October 29, 2025 Breakfast - Avocado toast. Lunch - Leftover Bun. Dinner - Leftover Linguine in Mornay Sauce with Monkfish and sautéed Vegetables

October 29, 2025 Breakfast - Avocado toast. Lunch - Leftover Bun. Dinner - Leftover Linguine in Mornay Sauce with Monkfish and sautéed Vegetables

We both had busy days. I watched the keynote speech Nvidia’s Jen Sun Huang delivered yesterday to the CDT conference. In it he described the progress Nvidia has made since its founding in 1993 and the present and future of Ai computing. It was mind boggling. He announced a number of strategic relationships with a number of companies. One example that surprised me was Caterpiller. Today Caterpiller went up $61.00. Both Nvidia and AMD went up over $6.00 today, so the speech must be ripplingbthrough the market.

I then dressed and fixed breakfast for Suzette and me. I sliced and toasted a four inch piece of baguette into three slices and then spread avocado on them. We dusted them with the basil salt Suzette made last weekend. They were not very filling but they were delicious. But hey we are trying to lose weight.

I then worked on my pleading until 12:30 and sent it to Scott for review.

I then added two handfuls of thinly sliced romaine lettuce to the leftover bun from yesterday’s lunch and ate a delightful meal/salad.

Frank and Bakhtar came to consult on a zoning issue for a few minutes at 2:00.

Then I pushed the transport wheelchair Suzette brought home for Peter to Charlie’s house and then filed a complaint and summons after until 3:30, when I meditated for a few minutes until another client came to discuss a problem around 3:45.

At 5:00 when he left I checked my portfolio and was really pleased that it had gained 1.8%. Then I walked around two blocks near the house that helped me reach 3800 steps today.

At 5:30 I watched the news until Suzette arrived from her busy day at work.

She had eaten a late lunch at the Center so she was not hungry. So I decided to make Mapo Dofu for tomorrow night’s dinner. I chopped a medium onion, a large shallot, 2 T. of ginger and 7or 8 cloves of garlic, plus a Pasilla Chile, the three Ichiban eggplants and four fresh shiitake mushrooms I bought at Talin yesterday. I also diced two boneless pork sirloin chops.p and added a small handful of brown beech mushrooms to the shiitake.

I heated three T. of peanut oil in the wok and stir fried all the vegetables and the pork except the mushrooms that I added about twenty minutes later when the vegetables were almost cooked. I started a cup of rice cooking and then diced 9 oz. of firm tofu and added 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth and the tofu to the wok. There was not enough liquid to keep the ingredients from sticking so I added another cup of water.

I was getting sore so I heated a bowl with some of the linguine in Mornay Sauce topped with the leftover vegetables and monkfish and began to feel better.

Then I made a seasoning with 2 T each of rice wine, soy, and three T. of cornstarch, 1 tsp. of sesame oil and 1/2 cup of water. After another ten minutes I added the seasonings to the wok, but in less than three or four minutes the seasonings stiffened so I added another cup of water to prevent the mixture from congealing and sticking to the wok. When the rice was cooked after thirty minutes I sampled some of the Mapo Dofu on rice. It was okay, but will be better tomorrow when we eat some for dinner.

We were watching game five of the World Series until around 9:00 when the Blue Jays were up by 4 or 5 runs. Suzette went to sleep and I blogged until 10:30 

Lunch was the best meal but not enough to help me from getting sore later, but I felt better after eating the Mapo Dofu.

Bon Appetit

October 28, 2025, Breakfast - Granola with Blueberries Lunch - No. 50 at Pho Linh Dinner - Monkfish Poached with Shiitake Mushrooms, shallot, garlic, and broccoli and served over Linguine in a wine Mornay sauce

October 28, 2025, Breakfast - Granola with Blueberries Lunch - No. 50 at Pho Linh  Dinner - Monkfish Poached with Shiitake Mushrooms, shallot, garlic, and broccoli and served over Linguine in a wine Mornay sauce 

Almost every day the food is good, but today the food was great and the Market performed exceedingly well also.

I stayed up until the end of the World Series last night at 12:00, so i slept until 7:34 and missed the open but everything started moving up from the open and again the market continued its surge into the close. Nvidia was up $9.54, but AMD and many other stocks closed down. I did not have much time today to watch the market, but when I checked it at 3:00 when I returned home my portfolio had a 1.7% gain. It would have been closer to 2% if I had not sold 1333 shares of Nvidia and bought 1000 shares of AMD yesterday.

But even with that impressive gain, the food out-shown the stock market today.

