Eating with Bob and Suzette: June 2024

Sunday, June 30, 2024

June 30, 2024 Breakfast Croissants and coffee. Lunch - pasta with a mushroom and kale sauce and a grill lamb chop. Dinner - Leftover Pasta with Mushroom and Kale Sauce

Today we rested. I spent most of the day watching soccer and reading.

In the morning I cheered for Spain and England and both advanced.

In the evening we watched Masterpiece theater on PBS rather than soccer.

We heated and ate the pain au chocolates /almond and almond croissant with coffee in the garden for breakfast.

Then for lunch Suzette boiled pasta and I diced four kinds of mushrooms that Suzette sautéed and added cream to make a sauce and grilled two lamb chops for a lovely lunch. We drank Spanish Rioja.

The mushroom and kale sauce

Willy came by for a shower at 8:00 and I heated the leftover pasta and mushroom sauce with a couple of pads of butter and a drizzle of cream to reconstitute the sauce.

I drank a glass of white wine with dinner.

Willy left around 9:00 and Suzette went to bed and I blogged and read until 11:00.

Bon Appetit

June 29, 2024 Lunch - Salad Dinner - Lamb and Couscous Stir Fry

I toasted three slices of Dutch Raisin spice bread and buttered them and press them with Portuguese plum preserves and drank a latte macchiato, after which we picked the rest of the apricots from our tree.

We then drove to the farmers’ market.

It was a beautiful sunny and cool day, so fun walking around the outer edge. We bought a nice head of butter lettuce, two daikon radishes, a bunch of leeks, a bunch of beets, two croissants, and a sour dough boule from Le Quiche Bakery and an assortment of mushrooms.

The Mushroom Man

When we went home I started watching soccer and Suzette diced and cooked the beets and hard boiled eggs and pickled the eggs with some of the beet juice.

For lunch I tore, rinsed and spun about half of the head of bibb lettuce.

I added two sliced green onion ringlets and cut up the four or five stale hot dog buns that Suzette tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted until brown in the oven.

I made a dressing with juice of an orange, some Spanish olive oil and some Spanish artisanal wine vinegar to which Suzette added some mayonnaise.

The salad with a sliced egg, croutons k diced beets, and green onion was a perfect lunch on a bed of fresh butter lettuce.

It rained and it stopped we walked 2/3 of the distance to the Country Club and back. I took one sugar pill to make sure I Had enough energy..

Later we made a simple dinner. Suzette sautéed chunks of lamb with the leftover couscous and added some chopped mushrooms and chard from the garden. We drank a glass of Kirkland Rioja with dinner.

Suzette wants to make larger meals for lunch and smaller meals for dinner.

Today was a good example, except both lunch and dinner were small meals. I am feeling better because of the smaller meals.

Wonderful fresh ingredients will be the focus of more of our summer dishes.

Bon Appetit

June 28, 2024 Breakfast - Bagel and Lax. Lunch - Octopus Stir Fred Rice. Dinner - SantaCafe

The most interesting event of the day happened at dinner at SantaCafe.

I got up around 7:00 and made breakfast around 8:30. I toasted two slices of bagel, spread them with cream cheese, and garnished them with slices of red onion and Gravad lax and sprinkled them with capers. I drank a cup of Earl Grey tea with them

Then I rested forces few minutes and read in bed.

Then I walked around the block and when I returned I worked at my desk on 2023 state and federal taxes until 1:15.

I then made lunch. I stir fried cooked octopus, kale, a sliced green Onion, and rice. It was a delicious meal and one I had never eaten until now.

After lunch I washed my face and dressed and at 3:30 Suzette came home and we picked up Mellisa and drove to Santa Fe. I was mistaken as to its location so we walked to the old location on Lincoln, before realizing the gallery was locate on Guadalupe near the rail yard. Suzette dropped us off.

Blue Rain Gallery had a large Erin Currier exhibition and I was more gratified than surprised when Melissa bought the three dancing girls. They will be dramatic in her living room in New York.

At 7:00 we drove back to SantaCafe for dinner and that is where the magic happened. We were waiting for the staff to set up a round table on the outside patio when the Executive Chef, Dale Kester, walked out to observe the almost full patio. I walked over to him and asked what he recommended. He said, “Please don’t make me choice between my babies.”

