May 14, 2026. Breakfast - Gravad Lax Omelet with goat cheese, potatoes, Ted onion, and fresh dill. Lunch - Leftover Pasta with Mushrooms and Chicken Dinner - Mapo Dofu with Rice

 May 14, 2026. Breakfast - Gravad Lax Omelet with goat cheese, potatoes, Ted onion, and fresh dill. Lunch - Leftover Pasta with Mushrooms and Chicken Dinner - Mapo Dofu with Rice

I did not sleep well last night, but at 4:30 a.m. got to watch the toasts at the banquet and first meeting of Xi and Trump, which were both craven adulation by Trump of Xi like a supplicant rather than a meeting of equals. I felt like I could have been looking at Trump and Putin. I felt there was something terribly wrong with Trump.

I then rested for an hour or two and then I watched the market open up again. I guess I was worried about the surgery set for 1:00 to remove my dialysis catheter.

At 7:30 I made a good breakfast, a Gravad lax, potato, red onion, and fresh dill omelet with toasted slices of baguette and a cup of tea.

Then at 9:00 I went back to sleep and slept until 10:50, when I got dressed. Suzette came home at 11:20 and we drove to Renal Medicine Associates at 12:00 for the removal of the dialysis catheter. I t was a simple operation but Suzette attending made me much less anxious.

Then at 1:00 Suzette drove us home and heated the leftover Pasta, Mushrooms, and Chicken dish left from last nightl I then checked my portfolio and discovered that it had another monster day thanks to Nvidia closing up $9.91, in part due the the U.S. approving the sale of Nvidia’s TH 200 chips to 10 Chinese companies.

So I had two wonderful bits of news today. The first was the doctor who removed the catheter confirming that starting dialysis probably saved my life and the second was my portfolio reaching another milepost. From April 7 to today it increased an amazing 23%. That is an annualized rate of over 230%. I have been waiting for the bubble to burst, but it has not yet. 

Dinner - We decided to make Mapo Dofu for dinner, so at 6:00 I started.

I cubed a small eggplant and two small Mexican squash. I then minced two small cloves of garlic from our garden and about 1 1/2 T. of ginger root and 1 Vidalia onion. Then I cubed four portobello, a shiitake and two lobster mushrooms and about 3 oz. of fresh wood ear. Then I cubed 2/3 of a pork tenderloin and finally a 14 oz. block of firm tofu.

Willy arrived around 7:00 as I  stir fried the onion, garlic and ginger in the large 18 inch wok and added sequentially the eggplant and squash, the cubed pork with a heaping tsp. of garlic chilli sauce, then 14 oz. of tofu cubed with enough water to cover the ingredients so they would stew. I forgot to add the mushrooms, so after about 30 to 45 minutes I added the sliced mushrooms and wood ear before the tofu so I added the mushrooms and wood ear and stewed the dish another fifteen minutes to cook the mushrooms. While the ingredients stewed I combined I tsp. of soy sauce, with 1 tsp  sesame oil, 1 T. of mirin, 2 T. of sake and 1 1/2 T. of cornstarch and whisked those ingredients to make a seasoning sauce.

I also separated the seeds from the husks of about 1/2 T.of Szechuan peppercorns with Willy’s help and thinly sliced four green onions for the garnish.

When the ingredients had stewed about an hour I added the seasoning sauce to thicken the stew and Suzette re-heated some PPI rice cooked with seaweed and Willy selected, opened and poured glasses of Vara Grenache red wine for him and Suzette. I drank water.

Willy left a little later and we watched an old episode of Midsummer  Murders. Suzette went to bed after it at 9:30 and I stayed up until 11:25 to watch an episode of George Gentley. Coincidentally, in both episodes the killer turned out to be a child.

I the blogged and went to bed.

Bon Appetit 

May 13, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate Lunch - Mary and Tito’s Dinner - Sautéed Salmon with Sautéed Roasted Potatoes and Snow Peas

May 13, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate Lunch - Mary and Tito’s Dinner - Sautéed Salmon with Sautéed Roasted Potatoes and Snow Peas

I got up around 6:15.  I watched the market dip and then recover for the NASDAQ to end up over 314 points and for my portfolio to increase by 1%.

At 10:00 I ate a pain au chocolate with a latte macchiato.

I made one more step toward dematerialization today. I received acknowledgment of acceptance by ICICI Direct of my application.

At Noon Henry arrived for lunch and I drove us to Mary and Tito’s. Henry ordered Chichirones, beans,  and red chili. I ordered a taco plate with two tacos, refried beans, and  lettuce and tomato garnish. I love the food at Mary and Tito’s but the fresh flowers on each table are fabulous.