At 8:30 I ate a bowl of granola with milk, mango yogurt, and blueberries. Then I worked on my pleading until 12:30 when I drove to Pho Linh at 9100 Central SE. it has become my favorite Vietnamese restaurant because of one dish, No. 50 that is a platter with composed piles of the elements of a bowl of Bun, vermicelli rice noodles on which was a pile of marinated grilled pork, a fried pork egg roll cut into thirds, and two grilled shrimp, plus beside the noodles was a pile of pickled vegetables, a pile of mung beans sprouts and chopped lettuce, cucumber spears and chopped basil, and mint.

I mixed the elements as best I could and ate a bit more than half.

After I boxed the remaining Bun, I drove down Zuni to Talin to buy Chinese eggplant for Mapo Dofu and noticed a fresh monkfish in the seafood case, so I bought 1 lb. of monkfish. The attendant cut the fish in half and then we decided where to cut the front of the tail where the loins were located to yield 1 lb. and he cut there and it yielded 1 lb. I was slightly embarrassed that at $12.99/lb. I had left hm with several pounds of what appeared to me to be inedible fish, but that passed when I butchered the fish at home and had to remove the huge spine bone and the scummy gelatinous flanks and skin around the two loins that amounted to about 4 oz. 

Monkfish is one of the ugliest fish and not an easy fish to butcher even when much of the work is done for you by the fishmonger but it is Suzette’s favorite fish and the rich lobster like flavor is worth it.

I also bought a bag of baby bok Choy and about a lb. of shiitake mushrooms. 

When I arrived home around 1:45 I got a call from Frank and he and Bakhtar came by to discuss a matter and the I spent the rest of the afternoon drafting a complaint for an eviction of a tenant.

At 5:00 Suzette arrived and I lay down for an hour and then we began dinner. We now had to choose which of three meals planned to choose for dinner, Polish Kielbasa and black beans, Mapo Dofu, or Fresh Monkfish.  Fresh monkfish won and Suzette suggested we poach it with mushrooms, minced shallot and garlic, and broccoli and serve the poached fish over the PPI linguine in a cream sauce. So that is what we  chose for dinner.

I minced a shallot, four cloves of garlic and cut the remaining flowerets from the head of broccoli into bite-sized chunks and sliced three of the fresh shiitake mushrooms and Suzette blanched the broccoli flowerets in a bit of water in a Pyrex bread dish covered with Saran and then sautéed the shallot, garlic, mushrooms and broccoli in butter in a large casserole and added equal parts of water and white wine to create a poaching medium and added the three monkfish loins I had butchered and covered the casserole and poached the fish for about twenty minutes until it was tender. 

                         The sautéed vegetables before the fish and poaching medium 

While the fish was poaching Suzette made a roux with butter and flour and then added some poaching medium and milk to make a cream sauce to which she added about 1/4 lb. of Tallegio cheese to make an elegantly smooth wine Mornay sauce.

                                     The linguine mixed with the Mornay sauce

Suzette had gone to the garage fridge and fetched a chilled bottle of Archery Summit Vireton Pinot Gris that she used for the poaching medium and we drank with dinner.  This wine is one of the best Pinot Gris I have ever tasted and complemented the elegant poached monkfish and linguine in a wine Mornay sauce to create a memorable meal. The bites of fresh shiitake mushrooms and monkfish coated with Mornay sauce and dusted with the amazing seaweed sea salt Diane and Jim brought us from Patagonia were especially delicious.

                    The small blue container behind the pasta bowl contains the Patagonia sea salt

                                                  The poached fish and vegetables

After dinner we watched an episode of Finding Your Roots that traced the history of Lawrence Fishburne and Henry Gates Jr. back utilizing a combination of DNA and printed records that was fascinating.

Then we watched The Toronto Blue Jays beat the LA Dodgers to tie the World Series at 2 games each. Suzette drank a cordial glass of our home made limoncello and I drank a small glass of Dolin Genepy Le Chamois Liqueur and cognac. I bought the Genepy from Blackwell’s in San Francisco and found out just now that it is more highly rated at 4.9 than Green Chartreuse at 4.8. I guess I will need to buy more of it, as my first bottle is almost empty.

We went to bed by 9:30 as the Jays were up 6 to 2 in the ninth.

It looks like the Jays will win the World Series this year. They have both great hitting and pitching.

So it was a great day in the Market and at the table with one of my favorite lunches and a fabulous dinner. Suzette said, “You are lucky that I can cook and I am lucky you can shop.”

I responded, “We shall never want for wonderful meals.”

