August 9, 2026. Breakfast - Baguette with cherry jam and Jarlsberg cheese. Lunch - Sautéed Cabbage and Apple with Smoked Pork Cutlet. Dinner - Pasta with eggplant and lamb spaghetti sauce, sautéed Shiitake mushrooms, wood ear, and shallot

August 9, 2026. Breakfast - Baguette with cherry jam and Jarlsberg cheese. Lunch - Sautéed Cabbage and Apple with Smoked Pork Cutlet. Dinner - Pasta with eggplant and lamb spaghetti sauce, sautéed Shiitake mushrooms, wood ear, and shallot

I slept until 8:15.  After Fareed Zacharia I toasted three slices of baguette and spread butter and cherry preserves and garnished wupith slices of Jarlsberg cheese and drank a latte macchiato.

Then we rode our bikes around the neighborhood.

When we returned I rested for a few minutes and then we picked the dozen or so apples from our tree that is looking half dead.

Suzette then simmered figs and cooked peaches from our trees with cooked quince from last year, one vanilla bean, 3 cups of sugar, juice of one lemon, and 2 T. of fresh lemon thyme. After 30 minutes of simmering she filled sterilized jars and processed the sealed jars in a water bath for ten minutes to seal the jars.

At noon while the jam was cooking she also sautéed a smoked pork cutlet and the added tha leftover cabbage and apples we prepared last week.

We then drove to Goodwill and picked up five pants and one shorts to try on to see if they fit.

Then we drove to Total Wine and bought two bottles of scotch for Suzette.

When we returned home we rested until 5:00 when we started preparing dinner.

Dinner - I sliced three shiitake mushrooms, about a handful of fresh wood ear and a medium shallot that Suzette added to the leftover orecchiette pasta mixed with the leftover eggplant stuffed with a lamb, capers, and spaghetti sauce made from fresh tomatoes to which we added three purple tomatoes plus a handful of orange tiny cherry tomatoes, three cloves of garlic minced, 1/2 cup of fresh minced oregano and four larger red cherry tomatoes. I cannot explain how delicious the flavor of fresh ripe tomatoes is, especially joined with grilled lamb and a good Italian red wine.

Suzette opened a bottle of Susemaniello red from Puglia. It was a birthday gift  last month. It was dense, but flavorful, with just a hint of tannins on the finish.

After dinner we watched the last two episodes of season two of Castle Impossible with sips of cognac and a chocolate truffle and went to bed a bit after 8:00.

Bon Appetit

August 8, 2026 Breakfast - Croissants and Coffee. Lunch - Enchiladas with Rice and Beans Dinner - Valencia County Hispano Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet

August 8, 2026 Breakfast - Croissants and Coffee. Lunch - Enchiladas with Rice and Beans  Dinner - Valencia County Hispano Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet

I slept until 8:30 which is unusual.

Then at 9:00 we rode our bikes to the Farmer’s Market where Suzette bought two regular Croissants and one almond croissant and a loaf of Country brread from Le Quiche Bakery.

Then when we returned Suzette ate her regular croissant with a latte macchiato while reading the morning paper and I started removing the husks from the cloves of garlic we grew this year.

Suzette left for work around 9:30 and Willy arrived around 10:00 and we split The remaining almond and regular croissant and ate them with latte macchiatos and had a deep dive into our stock investing strategies.  Willy is doing very well, especially with long term options.

After he left around 11:00 I returned to separating cloves of garlic from their husks until Suzette arrived at 12:30 when we heated leftover enchiladas wirh beans and rice for lunch and drank beers.

I then finished husking cloves and Suzette lay down for a nap.

When I finished husking garlic at 2:30 I also lay down and napped until 4:00 when we got dressed and at 5:00 drove to Isleta Hotel to attend the Valencia County Hispano Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet.

Suzette had paid for a table for Senior Living that was a new member and because her manager, Vicki Baldenado, was to receive the outstanding Board member of the year award.

I had never been in the convention area of the hotel and was amazed how beautiful the long barrel vaulted main corridor was.

After we sat at our table, got drinks (I took a glass of Merlot), and a lot of introductory remarks, diner was served. I was amazed how good the food was, there was gourmet salad blend with cucumbers and cherry tomatoes plus a tomato and caramelized red onion salad.  Then came the entrees, a vegetable medley of lightly sautéed red onion, yellow and zucchini squash, and haricot vertes, then mashed potatoes and then chicken, stewed brisket, and baked salmon fillets. There were also squares of carrot and chocolate sheet cake.

I took the brisket and it was really good, slow cooked for hours in a beef broth sauce, but the best dish was the vegetables with the thin haricot vertes and fresh squashes.

After dinner there was another two hours of introductions and awards and soeeches abd pictures taken by each of the 15 or 16 new members including Suzette’s Senior Living crew (pictured above) and Vickie and Jeff’s company, Sunrise Builders. Then the award winners were honored including Vickie as Outstandimg Board member of the year.

Finally at 9:15 we drove back to Albuquerque in Suzette’s 1990 BMW roadster with the top retracted. I had fun driving Suzette’s roadster convertible.

When we arrived home we went to bed.

