerbread house entries and then drove across the street to Mama’s Minerals, where I bought a wooden stand for my geode. 

We then drove home and I drove to Costco to pick up my hearing aids.

It took an hour and I still need to learn how to use them, but I wore them for the rest of the day and heard everything. After my noon appointment, at 1:00 I went shopping and forgot the most important thing, the lamb riblets for dinner, but I bought the cod, spinach, some excellent Spanish  olive oil, small quiches, a wheel of brie d’ Isigny, Normandy, pink salt, and another bag of 16 chocolate croissants.

After I loaded and filled up the mini with gas, I drove down the street to Southwest Distributers and bought, rice wine cooking liquid, rice vinegar, capers, ground cumin, and a bag of tagliatelle pasta. I also stopped at Lowe’s and bought a gallon of milk and a package of oatmeal cookies.

When I returned home it was 3:00. I watched some TV and a 4:00 heated and ate a slice of pecan pie with a cup of tea.

At 4:30 Suzette and I walked around the block to see the Christmas decorations. Our neighbors at the corner of Los Alamos went all out with a yard full of inflated figures.  Here up is a picture of their front yard.

We rested when we returned home. I felt good and had walked over 5000 steps, which is more than usual.

Billy and Elaine came over at 6:00 and we made dinner. Suzette heated two duck halves and glazed them with her homemade apricot jam. She roasted the pre-cooked duck that we bought at Costco that take 20 to 25 minutes to re-heat, so it was an easy, quick dinner to prepare.

I made spinach couscous. I sautéed 1/3 onion minced in butter, then added 1 cup of couscous and tossed it in the butter. Then I added 1 1/2 cups of boiling water and finally several handfuls of spinach that Billy and Elaine de-stemmed.

I opened a bottle of Chateauneuf de Pape and we had a lovely dinner.

After dinner we opened the German Asbach dark chocolate brandy filled beans they brought us andveachbate and each ate a bean.

We watched the Cowboys v. Buccaneer game and the Kennedy Center Awards auntie Billy and Elaine left at 9:00.

We watched the end of the football game that ended in an improbable finish when a Dallas defended took the ball out of the hands of a receiver after his catch while Tampa was marching toward a game winning field goal. Instead, Dallas won 26 to 24.

We then watched about an hour of Elf at 9:30 and then Suzette went to sleep and I blogged.

Bon Appetit

December 21, 2024 Breakfast - Bagels and Lax Lunch - Leftover Chili Relleno and beans. Dinner - Sashimi stuffed Avocados with Sushi rice, andWasabi/avocado paste

December 21, 2024 Breakfast - Bagels and Lax  Lunch - Leftover Chili Relleno and beans. Dinner - Sashimi stuffed Avocados with Sushi rice, and wasabi/avocado paste

This morning I tried the newly cured Salmon on bagels with cream cheese, red onion slices, and capers and it was pretty good, soft and just a hint of dill and salt.

Then I rode the therapeutic bike 1.00 mile.

At 12:30 I heated the leftover chili Relleno and beans from yesterdays lunch with Aaron at Padilla’s with a few corn chips to get the full effect of a Padilla’s lunch.

I felt stuffed, so I drank the last of the Smith’s root beer to settle my stomach with some carbonation

At 1:30 I walked around the block and ended up with 2400 steps that grew to 3300 by bedtime.

The big event of the day was the Texas v. Clemson college playoff game at 2:00, which Texas won, go Horns.

There were also two soccer fixtures, two NFL games, and two other college playoff games, so an entire day of football.

I had a menu idea for Dinner.

We had four avocados of varying degrees of freshness. One was mostly over the hill, one was great, and two others were edible with minor surgery.

I mixed the super soft one with wasabi, mirin, sesame oil, and lime juice to make a thick dressing.  The others I cut in half and filled with raw salmon and Aji tuna. I also peeled, seeded and cut 1/3 cucumber into spears and sliced two radishes and placed those items on a plate covered with romaine lettuce leaves. I chopped pickled ginger and fetched soy sauce and heated rice bowls filled with sushi rice. The wasabi dressing was very spicy, soft and so we dumped the pickled ginger onto our plates and mixed the avocado/wasabi dressing with soy to reduce its spiciness and made lettuce tacos by dipping torn bits of Lettuce leaf filled with fish, avocado, and pickled ginger into the soy/avocado/wasabi dressing/sauce. I drank tea and Suzette drank limoncello.

It was an interesting dish that reminded me of how Noda mixed Avocado and wasabi and sushi.

I loved it and Suzette thought it was “interesting”.