We ate until 1:30. When I returned home I worked until 4:00 and napped until 4:45 when Suzette came home.  Then we ate som pistachios and then at 5:30 I drove to El Super and bought avocados, limes, lemons, oranges, cilantro, red and brown onions, a butternut squash, Brussels sprouts, Mexican squash, green onions, an eggplant, tomatoes, and Fuji apples.

Dinner - 

When I returned home at 6:45  Suzette helped unload the groceries. Suzette thawed two salmon filets and we snapped a pile of snow, peas.

Then Suzette blanched the snow peas and re-heated PPI roasted diced potatoes and leeks and then tossed the snow peas with the potatoes. She sautéed the salmon fillets and I poured glasses of Chablis Premier cru.

After dinner we watched Trump’s arrival in Beijing and sipped a limoncello with a lemon cookie.

Suzette went to bed at 9:00. I stayed up to watch the WNBA game between LA and Indiana Fever.

Bon Appetit

May 12, 2026 Breakfast - Granola Lunch - Lime Restaurant. Dinner - PPI Pasta with Snow Pea, Shallot, and Mushroom Medley

May 12, 2026 Breakfast - Granola  Lunch - Lime Restaurant. Dinner - PPI Pasta with Snow Pea, Shallot, and Mushroom Medley

I woke up at 6:00 and ate a bowl of granola with milk, yogurt, and strawberries as I worked at my desk until 7:45 when I went back to bed for an hour.

At 10:30 I drove to my doctor’s appointment at 11:30.

When it ended at nooon i drove to Lime to meet Suzette for Lunch.

Suzette ordered Pad Thai with pork made with Vietnamese wide noodles. Aaron and Monica joined us around 12:30.  Aaron and I each ordered chicken soup with pork, Wontons and egg noodles. Monica ordered salt and pepper fried shrimp. Lime specializes ih roast pork, so ant dish containing it will be wonderful.

Suzette left for exercise at 1:15.

We talked about Earn mostly until 2:00.

After lunch I drove to the Xfinity store and returned a box and picked up another one for our other TV.

Then I drove across the parking lot to the Walmart Neighborhood market and bought milk and two jars of pickled herring.

When I returned home it was 3:00. I checked the market and was surprised that I was down only marginally after Trump rejected Iran’s peace plan and oil soared.

From 3:30 to 4:00 I meditated with my little group of 4 others.

Then I lay down to watch the news and nap until 5:30.

Dinner - When I awakened we discussed dinner and decided to combine the leftover pasta abd chicken from last night with a mushroom medley using the orange oysters, shiitake, lobster, and black wood ear plushies sweet peppers, shallot, garlic from our garden, grape tomatoes, and snow peas

I chopped the ingredients and Suzette sautéed them and then tossed them with the PPI pasta and some white wine. There is enough left for another dinner.

I opened a bottle of Kirkland Chablis Gran Cru, the only Chardonnay we drink that was delicious. It was slightly sweet and yet had goof minerality. A lovely bottle of wine.

From 7:00 until 9:00 we watched Finding Your Roots and then Suzette went to bed. I ate a bowl of chocolate ice cream with maraschino cherries and watched Frontline’s feature of the fight between the federal reserve and Trump and went to bed at 10:00.

Bon Appetit

May 11, 2026 Breakfast - Lax and Bagel. Lunch - French Onion Soup. Dinner - Pasta with Snow peas, Ricotta, and leeks

May 11, 2026 Breakfast - Lax and Bagel. Lunch - French Onion Soup. Dinner - Pasta with Snow peas, Ricotta, and leeks

I woke up at 6:45 and watched a few minutes of pre-market activity that did not look promising, which made sense after the monster day on Friday, but as the day progressed the risk on attitude prevailed. Although the NASDAQ was up only 27 points at the end of the day, there a surge of buying in the high tech part of the market by mid day that slackened a bit by the end of the day. My portfolio ratcheted up another .92% today. This rally is inexplicable, except to say that the critics who criticized NVIDIA for its circular investing have changed their critique to praise as all of NVIDIA’s investments are part of this high tech rally. Mid day Nvidia was up $6.00 and it closed at $219.44, up $4.22.

Suzette left early for an appointment and I helped fix breakfast for Billy and Elaine. I toasted bagels and sliced red onion and Gravad lax. Billy wanted to make a sandwich and breakfast with the bread he bought in Santa Fe. He smeared the bread with cream cheese and piled it with  slices of Gravad lax.