Bon Appetit

August 7, 2026 Breakfast and lunch- Pain au Chocolate. Lunch - Pho Linh. Dinner - Brown Grouper grilled in Aluminum with green beans and tomatoes and wrapped in Korean basil

August 7, 2026 Breakfast and lunch- Pain au Chocolate. Lunch - Pho Linh. Dinner - Brown Grouper grilled in Aluminum with green beans and tomatoes and wrapped in Korean basil

Today I rested in the morning and tried to buy some more Space X except something interesting happened. Instead of going down as the market usually does on a Friday, the NASDAQ went up 342 points and instead of going down Space X went up over $18.00.

At 7:20 I ate a pain au chocolate with a Latte macchiato with collagen.

Then Suzette and I biked around the neighborhood.

When I returned home I updated the documents for the transaction that was closing today and my Notice of Non-availability.

Then I showered and dressed and drove to Robert’s at 11:00.  We drove to Pho Linh Vietnam Grill at 9100 Central SE for lunch.  Robert ordered fried rice with tofu and I ordered a rice vermicelli bowl with fried egg roll and grilled marinated pork and piles of mung beans, lettuce, cucumber threads, plus fish sauce. I asked and was brought more fish sauce and cilantro and Oriental basil. I like the food and presentation at Pho Linh and others must also. It was quite crowded and has a 4.6 rating on Yelp.

We could only eat half of our large portions and took the other half home, which Suzette ate when she ate for her lunch.

On the way home I stopped at Talin and bought, Chinese eggplants, fresh wood ear, beech mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, soft tofu, a lb. of fresh brown grouper, pimientos, and buckwheat noodles, a bag of fresh lo mein wheat noodles, and mung bean noodles.

                                Here is the brown grouper that became dinner

When I returned home at 1:30 I read mail and watched the market close and then drove to the 3:00 closing near Paseo del Norte.

When I returned at 4:00 I checked my portfolio which was very close to a new all time high due to the recent surge in tech stocks and then rested until 5:00.

Suzette picked a basket full of ripe figs from our bush and searched for a recipe for fig and peach preserves that we will make this weekend. 

Dinner - Suzette has been wanting to wrap fish in the Korean basil leaves growing in the garden, so I boned the grouper steak into a pile of small fish fillets to which Suzette added snapped green bean sections and minced garlic and small halved orange tomatoes from our garden plus butter, capers, Lemon thyme, and a dash of Bandol rose and we then wrapped and crimped the two mounds of ingredients in aluminum foil and Suzette baked the packets on the grill outside. We heated leftover rice and poured glasses of Trader Joe’s Bandol Rose.

After 30 minutes on the grill we opened the aluminum foil wrappers and added rice and ate another amazing dinner. I found that my fork filled with a bit of fish, tomato, caper, and green bean sections was a perfectly wonderful bite of food. 

After we had eaten all the cooked ingredients there was a small puddle of cooking juices left. I cut a thin slice of French country bread and we soaked the bread in the juices and ate the bread saturated with the cooking juices, it was also delicious.

We then watched The 1963 classic, Charade, with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, set in Paris and Suzette criss cross cut open the top of six ripe figs and stuffed them with fresh goat cheese and drizzled them with honey. I opened the chilled bottle of Reif Estates  Grand Reserve 2021 Vidal Icewine grown on the Niagara Peninsula we bought of Niagara Falls on the Lake in Canada several years ago. ‘‘‘Twas a pretty fancy dessert for a pretty fancy dinner.”

The wine’s back label said that the wine was made by crushing frozen Vidal grapes that produced the “layers of flavors of peach, apricot, and honey.”  Reif’s currently offers its 2023 375 ml. Grand Reserve Vidal Icewine at a retail price of $69.95, and this unique wine seemed worth it. 

Great meals include unique fresh ingredients beautifully prepared. This was a great meal.

When Charade ended at 9:45, we went to bed and had a good night’s sleep.

Bon Appetit

August 6, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Enchiladas with beans and rice. Dinner - Leftover Stuffed Eggplant with Sautéed Tomatoes and lamb over orecchiette pasta.

August 6, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Enchiladas with beans and rice. Dinner - Leftover Stuffed Eggplant with Sautéed Tomatoes and lamb over orecchiette pasta.  

Dinner was fantastic today. I diced 2 cups of the fresh tomatoes Suzette picked yesterday plus the last leftover grilled lamb chop, 1/8 of a red onion, and she picked fresh basil from the garden and sautéed those ingredients.

The sauce dominated by fresh sweet tomatoes was sublime. She boiled a cup of orecchiette pasta and heated the leftover stuffed eggplant from dinner two nights ago.

I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of Aquino 3014 Chianti Reserva and we enjoyed a great meal.

Breakfast and lunch were the usual blah dishes, good but nothing compared to dinner. Here is a photo of the lunch.

We watched Desert Reef about the Guadalupe Mountains geological history as a preserved 250 million year old reef, then Midsomer Murders and after Suzette went to bed I watched my new favorite show, George Gently Detective, with another gritty plot of humanity as it really exists.

I went to bed at 11:00 when it ended.

Bon Appetit