After dinner we sipped cognac and ate two Belgium chocolates each as we watched Father Brown and Death in Paradise. I with a cup of tea.

Then Suzette went to bed and I stayed up to watch an episode of the new PBS Sherlock Holmes with Cumberbunch.

We are ready for the family to arrive starting tomorrow.

Bon Appetit

December 20, 2024 Lunch - Padilla’s Dinner - Snacks at Half-life and penne pasta with Chicken and a Mushroom cream sauce.

December 20, 2024 Lunch - Padilla’s Dinner - Snacks at Half-life and penne pasta with Chicken and a Mushroom cream sauce.

I ate a chocolate croissant with a cup of tea for breakfast.

Aaron came at 11:00 to print several documents for Earn. 

Then we met at Padilla’s for lunch at 11:30. We each had our usual, Aaron ordered a taco plate and I ordered a chili Relleno plate with double beans, green chili, and extra onions. The dish is served with two rellenos and today, as usual I ate only one Relleno and half the beans, so I was able to box a Relleno and half the beans that will provide another lunch. We ate both of our sopapillas.  

I drove home after lunch and met with new clients from 1:30 until 3:00.  I then took a walk around the block to accumulate over 3,000 steps for the day.

I also checked my portfolio and everything went up today. For example, The Dow gained 500 points, the NASDAQ gained 200 points, Nvidia went up $4.02, Apple went up $4.70, and Pltr went up $6.38. My portfolio increased by 2.0%.

Suzette had to coordinate the Center’s employees’ Christmas until 7:00, so I made an appointment with Roger and Terry to prepare their living trust.

We finished around 6:15 and I drove to half-life at 3215 Central and was pleasantly surprised to see that David and Nichelle had opened both doors into my building at 3213 Central.

They had built a stage in the back of 3215 and their band was playing, David on guitar and Nichelle on violin and they were both vocalists. It seemed to me that they were film makers by day and musicians at night.

There was a table filled with food and purveyors of beverages including eggnog and apple cider at one table and alcohol at another.  I filled a plate with 4 slices of salami, four round Melba toasts, three cheese cubes, some grapes, two macarons, and two cookies; a snack plate for dinner and donated $5.00 for a glass of red wine that looked like a Mondavi Woodside. I went to the seating area in front of the stage were there were about 50 to 60 folks listening to the music and found two open seats and sat my plate on one and listened to the music and ate my snacks.

After I finished my snack and the band took a break I walked next door and talked to Jay and Paula. Paula who is younger than me went to Paschal in Fort Worth, so we have a shared history, although far behind us now.

In 3213 there were pop up shops, an aunt offering her mosaic pieces, two other vendors, and Jay and Paula offering a selection of glassware, incense, and dresses. The big news is that Jay and Paula sold the VW bus and it will be removed from beside the front window after Christmas, marking the end of a 30 year era as the symbol of Jay and Paula’s head shop on Central.

Nickelle said hello during the break and when the music started again I filled another plate with snacks, minus macarons and found two seats in the audience in front of the stage. I noticed that David has a powerful voice and Nickelle has a lovely lilting quality to her playing of the violin.

At 7:45 I noticed a text message from Suzette, so I left the stage area and called her. She was at home, so I drove home.

When I got home Suzette was watching Lottery Home. At 8:00 we picked a Netflix Christmas movie, “Waltzing in Paris”, about an accountant who loves to dance who leaves her job, runs into a famous French ballroom dancer and becomes his partner in dance and life.

I opened a bottle of Cotes du Bourg red wine and we each drank several glasses of red wine during the movie.

At 9:30 I became hungry and ate a small plate of the leftover penne pasta in mushroom cream sauce we made last night that zsuzette had also eaten for dinner and at 10:30 we went to bed after a few minutes of Alex Wagner’s news program.

I hope the Garcia’s creation of a performance space works for them

Bon Appetit

December 19, 2024 Lunch - Le Troquet Dinner - Leftover Stuffed Peppers

 December 19, 2024 Lunch - Le Troquet  Dinner - Leftover Stuffed Peppers

A very interesting multicultural food day. I ate granola with milk, yogurt, and blueberries for breakfast. 

Then at 11:15 Charlie arrived and we drove to Le Troquet at Third and Gold for our book club luncheon. All but two members made it to lunch.

                   From left to right, Peter, Keith, me, Karl, Travis, Charlie, Paul, and Pradip

Le Troquet is a legitimate French Bistro in the middle of downtown Albuquerque owned by Jean Pierre Godard, a French chef who has owned five French restaurants in Albuquerque in over 50 years making him one of the longest dedicated chefs to fine French cuisine. The menu contains many French classics, such as escargots, onion soup, and a wonderful pate de Maison.

