August 24, 2026 Breakfast - Bagel with Jarlsberg and cream cheese Lunch - Salad with cheese toasts. Dinner - Salmon in garlic cream sauce with chard over rice

August 24, 2026 Breakfast - Bagel with Jarlsberg and cream cheese Lunch - Salad with cheese toasts. Dinner - Salmon in garlic cream sauce with chard over rice

We had one of my favorite dinners today, poached salmon in a garlic cream sauce with chard over rice.

I woke up at 7:30 as the market opened with the NASDAQ down. I was busy all day and did not look at it except to see that Nvidia ended down $6.24 and AMD ended down $16.50.

At 8:00 I toasted a bagel, spread it with cream cheese and cherry preserves and garnished it with slices of Jarlsberg cheese and heated the slices for 22 seconds in the microwave to melt the cheeses a little.

I drank a cup of chai with collagen with it.

Then I rode around the neighborhood a little farther than before.

When I returned I thawed two pieces of salmon for dinner and spent the rest of the morning moving mine to pay my capital call and taxes and bills. 

I finished my desk work around 12:30 and made a lovely salad with 1/2 head of artisanal lettuce, 1/2 of a tomato diced, 1/3 of a cucumber  peeled, seeded, and diced, some red onion, and about ten Kalamata olives. I made a simple balsamic, olive oil, garlic, and lemon thyme dressing. I also toasted three slices of baguette and spread  them with the last of the brie and some goat cheese.

I drank water.

Then I returned to my desk and prepared a Notice of completion of briefing for my eater case and called the court clerk to clarify my Friday filing and then the notice filing and wrote a letter to my clients.

They started a Status Report in my appeal but got tired when Suzette came home at 4:00 and lay down and rested until 5:00 when I cooked a cup of rice.

Suzette wanted to poach the salmon, so I asked her to make a garlic cream sauce with a Bechamel instead of using only cream and she agreed. Poached fish in a garlic cream sauce is one of my favorite dishes, especially the way Suzette makes the sauce with fish fume, cream and white wine.

I minced a shallot and two cloves of garlic and Suzette sautéed them with dried lemon thyme and butter and then added the fish, water and white wine to make poaching medium. 

When the fish was poached she mixed flour with some of the poaching medium and then added some of the flour and poaching medium mixture until the poaching medium thickened into a cream sauce. As the cream sauce continued to thicken she added 2 T. of cream and a dash of white wine.

While Suzette cooked the fish dish I destemmed and chopped the last three cups of mixed chards Suzette brought from the Center’s garden and we added it to the sauce and cooked it in the sauce for several more minutes with chunks of poached salmon to make a lovel medley of fish and greens in a garlic cream sauce.

We opened the bottle of bottle of 2023 Chemin de Mazou Pouilly Fume white wine that I had chilled in the fridge. I think it was a birthday gift because I do not remember buying it, especially since it is a $21 to $22 bottle. It was fabulous and made the dinner even more special in a very French way. It was fruity and had an exuberance of flavor that I rarely taste in Sauvignon Blancs.

Here are some tasting notes for 

Appellation: Pouilly Fumé

Region: Loire Valley

Grape Variety: 100% Sauvignon Blanc

Soil Type: Clayey-siliceous

Winemaking: Mechanical harvesting, pneumatic pressing, vinification in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats at 15-16°C.

Tasting Notes: Pale gold color with ripe yellow fruit notes, citrus, white flowers, and exotic fruits. Rich and complex palate with a fresh mineral note.

Food Pairing: Seafood, stuffed tomatoes, fish in sauce, crotin de Chavignol cheese.

It was perfect with our fish in sauce meal.

After dinner Willy left and we watched the Antique Roadshow.

Suzette mentioned that there was one strawberry eclair left and we decided to eat it with the last of the amazing Reif Estate 2021 Vidal Icewine. I guess I had a citrus overtone feeling leftover from the Pouilly Fume.

We loved our dessert course with the elegant dessert wine.

I also ate some chocolate ice cream with rum for an extra dessert.

We both went to sleep during the second hour of Roadshow, and went to bed at 9:00.

I love fish in garlic cream sauce and find it especially interesting because it is the easiest sauce to make if you cook it long enough to cook the flour because you use the cooking medium as the base and simply add flour to make paste and then dissolve that into the medium.

This is similar to Julia’s Scallops Provencal dish in which you sauté scallops dusted with flow and then add wine and fish stock to emulsify the cooked flour into a sauce. Both are recipes that utilize shortcuts to a cream sauce.

Willy came by around 7:15 and heated up the rest of the dish and drank about 1/2 glass of wine, so he was able to enjoy this special dinner also.

We are into our last week before we leave for France and are not buying any more food, but that just means we are mining our frozen food for ingredients as we need them, not that we are cooking less elegant meals.

Bon Appetit 

August 23, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate Brunch - Bacon, mushroom, chard, and Swiss Gruyere cheese omelet with Croissants Dinner - Butter Chicken Ratatouille Saag with Pita

August 23, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate Brunch - Bacon, mushroom, chard, and Swiss Gruyere cheese omelet with Croissants  Dinner - Butter Chicken Ratatouille Saag with Pita

Today was a restful day for me.

I awakened at 4:30 and finished the book discussion notes and grades for Sense and Sensibility and then slept from 6:00 until 8:30.

