July 25, 2024 Breakfast - Tabouli filled Pita Sandwich. Lunch - Fried Dumplings. Dinner - Pot Roast with Masses Potatoes and fresh Chiffonade cut Kale

July 25, 2024 Breakfast - Tabouli filled Pita Sandwich. Lunch - Fried Dumplings. Dinner - Pot Roast with Masses Potatoes and fresh Chiffonade cut Kale

This was a fun day of food.  It started with a breakfast 5at could have been Lunch around 10:00 . I heated one half of a pita and filled it with tabouli, feta cheese, and labni. I drank a cup of hot tea with it.

Then around 12:45 I sautéed 12 dumplings until they were golden brown and made a dipping sauce by mixing soy, chili oil, and a thinly sliced green onion.  I ate sliced of pickled daikon and Korean basil and drank a cup of green tea with the dumplings.

Then I spoke to Suzette around 3:00, who gave instructions for preparing the pot roast.

Dinner Pot Roast, Mashed Potaoes, and fresh Kale. - I put the roast in a shallow bowl formed with aluminum foil and covered it with two cans of cream of mushroom soup and one package of onion dip. I then wrapped it with aluminum foil and put it into a 325 degree oven to bake for 3 1/2 hours. 

I returned a library book to the library and then watched the news until 5:00 when I peeled and diced 4 carrots, 2 turnips and 2 parsnips.

I put the root vegetables into a Pyrex baking dish with about ten cloves of garlic unpeeled. Suzette took over and doused the vegetables with olive oil and covered the baking dish with aluminum foil and put it into the oven to roast with the pot roast.

I then peeled and diced 4 russet potatoes and put them in a sauce pan and covered them with water and put them on the stove to boil.

Suzette came home at 4:30 and took over the cooking.

Willy arrived at 7:00. The roasted vegetables were still not soft, so we ate the pot roast with mashed potatoes and fresh kale. The thin strips of kale resulting from the chiffonade method of slicing cooked as soon as Suzette put them on the warm mashed potatoes and put the pot roast and gravy on top of them.

I fetched a bottle of Barbera di Asti and chilled it in the freezer for an hour and poured it for dinner. It is not an expensive wine, $6.99 at Trader Joe’s and is a smooth pleasant drinking wine.

Suzette says there is enough pot roast and roasted vegetables for dinner Saturday evening when her brother Don and his wife, Bev, stay with us. We will probably sautée mushrooms and shallots to enrich and extend the pot roast sauce.

During dinner we watched Whose Feeding Phil in Dubai and when it ended Willy left and we watched Midsomer Mystery until 9:45 during which I ate a bowl of chocolate truffle and cherry ice cream with maraschino cherries and liquid.

After Midsomer Mystery we went to bed.

I sent another $50.00 to Kamala today and Suzette said she did also.

I am hoping she picks Senator Walt Kelly of Arizona as her running mate. He has great credentials, a fighter pilot, an astronaut, and husband of Gabby Gifford, who was a Congress woman and suffered the worst political violence attack in recent years.

During the day I spoke to Rebecca and Willy who have said they will come to Combarro in September.  

Bon 

July 24, 2024 Breakfast - Bagel and Lax.Lunch - Bobcat Bites Jambo Dinner ~ Texas Law School reunion at Santa Fe Railyard at Nuckolls Brewery

July 24, 2024 Breakfast - Bagel and Lax.Lunch - Bobcat Bites Jambo Dinner ~ Texas Law School reunion at Santa Fe Railyard at Nuckolls Brewery

The day started at 4:30 when I prepared and filed Notices of Non-availability in two cases. 

Then at 6:30 I drove to Pres for an appointment that ended at 7:30.

I drove home and toasted a slice of bagel and spread it with cream cheese and garnished it with slices of red onion, Gravad Lax, and capers and drank Earl Grey tea with it.

Then at 9:30 I drove to Bobcat Bites near Eldorado at 418 Old Las Vegas Hwy. north of Santa Fe.

Four other book club members arrived by 11:30 and many other customers arrived also. Many ordered hamburgers but I ordered the East African Coconut Lentil Stew with basmati rice and a glass of South African Rose’ wine.

I enjoyed the vegetable stew with lots of strong cumin flavor and just a hint of picante chili flavor.