One of the off the menu specials today was chicken or seafood crepes. I sat by Keith and Peter and we all ordered a seafood crepe. Our waiter described the wine list and after he described the reds, I asked him to describe the whites. When he said Vouvray, I said, “Stop. May I taste the Vouvray.” When he poured it, it was delicious, fresh, fruity with a good deal of acidity and that hint of lemon one loves in a Vouvray. I said, “I will have a glass.” Karl who sat next to me and is a wine connoisseur and drinks lots of Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon also took a glass, saying, “I need to try more whites.”

When the crepe came I was pleasantly surprised because sticking out of one end of the thin crepe was a large plump pink shrimp and on the other end was a huge 1 to 2 oz. sea scallop. The crepe was wrapped around several more shrimp and scallops that became a pleasantly filling meal. The rice was a little dry so I mixed a small amount of butter and lemon juice into it to soften it.   This lovely, elegantly simple dish reminded me why I love Le Troquet, it serves the best ingredients, impeccably prepared in a uniquely French manner. The crepe was lightly sauced with a mushroom cream sauce and accompanied on the platter by a pile of rice risotto, two blanched and sautéed asparagus, and two blanched carrot strips.

Others ordered other items. Karl ordered salmon, 

                                           Karl’s Panko encrusted salmon

Charlie ordered French onion soup, Travis ordered a bowl of cream of carrot soup, the soup of the day, and a house salad. We were served two rounds of lovely browned dinner rolls as they came fresh out of the oven.

                                          Charlie’s dinner roll and French Onion Soup

                                    

This level of cuisine is not cheap. My crepe was $31.00 and my glass of wine was $14.00, but I did not regret my choices, I was favorably impressed by the skill in preparation and the superb quality of ingredients.

The scallops and shrimp were plump, and juicily not over cooked and the crepe could not have been better prepared, thin and delicately tender. It was easy and delightful to cut a bit of crepe and a bit of scallop and dip them in the cream sauce for a heavenly bite of seafood.

After lunch we drove to Peter’s house for our discussion of Herman Melville’s novel, The Confidence Man, a series of vignette conversations taking place on Mississippi riverboat written to be serialized in 1857. Peter pointed out that he chose the book because its long flowery sentence style with many uncommon words was at the opposite end of the spectrum of literary styles from the terse sentence style of 20th century novel by authors such as Hemingway.

We had a good discussion from 1:45 until 4:00 and the I drove Charlie home.

When I arrived home I checked the market and found that my two main stocks, Apple and Nvidia were both up, while the NASDAQ was down about 15 points, which is not uncommon when the market recovers from a negative period. As I write this blog at 4:00 a.m. Friday morning the futures are strongly down, which indicates to me that the market has reached the end of its euphoria after the Trump victory and is now more realistically assessing the future under a Trump administration and policies.

At 4:20 I walked around a larger circuit Park to San Carlos and back to 15th and home, a distance of approximately 2100 steps instead of about 1200 in the shorter Silver circuit. I felt tired but not weakened, even though I did not take a sugar tablet.

Suzette came home around 5:30 and rested for a while after a busy day running around looking for items to fill this year’s treasure chest that one of her staff will win with the lucky key at the a center’s annual Christmas party tomorrow.

We considered the available leftovers. We rejected the faves with mussels and clams as too old in favor of the stuffed peppers Nina, Monica’s Romanian friend made for the Thanksgiving dinner that Suzette suggested be eaten or thrown out if not eaten. So she heated the stuffed peppers and poured the rest of the La Granja Viura/Verdejo blend into wine glasses and we enjoyed the very Romanian dish one more time. The peppers were stuffed with a mixture of rice and ground pork and the tomato sauce covering it contained crisp prosciutto and ham.  It was a great dish. The peppers had collapsed into soft mounds around the stuffing into the tomato sauce to create a vegetable accompaniment.

After dinner we watched the Chargers v. Broncos game until the 2 minute warning when the chargers were up by 10 points 34 to 24, having erased a 21 to 3 point deficit.

I slept from 9:30 to 3:30 a.m. and will go back to sleep.

I often wake up at 3:30 to 4:00 and stay up for an hour or two.

Some of the best news is on TV early, for example this morning Secretary of State Blinken was interviewed and gave lengthy descriptions of U.S. foreign policy and the transition in motion to hand it over to the new administration.

Bon Appetit