October 22, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate. Lunch - Cassoulet and Tomato and lettuce salad. Dinner - Grilled trout, Cottage Fries, and Sautéed Bell Peppers and Zucchini

October 22, 2026  Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate. Lunch - Cassoulet and Tomato and lettuce salad. Dinner - Grilled trout, Cottage Fries, and Sautéed Bell Peppers and Zucchini

I slept until 7:00. I watched the devastation of high tech shares unfold with a pain au chocolate and a latte machiatta.

Then I dressed and accompanied Suzette for a meeting with her financial advisor that lasted frm 9:00 to 11:00.

We then drove to Costco and bought 12 white wines to replenish.

Then we drove home and Suzette heated the leftover cassoulet and added lettuce to the Caprese salad from last night that we ate for lunch.

Suzette then drove to Lowe’s to buy plants while I stayed home and watched a EUFA match between Bournemouth and AC Milan that Bournemouth won.

From 3:00 to 5:00 I edited my Motion.

Then we started dinner it was rather elaborate: stuffed grilled trout, Cottage fries, and sautéed Zucchini, garlic, onion, and bell peppers. We stuffed the stomachs of each trout with a mixture of fresh minced parsley from the garden, butter and minced green onion.

When everything was ready I opened one of the bottles we bought and chilled, a Spanish white that was 80% Verdejo and 20% Godella from Leon. It was really delicious but I found it more interesting as I sipped it after dinner ($7.99 at Costco).

Later as we watched Midsomer Mysteries Suzette heated, buttered, and spread strawberry jam on a slice of the quince olive bread she made rhat I ate with a cognac and Grand Marnier.

Suzette went to bed at 9:30 and I tried to stay up for Signori Volpe and went to bed after I blogged this entry at 11:30.

Today was the worst loss of my portfolio as oil went up, shipments through the Straits of Hormuz are down, the war in Iran is expanding, and Trump is threatening to start bombing after the mid-term elections, down 3.66%.

Bon Appetit

October 21, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - East Ocean. Dinner - Grilled T-bone steak with Sautéed Delicata Squash and Mushrooms and Shishito Peppers and Caprese

October 21, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - East Ocean. Dinner - Grilled T-bone steak with Sautéed Delicata Squash and Mushrooms and Shishito Peppers and Caprese Salad

It was a busy day of errands. Because the new printer is still not working I had to do things manually, although I amended by insurance policy on the telephone and bought five more shares of Micron after breakfast in the morning before showering and dressing.

I ate granola with milk, yogurt, and a diced plum for breakfast and watched the market open positive. Today was a day when everyone was a genius because almost everything closed up. My portfolio was up 1.68%.

At 11:00 I drove to Schwab and transferred the shares in the custody of Computershare to my Schwab account which took over an hour of completing and signing forms for each stock.

Then I drove to Wells Fargo to deposit my check from the Warher Brothers Discovery sale to Oracle.

At 1:00 I drove to East Ocean and ordered one of my favorites, Deep Fried Tofu and Mixed Vegetables in a Mandarin Sauce with rice. I love this dish because it contains 10 different stir fried vegetables; mushrooms, water chestnuts, baby corn, Bok Choy, onion, snow peas, broccoli, bamboo shoots, carrots, and zucchini.  I also like the egg drop soup that is made fresh m chicken instead of some dry mix.

                                                   My favorite waitress multitasking

I could only eat 1/3, so I boxed the rest in a take out container.

Then I drove to Shahin’s and went through several tax matters.

Then I drove to Half-life to try to collect the rent but David and Nikelle were out on a shoot.

Then, I drove to Smith’s and bought; milk, grapes, hamburger meat, orange juice, sheep milk Gouda, trout, green onions, and yogurt. I forgot to buy shallots and sugar.

I drove to Bosque Bakery and bought a loaf of South Valley Sourdough and a rustic baguette, arriving home at 3:24, six minutes before meditation. I meditated from 3:30 to 4:00 and then rested for about 1/2 hour. 

I joined Suzette for cocktails and a discussion of our dinner menu.

We decided to grill the thawed T-bone steak and sauté mushrooms and the baked delicata squash and shishito peppers and make a Caprese Salad.

Suzette diced the baked delicata squash and I sliced five portobello mushroom and about 1/T. of red onion, and stripped the leaves from several stalks of French thyme and sautéed those ingredients while Suzette made the Caprese Salad with chopped fresh basil from the garden, the red and yellow tomato she bought at the Los Lunas Farmer’s market, red onion, feta cheese and a balsamic and olive oil dressing.

I opened the bottle of Merlot Johal gave us, made from the grapes growing on his property in Green Valley. The wine was delicious with the steak. Merlot is the main grape used to make St. Emillon wine in Bordeaux and my favorite wine with steak.

Suzette grilled the steak to between medium rare and medium. It was a large thick steak, so we only ate the smaller filet side.

I sautéed the mushrooms and delicata for about twenty minutes so the delicata browned and developed a crunchy caramelized crust on one side.  I sautéed the shishito peppers in a separate skillet until their skin was evenly blistered on all sides and tender.