I told him how much I enjoyed SantaCafe. Dale asked me how long I had been coming to Santa Cafe and I said, “20 to 30 years” and I mentioned that I had eaten one of the best meals of my life at this restaurant. I mentioned it was when there was a Japanese chef, Dale said, “That was when Ming Tsai was Executive Chef.” I said, “It was a pheasant (perhaps a quenelle) and grape stuffed ravioli wrapped in rice paper and served with a green grape Veronique sauce. Dale said, Ming Tsai was a good chef,” and then excused himself. Shortly thereafter we were shown to a round table set for five people, Amy and Vahl joined Mellisa, Suzette, and me.

Soon we were served complimentary flutes of good champagne and a platter of Fried calamari with two dipping sauces.

I guess my comments had made an impression on Executive Chef Dale Kester, because when I asked the assistant manager who served us he said, “with compliments of the chef.”

This was the first time this had ever occurred to me; that my words had had an impact on a highly knowledgeable chef and that he responded with a special course.

We each ordered one or two dishes. I ordered Cream of Celery Root soup with a flash dried crumble of peanut that was not particularly interesting. I also ordered a lobster salad that was an average salad made with a handful of gourmet greens dressed with a simple Viaigrette and the three slices of radish throw in the bottom of the bowl. But the salad was exceptional due to the addition of two fresh Maine lobster claws cut roughly into large pieces. In spite of the awful greens, I loved the salad and lack of other interesting ingredients, such as a sliced egg.

Suzette ordered a burrata and endive salad that was a nicer salad than mine when I gave her my largest piece of lobster claw.

Vahl ordered a Ceaser salad topped with white anchovies and a lamb riblets entree, both of which looked excellent.

Amy, who was sitting next to me ordered the best looking entree a thick sautéed salmon steak that was cooked the way I love it, just beyond seared with wilted spinach, bacon, orzo, with lemon butter and tomato jam, the best dish of the meal.

E conversation continued

I did eat an artichoke heart from Melissa’s gnocchi and it was delicious.

We ordered another bottle of Elk Cove Pinot noir rose and the conversation continued.

The evening was a perfect temperature, so we talked on and on for 1 1/2 hours until 8:30, when we said goodbye to Amy and Vahl.

Another amazing experience in the evening. When Amy and Vahl arrived Amy gave me a picture of Cissie hugging me at a New Year’s party what must have been forty or forty-five years ago during our youth in Fort Worth.

We drove back to Albuquerque and dropped Melissa at her mom’s house in Tanoan.

This was one of the best evenings of my life.

Bon Appetit

Friday, June 28, 2024

June 27, 2024 Lunch - Garcia’s Dinner - Stir Fried Steak and Couscous

I ate a pain au chocolate and a cup of coffee for breakfast around 8:30 and made final revisions on a lease.

Then at 11:30 I drove to Garcia’s on Central to organize the book club seating. The restaurant staff put two four top tables together. A total of 9 showed up so we dragged another table together. Everyone ordered different dishes. I ordered menudo with hominy.

After lunch we went to my house and discussed Kindred by Octavia Butler.

She is probably the most famous US Black woman Sci FI writer, but the brutal descriptions of slavery did not go well with our members.

The discussion was interesting mostly but it was not a subject people seemed willing to discuss seriously.

After the meeting Willy came over and we watched U.S. v. Panama. Weah was thrown out in the 18th minute and the U.S. playing with ten men lost 2 to 1.

At 6:00 we cooked a simple dinner. I minced 1/2 of a shallot and diced the PPI grilled steak and Suzette went to the garden and picked some chard and kale and de-stemmed it and stir fried those ingredients in the wok with a container of PPI couscous with tomatoes. The dish was very delicious. The couscous was rather wet and missed perfectly with steak and greens.

We drank glasses of open wine with dinner. I drank Chianti and Suzette drank Malbec.

Later we watched the Presidential debate which became painful as Trump lied and Biden seemed sick and none cognitively engaged. I went to bed and read the Egyptian.

My portfolio was down slightly today, about .02% and I only walked about 1800 steps.

The debate looked like the end of the Biden bid for the Presidency to me,Whether Biden runs or not, it looks like Trump’s snake oil salesman approach will carry the day.

During the discussion at book club I mentioned a histology theory that US politics follows a pattern of swinging from liberalism to conservatism every seventy to ninety years and the last liberal period began with the reforms of the early 1900’s through the 30’s New Deal era and the Counter culture period of the 60’s and then began swinging back in 1980 with Reagan and we seem to be in the extreme phase of a Conservative era that could last another 20 to 30 years if the pattern repeats itself.

It seems like Donald Trump is riding that conservative wave.

Bon Appetit