September 30, 2025 Breakfast - Leftover Egg Foo Young. Lunch - Lamb Shish kebab with Rice and mint chutney and yogurt sauce and Mediterranean salad. Dinner - Trout soufflé with cucumber, tomato, and onion salad.

September 30, 2025 Breakfast - Leftover Egg Foo Young. Lunch - Lamb Shish kebab with Rice and mint chutney and yogurt sauce and Mediterranean salad. Dinner - Trout soufflé with cucumber, tomato, and onion salad.

What a diverse menu of Chinese, Afghan, and French cuisines today.

It started with leftover Fried Rice Lamb Egg Foo Young for breakfast with green tea.

I worked until 11:30 and then drove to my dental cleaning appointment at 12:00.

After the appointment at 1:00 a drove to Arianna Market and restaurant at 1401 San Mateo NE, where Sharief, my client, owner and an Afghan, made me lamb shish kebab for lunch with rice, mint chutney and yogurt sauce (made with homemade yogurt) with a yogurt drink. Sharief prides himself on serving the type of lamb raised in Afghanistan. Cooked to medium, it was firm and chewy, but not sinewy. I liked it a lot, especially when dipped into the mint chutney or yogurt sauce. The lamb was served in a double row on a platter around a pile of flaky basmati rice dusted with a golden colored dust that was slightly sweet.  I was also served a small Mediterranean salad before the meal that I ate with the meal as my vegetable. I could only eat 1/2 and Sharief provided me a box to carry the other 1/2 home. 

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The most fun was the arrival of Shahin, his wife, and daughter after lunch. I have not seen his wife in many years and it was fun to get reacquainted.  When I told her I was blogging, she immediately joined as a follower, so I hope she enjoys my adventures in food.

After Shahin’s family left I bought a lb. of medium, No. 2 bulgur, a jar of the fresh homemade yogurt, and a small jar of tahini in case Suzette needs some for the hummus she intends to make for dinner Thursday night. 

I then drove to Walmart Neighborhood Market to buy Vita Herring in Wine Sauce and discovered they had none, so I bought a gallon of milk and drove home.

When I arrived home around 2:45  I checked the market and discovered that the early surge in Nvidia mostly held up until the close with Nvidia closing up $4.70 to $186.58, even in the face of the government shutdown, which tells me that Nvidia is considered a safe harbor for the rich to park their money in troubled times.  Apple, the other stock I consider a safe harbor with a strong international market was volatile today swinging from a high in the morning of $255.92 to a low in the afternoon of $253.11 but managed to recover to $254.63, for a $.20 gain by the close.

These are remarkable stock performances in this troubled economic time. Microsoft also gained $3.35 per share to confirm its universal appeal and market dominance.

I then drafted a pleading for one of my cases until 5:30 when Suzette fetched me to cook dinner.

We had decided to use the two grilled, smoked trouts to make a fish soufflé. Suzette followed the recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of lFrench Cooking. I affectionately refer to it as my bible for French cooking since I used it to learn to cook French Cuisine.

Here is the recipe.  

While I filleted and boned the trout and added the butter, green onion, and lemon thyme stuffing from the trout stomach cavity and sliced and added the cooked Korean Basil leaves Suzette had wrapped around the trout, Suzette separated 6 egg yolk from the whites. She added the yolks to the fish mixture and whipped the whites into stiff peaks in the Kitchenaid mixer.

After seasoning the fish mixture we folded it into the egg whites and poured the combined mixture into a large buttered soufflé dish dusted with grated Jarlsberg cheese. Suzette then covered the top of the mixture with grated Jarlsberg cheese (our substitute for the recipe’s French or Swiss Gruyere) and Italian parsley picked fresh from our garden and Suzette baked the souffle in our steam oven for 40 or 50 minutes at the designated settings for soufflés.

We served the soufflé with a pile of cucumber, onion, and cherry tomato salad I made with a cucumber and cherry tomatoes from our garden.

I fetched a bottle of Kirkland Pinot Grigio from the garage, which is my favorite under $5.00 bottle of wine and perfect for a light fish dinner, such as soufflé and poured glasses.

We also drank a glass of Italian red wine before dinner while the soufflé was cooking.

After dinner we were both tired and went to bed at 8:00 after watching my beloved Finding your Roots.  I love its discovered family histories and tonight was no exception. One of the two guests was Ruben Blades, the Panamanian musician. He discovered that he was the illegitimate grandson of Panama’s most famous poet named Miro and also related to Panama’s most famous female poet. Seen in perspective with those discovered lineages, it is obvious where he got his talent for writing and performing his music.

I awakened at 1:00 and finished this blog and drank a cup of Earl Grey tea with milk and 1/2 tsp. of sugar.

I love cooking with Suzette because she will tackle any recipe and loves to use PPI’s such as the smoked trout as ingredients in new and different dishes like using the fish meat to make a fish soufflé or yesterday’s dinner, when instead of making pedestrian hamburgers, she sautéed fresh mushrooms until golden browned and then sautéed the ground beef and added PPI Penne pasta and homemade pesto to make a rather elaborate and tasty hamburger helper concoction dusted with grated Reggiano Romano cheese.

We can take on such elaborate recipes such as fish soufflé because we prep and cook together, which reduces the time and effort required of each of us.

We are lucky that we have good food to get us through these trying times. Many are not so lucky. I probably will make another donation to the ACLU soon.

Bon Appetit