The Caprese Salad was terrific with the last great tomatoes of this year and the wonderful olive oil we bought in France.

We ate at the table outside on the patio in the pleasantly warm evening air.

Later I ate some of the red grapes and blogged while Suzette slept.

Bon Appetit

October 20, 2026 Breakfast - Two men an Island. Lunch - Pork, Manchego, and onion Quesadilla. Dinner - Scallops Provencal with rice

October 20, 2026 Breakfast - Two men an Island. Lunch - Pork, Manchego, and onion Quesadilla. Dinner - Scallops Provencal with rice

A day of convalescence and good food.

I woke up in time to see the market open. It looked positive at the open and the Dow closed up over 500 points but my tech heavy portfolio suffered another losing day with a drop of .46%.

I butterflied a piece of Bosque baguette and toasted it in a skillet with butter and a slice of red onion. When I flipped the buttered side  and the onion slice I added butter to the skillet and toasted the other side for a couple of minutes and then added two eggs and then flipped the second side again to cook the eggs briefly. I drank a cup of tea and toasted a thin slice of baguette that I buttered and spread strawberry jam on it.

I worked on the motion but lacked clarity so I rested until 1:00 when I made a quesadilla by toasting a flour tortilla then laying slices of roasted pork, red onions and Manchego cheese on a second flour tortilla. I then toasted the combined two halves on each side to golden brown, which melted the cheese between the two tortillas.

I drank a glass of Clamato with juice of 1/2 lime-as I watched PSG beat Barcelona in EUFA competition.  

After the match I drove to Bosque Bakery to buy bread but it was closed.

I returned home and took two Tylenol and rested for an hour.

When Suzette came home we had cocktails and then tried to set up the new HP printer. There was a problem and called HP and after Suzette yelled at them for a while she was told a large number of printers were sent to the wrong customers and HP was trying to straighten out the accounts for each printer and it would take several more days.

At 5:15 Luke called and we wished him a happy birthday.

I had not thawed steaks, so I requested Scallops Provençale for dinner. We used the recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking vol. 1.

Here is the recipe.

Suzette fetched a bottle of Albariño from the garage fridge to use in the recipe and drink with dinner and fetched French thyme, sorrel, and a bay leaf from our garden. I made rice seasoned with dashi and seaweed.

It was a lovely dinner.

We then watched Finding up your Roots with John McCain, Julie Ann Moore, and Patricia Arquette, all of whom had long family histories of military service. The big surprise was that one of John McCain s ancestors fought with George Washington and that George Washington was John McCain’s cousin.

Suzette made us each an ice cream sandwich with vanilla ice cream on 1/2 each of the last chocolate chocolate chip cookie for dessert.

Suzette went to bed to read after the show, but I stayed up to watch Dallas Stars beat Boston in overtime.

I finished this blog entry and went to bed at 10:20.

Bon Appetit

October 19, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Chicken Noodle Soup with Wontons. Dinner - Lamb and Pork Cassoulet

October 19, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Chicken Noodle Soup with Wontons. Dinner - Lamb and Pork Cassoulet 

I got up and blogged at 3:00 a.m. and went back to sleep at 4:30 and slept until 7:45.

I ate Granola with milk, a diced plum, and yogurt at 8:00 and then showered and dressed and rested until 11:30 when I edited the first four pages of the motion to lift stay.

Then at 1:00 I added a cup of water, a stalk of celery diced, a bundle of Rice vermicelli, some roasted pork, two wontons, and two mushrooms sliced thinly, and a heaping T. red miso to the leftover chicken noodle soup and heated it for lunch and watched a thrilling PL match between Coventry and Tottenham in which Maddison scored a brilliant goal to help Tottenham win 2 to 1.

At the end of the match around 2:30 I called Suzette. She was on her way home and picked me up and we went to vote.

Then when we returned she had a snack of roast pork with Mayo, while I checked my portfolio that gained .7% today.

We watched news and Antiques Roadshow starting at 4:00.

Suzette decided to make cassoulet for dinner, so I diced the meat from the three leftover lamb chops and one large boneless pork rib while Suzette diced a piece of Sourdough bread into crouton sized pieces. She then mixed the two diced meats into the cooked beans, squash, and corn she cooked a few days ago and then garnished the top of the casserole with the bread cubes and drizzled olive oil over the bread crumbs and baked the cassoulet in the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Suzette said she is in a French Cuisine cooking mood theses days after our trip to France. Cassoulet is a traditional dish of Provence.

I opened a bottle of Kendall Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and poured glasses and we ate around 6:00.

Willy came by later to help Suzette load rugs and other items into her Highlander and ate some cassoulet also.

After 6:00 we watched Tampa Bay win the American League pennant and San Francisco beat Washington in Monday Bight Football along with the Antiques Roadshow after 7:00.

After MNF and Tampa Bay won, we went to bed around 9:00, Suzette to sleep and I to blog.

Bon Appetit