December 19, 2025 Breakfast - Bagel with cream cheese, red onion and melted Jarlsberg Snack - Pain au Chocolate Lunch - Enchiladas Dinner - Pho Ava

December 19, 2025 Breakfast - Bagel with cream cheese, red onion and melted Jarlsberg  Snack - Pain au Chocolate Lunch - Enchiladas  Dinner - Pho Ava 

Today was the first day I experienced joy since I got sick on November 23. It was on a star gazing train ride and lecture from the Railyard on the Sky Train with music, drinks, a brownie, an excellent astronomy discussion and guided tour of the night sky. I loved the train ride and the club car looked exactly like the Super Chief one we used to take to Chicago in the 50’s.

But let’s go back to the food that supported my body.

I felt sluggish in the morning even after eating two halves of a toasted bagel spread with cream cheese and garnished with slices of red onion and Jarlsberg cheese that I melted in the microwave. The microwave heat melted the cheese and cooked the red onion and softened the cream cheese into a tasty pastry-like consistency.

At 10:00 i decided to make my chocolate baked pudding dessert.

Here is the recipe.

I melted 1/2 cup of Kirkland semi-sweet chocolate chips with 2 T. of hot chocolate mix and 1/2 lb. of butter. I then added 1/2 cup of sugar to the chocolate  

I then mixed 1 T. of flour into six or seven egg yolks and whipped 11 egg whites in the large mixer until they stood but were less than stiff.

I then mixed the egg and flour mixture into the chocolate and egg mixture and then folded the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and poured the mixture into a metal bowl that I had buttered and dusted with granulated sugar that I had collared with parchment paper.

I then put the bowl of chocolate into a bain marie and baked it for 50  minutes at 350 degrees.

Here is how it looked at the end of the bake.

Willy arrived shortly after noon and Suzette, a little later, and we all heated enchiladas and ate them with sour cream and guacamole.

It was after 1:00 and the market was still going up, which is unusual on a Friday afternoon. High tech stocks were all up and it looked like a monster day.  I will get a final assessment when I return home on Saturday, because we spent the rest of the day and tonight in Santa Fe. 

At 2:00 we drove to Santa Fe. Our first stop was Stephen’s Consignment where we saw nothing we wanted to buy.

It was after 3:30 when we drove to El Rey, one of the original motor lodge hotels, and checked in.

We checked in and went to our room and rested until 5:30 when we went to Pho Ava for dinner.

My impression of Pho Ava was that a Vietnamese family has moved in and made their family recipes largely the menu. Suzette ordered grilled spring rolls, which I have never seen on a menu and I saw that the restaurant offered a steamed bun, so I ordered that plus a bowl of pho with rare beef and meatballs. 

Suzette’s spring roll was very different than most. It had lots of sautéed peanuts and grilled pork and rice noodles rolled in a rice wrapper and grilled that was served with fish sauce instead of the usual peanut sauce.

My steamed bun had a heavier irregular steamed bun bread coating wrapped around a meatball that combined a hard boiled egg. I was expecting BBQ’d pork, but this was a very different and rougher bun and more of a meatloaf filling.

Then when I received my pho, it had lovely slices of beef and wedges of meatball that seemed to be the rough texture of the meatball that was in the steamed bun. It was like the restaurant had its own recipe for meatballs that it cooked for all the dishes that included meatballs. Interesting, and different. Also when we tasted the broth it had a decidedly five spice flavor of cinnamon and anise, so not your usual pho either.

I was intrigued by the approach to Vietnamese Cuisine at Pho Ava enough to want to go back and try other items.

Then at 6:30 we drove to the Railyard for the Star Gazer train ride on the Sky train owned by R. R. Martin and the Bronowskis. We waited in the lobby of the restaurant/theater until 7:35 when we boarded the train. The train had three original railroad cars, a coach that we sat in in which a bar had been installed in the middle, a flat car to which railings had been attached, and an original club car where there was a jazz band playing. One could take the jazz concert trip or the star gazing trip. We elected to take the star gazing trip but walked to the jazz venue and I was blown away when I saw that it was one of the original club cars with bar and plush seats, exactly like my memories of the club cars with bar on the Santa Fe Super Chief railroad we rode to Chicago from Fort Worth in the 1950’s, because it probably was.

The lecturer on the night sky was not only knowledgeable about the stars, constellations, and planets, but also the history of astronomy and during the ride out to the dark sky location where we viewed the sky, he lectured about the history of how brightness was analyzed to work out distance of stars and how Hubble discovered the Andromeda galaxy using the work of a lady at the Harvard Astronomy department that discovered how to compute distance by determine the absolute brightness of a star.

There was also a musician who played guitar and harmonica who sung old favorites and requested between astronomy lecture segments.

Suzette drank a Manhattan and I drank a Tractor Brewing apple cider and ate a brownie.

It was a thoroughly delightful evening that for the first time I felt fully engaged in and could enjoy because I had had enough rest and sufficiently pleasant food. Suzette loved the evening also and was happy that she had planed an evening that we could enjoy.

I went to the bathroom in the club car and had a rush of deja vu thoughts of riding the Super Chief, also.

Our train was even side railed on the way back to allow the main train to pass us, so it was a real railroad experience.

When we returned to the station at 10:30 we drove back to El Rey and went to bed in the big king sized bed.

As Suzette described it, “It was a lovely mini-vacation.”

And it was.

Bon Appetit