Then I watched the news and the highlights of the first 2 stages of the Vuelta de Espana and ate a pain au chocolate with a cup of chai with collagen.

I then began the prep of brunch. Monica returned from Romania and we invited her and Aaron for brunch at 11:30.

I minced four shallots, a. pimiento pepper from our garden, about two cups of portobello mushrooms and three fresh shiitake mushrooms.

I also chopped five slices of thick cut bacon into 1/4 inch strips that I fried into lardettes.

At 10:30 Suzette returned from Los Lunas with a bag of freshly picked chard. She sliced the leaves from the stems for a handful and I chopped the pile of leaves into bite sized pieces.

Suzette had cleaned two window air conditioners at the Center, so she showered and dressed and then set the table.

Aaron and Monica came at 11:30 with croissants, strawberry eclairs, and Danish pastries from Whole Foods.

We served coffee to them and I grated 1 1/2 cups of Swiss Gruyere cheese. 

Suzette and Monica took over kitchen duties and heated the croissants in the oven and cooked the shallots and pepper in butter and olive oil and then added the mushrooms, chard, and bacon, and finally four whisked eggs. Then they sprinkled grated Gruyere over the surface and covered the skillet and let the omelet cook without turning it.

Suzette cut a bunch of red grapes into small bundles and cut the omelet into 4 quarters and placed a quarter on each plate with a bundle of grapes and a toasted croissant.

I fetched the bottles of cherry preserves and the homemade quince, peach, and fig compote and poured glasses of Archer Summit Vireton Pinot Gris for Suzette and Monica. Aaron and I drank water.

We enjoyed the meal and talked of travel.

After thre meal we served cordial glasses of Canadian Rief Vidal Blanc Icewine for dessert.

I then lay down and watched Barcelona destroy Eche in a La Liga match and Suzette worked at her desk.

At 5:00 Willy called and we set 6:00 as the time to come for dinner.

I then boned and diced the meat from the three chicken thighs Suzette cooked last Thursday, We decided to cook the chicken in the leftover Ratatouille with spinach for an easy one pot dinner, which turned out to be the perfect menu idea because when Willy came he brought a bottle of Butter Masala. I thinly sliced a zucchini and we added that and 4 T. of Butter Masala paste to the ratatouille and cooked it for 30 minutes and then added the bunch of spinach I had chopped into bite sized pieces. The end result was a very pleasant tasting butter chicken combined with a mixed vegetable saag.

We did not have naan, so we sliced and toasted pita halves. The warm pita were really delicious with the richly flavored chicken and vegetable stew.

We drank glasses of the Vireton Pinot Gris that was really pleasant with the rich Indian stew because it had a fruity slightly sweet flavor.

After dinner we looked in the box of pastries Aaron and Monica brought and found the three small strawberry eclairs. Suzette cut each of them into thirds and we ate them for dessert.

I drank another cup of chai with collagen with dessert. Willy brewed a cup of Kushmi herbal tea and Suzette drank a sip of cognac.

Willy described his 7 hour ordeal to fix the ball joints on his car and he decided to call Jody to make the final adjustments.

Willy also reported that Luke was loving his job and was thrilled because he had his own office, which made us all exceedingly happy.

Willy left at 8:30 and we put the leftover chicken saag into a container in the fridge and went to bed at 9:30.

Bon Appetit

August 22, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate Lunch - Coda Bakery Bun Cha Gio with egg rolls. Snack - cheese and grapes

August 22, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate Lunch - Coda Bakery Bun Cha Gio with egg rolls. Snack - cheese and grapes

We woke up early. I ate a pain au chocolate with chai and then rode my bike around the neighborhood.

Suzette left for exercise and work and I left home at 9:20. I dropped the book off at Peter’s and then met Shahin at his office at 10:00 and we worked until 1:30 to complete my taxes.

When I returned home I discovered that Suzette had eaten my leftover Bun Cha Gio from Friday’s lunch at Pho Linh.

I was still in the mood for Bun Cha Gio, so at 2:00 I drove to Coda Bakery at the corner of San Pedro and Central. It was busy as usual nut in a couple of minutes I ordered Bun Cha Gio for $12.50 with a large container filled with piles of Vietnamese Rice Vermicelli, lettuce, cucumber sticks, mint, mung bean sprouts, pickled carrots and daikon, peanuts, and fish sauce. On the side was a cardboard basket with four steaming hot egg rolls in a bad to keep them warm.

It was a lot of food but I was hungry and ate it all with an extra fish sauce.

I then went home and rested for an hour and then we drove to Home Depot where Suzette bought swamp cooler and I filled the Highlander with gas.

It was 8:00 when we drove to Vara to taste wine and pick up my three bottle wine club selections, a Spanish Viura, a California Albariño, and a red Mencia.  We tasted all three and then were offered several other wines to taste. We both liked the Atrevido that is a blend of 75% Grenache and 25% Carenina grapes from Spain.

We also bought a bottle of late harvest Albariño from California grapes.

The two bar tenders were pleasant and knowledgeable and, since there were no other customers we had a pleasant conversation as we sampled about ten wines.

As I neared 9:00 the bar tender helped load our wine and we drove home.

Neither of us were hungry so I toasted three slices of baguette and we spread goat cheese on one slice and brie on the other two and wash them down with a glass of Brunello and a bunch of grapes.

We went to bed around 9:30.

Bon Appetit