Elaine ate granola with strawberries.

I sliced 1/2 of a bagel in half and toasted each thin slice and spread cream cheese and garnished with slices of red onion and Gravad lax.

I ate about 2/3 and drank about 3/4 of a latte macchiato by 8:45 when Billy announced it was time to leave for the airport.

When I returned I finished my bagel and coffee as I watched the market rise on TV until about 9:45.

I then finished reviewing two documents for Earn.

At 11:00 my new client arrived and we spent a bit over an hour on his case.

I then called Karim and Rahim about dematerialization and documents Karim needed notarized.

Then at 1:00 I walked to the bank. I accumulated over 2800 steps today, so a bit above average

At 2:30 discussed my comments on the Earn documents with Aaron.

When we finished around 3:45 I had still not eaten any lunch. As I was heating a bowl of French Onion Soup with croutons and melted Jarlsberg cheese.  Suzette arrived and grabbed a bowl of grapes and went to her office to work.

Finally at 4:30 I was able to watch some news until 5:30 when Suzette wanted to fix dinner.

Dinner - I chopped the We went to the garden and picked a handful of snow peas from our vines plus some basil leaves and parsley.

I chopped the parsley and basil while Suzette snapped the snow peas and chopped some leftover chicken and fetched the jar of fresh ricotta we bought at the Santa Fe farmers’ market on Saturday and combined all the ingredients into a lovely mixture. garnished with fresh grated Parmesan cheese.

 We drank glasses of Archery Summit Vireton Pinot Gris.

Later we watched the Antiques Roadshow and ate Danish cookies and I made a chai. The second hour was another Santa Fe Session from the plaza om Museum Hill.

We went to bed at 9:00 and watched Tucci in Italy for a few minutes but  went to sleep when we saw that it was about the cuisine of Tuscany that we had seen previously.

Suzette went to sleep and I blogged for a wjphile and the watched Rachel.

Bon Appetit

May 10, 2026 Breakfast - Lax and Bagels. Lunch - Almond Croissant Dinner - French Onion Soup

May 10, 2026 Breakfast - Lax and Bagels.  Lunch - Almond Croissant Dinner - French Onion Soup

I ate a lot of snacks but no meal today.

I started with a bowl of granola, milk, yogurt, and strawberries as I watched Newcastle tie Nottingham Forest and Fareed Zacharia.

Then Willy came over and we watched Arsenal beat West Ham.to push West Ham toward relegation and keep Arsenal at the top of the PL and we made Lax and bagels.

The girls went on a garden tour at 11:00.

I worked at my desk a bit and around 1:00 turned on La Liga El Classico, the annual match between Barcelona and Real Madrid to determine the winner of the Spanish Liga. This year Barcelona won.

When Billy arrived around 2:30 I finished eating the almond croissant we bought at the Farmers’ Market yesterday.

we joined Suzette and Elaine on the Downtown garden tour and went to five homes. The last one was owned by a young couple and had a Barbero print. They seemed nice so I invited them to see my art collection.

When we then returned home I made a beef stock with some of the leftover steak and the bones from last night’s dinner plus carrots,, celery, and a little onion.

Then Billy showered and I napped until 5:30 when I sliced three onions into thin slices and sautéed them. I followed the Julia Child recipe and Caramelized the onions in olive oil and butter plus salt and sugar until they took on a golden brown color. I then added 3 1/2 T. of flour and sautéed the onions another 3 minutes to cook the flour. Then I added 2/3 cup of dry Marsala and about 2 1/2 quarts of the hot beef stock and 1 T. of Better Than Bouillon beef stock with some pieces of steak and simmered the soup until we finished watching an episode of Eva Longoria Discovering France.

Willy joined us at around 7:30.

I opened a bottle of 2012 Chateau du Retout Haut Medoc that I had chilled slightly since the evening was warm and we opened some windows and the doors.

I sliced Manchego and toasted slices of bread and suzette fetched and Suzette filled brown ceramic soup bowls with soup, croutons and cheese and melted the cheese in the oven. I put the cheese biscuits Susan brought us last night to eat with the soup. We all liked the soup. 

After dinner we moved into the living room to talk and hang the 1969 Shleeter I bought at last week’s Santa Fe Art Auction. It looks even better than I remembered it and is an interesting addition to the collection now that I have two Shleeters.

Willy left around 9:30 and we soon all went to bed.

I sipped a cognac and ate a Danish Lemon cream cookie and blogged in bed until 11:45 when I went to ned.

Bon Appetit