Bon Appetit

October 27, 2025 Breakifast - Leftover Pasta, Broccoli, and scallops. lunch - Mary and Tito’s Dinner - Tomato Sauce with Eggplant and Broccoli

October 27, 2025 Breakifast - Leftover Pasta, Broccoli, and scallops. lunch - Mary and Tito’s Dinner - Tomato Sauce with Eggplant and Broccoli

The Market dominated this day. Willy and I talked pre-market and agreed to do a trade, to sell 1333 shares of Nvidia and buy 1000 shares of AMD. Everything went up today, but AMD closed up $6.75 and Nvidia closed up $5.23. Qualcomm was the big mover, up $18.74. My portfolio had a great day, rising 2.2%.

At 12:00 I carried several sweaters to the cleaners at 8th and Central.  Unfortunately, I did not have a sugar pill and my muscles weakened from the 2700 step walk.

When I returned home I drank a limeade and then drove to Mary and Tito’s at 1:00 and ate my favorite dish, blue corn enchiladas with beef and an egg over easy, double beans, extra onions, and red chili.  I only ate 1/2 of the dish so took the rest home.

When I returned home I checked the market and was surprised that I kept rising to the close. The conclusion of trade agreements with Malaysia, Vietnam, and Japan helped trigger a second great day in the market. The Dow was up 337 and NASDAQ was up 433.

I had a fraudulent check negotiated in my bank account that required me to stop payment and close the bank account. Then at 4:00 I drove to the Richmond branch of Wells Fargo and made an appointment to open a new account on Friday.

When I returned home I lay down at 4:30 and rested until 5:30.

When I got out of bed my muscles were still soar so I made a cup of hot chocolate spiked with rum and ate a chocolate croissant with it to try to regain my energy, which worked with the combination with the pasta dish for dinner.

We decided to cook the eggplant with some broccoli in tomato sauce and serve it over PPI linguine.

Suzette opened a bottle of 111 red blend and fetched a frozen container of tomato sauce from the fridge.

She sautéed the eggplant in olive oil and added and cooked the broccoli and then added the tomato sauce that tasted of fresh tomatoes.

We grated fresh Parmesan cheese we bought at Smith’s onto the pasta dis that added more flavor.

I loved the dish with its juicy fresh tomato flavor and did not mind the lack of meat.

We watched the Chiefs beat Washington and the third game of the Witld series that is entering its 16th inning at midnight tied 5 to 5.

Bon Appetit

October 26, 2025 Brunch - Fried Pork Chop, onion, and Eggs. Snack - Lebanon Bologna Sandwiches Dinner - Roast Duck with Sautéed Red Cabbage and Salad

 October 26, 2025 Brunch - Fried Pork Chop, onion, and Eggs. Snack - Lebanon Bologna Sandwiches Dinner - Roast Duck with Sautéed Red Cabbage and Salad

I awakened at 4:45 and worked on my pleading until 7:15 when I watched Aston Villa beat Man City. At 8:30 we drove to the estate sale at the Meadows and I bought a recumbent Catrike three wheel bike and two ceramic pots  Then we drove home and made brunch of sautéed pork chops, a slice of onion, avocado toast with a slice of tomato garnished with a sprinkle of basil saltand three fried eggs.

Then I harvested the small amount of tarragon because some had already died and a full bag of oregano. Then Suzette harvested 1/2 of a big bag. We intend to mix those three herbs with some of the basil salt.

At 1:30 I made three Lebanon salami, red onion, and lettuce sandwiches on toasted baguette spread with mayonnaise With Carlsberg beer and three dill pickles.

Then I drove the bike to REI and filled the tires.  When I returned home I rode the bike around the neighborhood and fell in love with the bike. The gears and derailleurs worked perfectly and I did not push the pace but still felt tired upon returning home. The only problem with the bike is that the seat is low and I am not strong enough to get out of the seat without assistance. Suzette helped lift me out of the seat. Perhaps I will get stronger or we will put a pull bar on the garage.

I then thawed 1/2 of a duck from the freezer and then rested until 6:00.

I then sliced 1/3 of a red onion the Suzette sautéed with the 1/4 sliced red cabbage and cumin in olive oil.

I chopped about six leaves of romaine, a tomato, and 1/2 of an avocado to the cucumber, red onion, and cherry tomato salad and dressed it with the remaining Dijonnaise dressing.

I opened a lovely bottle of Cotes Du Rhone I bought at Costco.

We ate and ate and then watched our favorite shows on PBS. Miss Fisher and some football and thembMagreit and then after a busy day we went to sleep.

Bon Appetit