After lunch we followed Pradip to his house in Eldorado for our club meeting to discuss We by Yevegeny Zamyatin written in Russia in 1920.

The book is a satirical fantastic sci-fi history of society set 1000 years in the future of a autocracy ruled by the Great Leader. The most important literary element is elaborate punctuation that breaks sentences in a staccato effect that gives the reader insight into the workings of a narrator’s thoughts. Zamyatin called this writing technique “thought language”.

Pradip had ordered a special spice cake from Chocolate Maven for the occasion that we ate after the discussion with glasses of a lovely Argentinian red blend of cab Sauvignon, cab. Franc, and Malbec, a 2019 Unanime, that scored between 90 and 94 points.

We sat and talked until 5:40 when I said goodbye and drove to the Railyard to Nuckoll’s Brewery for a reception for the University of Texas Law School Dean who is on tour this Summer. As soon as I arrived and served a spiced apple cider, I saw a person who looked a lot like Mike Runnels and I said, “Hi”.

I soon discovered that the person was Bill Banowsky, the owner with his wife, Susan (the Texas Law grad) of Nuckolls Brewery and several other properties in the Railyard and the train.

When I told him I was a real property lawyer, he hired me on the spot to assist him in a current dispute with the Santa Fe Railyard Authority.

There was a brief presentation by Dean Bobby Chesney about the trajectory of the Law School and a buffet dinner of grilled corn beef slices, roasted potatoes, and salad.  I ate mine with a fried dill pickle and listened to two recent graduates describe their experience of attending law school during Covid.

                           Dean Chesney and Bill Banowsky entertain with a guitar duo

I drove home at 8:00 after a pleasant evening with fellow graduates and a new client.

When I got home I was able to see President Biden give his withdrawal speech from the Oval Office.

Bon Appetit  

July 23, 2024 Breakfast - Sausage and fried eggs and toast. Lunch - PPI fried rice with steak, chicken and peas Dinner - Lamb burger pita sandwiches with Tzatziki and sautéed yellow squash and kale

July 23, 2024 Breakfast - Sausage and fried eggs and toast. Lunch - PPI  fried rice with steak, chicken and peas Dinner - Lamb burger pita sandwiches with Tzatziki and sautéed yellow squash and kale

Recently I had been feeling weakness in my muscles in the morning that lasted through lunch or even dinner as I accumulated carbs and protein. So today I decided to implement a reverse strategy. I fixed a large breakfast with lots of carbs and protein. I sautéed a sausage patty, two eggs over easy, and a slice of yellow onion and then washed that down with a cup of Earl grey tea and then toasted two slices of baguette and spread butter and plum jam on them. I felt none of the usual tiredness after breakfast that lasted through lunch when I ate my small amount of leftover dinner from last night, fried rice with steak, chicken, and snow peas.

I was still on a protein high at 2:30, so I drove to El Super and shopped. I bought three small avocados, two leeks, yellow and red onions, lemons and limes, yellow squash, broccoli, romaine lettuce, carrots, three chicken leg quarters, a bunch of beets, a bag of cherries, a 1/2 gallon of fresh squeezed orange juice, 2 cucumbers, and a lb. bag of house made corn chips.  

I returned home at 3:30 and Suzette helped me take in the groceries. And I drafted and filed a notice of non-availability in one of my cases.

At 4:50 I meditated for 30 minutes and then lay down but shortly after I lay down around 5:30 Suzette came to ask me to start dinner.  We had planned to use the remaining 1 lb. of ground lamb to cook lamb burgers.  I wanted to make tzatziki to go with the lamb and Suzette wanted to make a real burger by putting the burger into a pita pocket and adding tzatziki.

 I wanted a vegetable and we soon agreed to sautée a diced yellow squash with chopped kale from our garden.

Suzette and I agreed that we wanted to add additional ingredients to the lamb burger to make it less dense, so Suzette added some pork sausage to add some fat and I went to the garden and cut about 8 to 10 stalks of mint and three stalks of oregano plus two roses that I put in a vase on Suzette’s side table.

Suzette fetched me a head of our recently harvested garlic and a shallot and I minced the shallot and added most of it to the lamb burger pot with a minced clove of garlic and 2 T. of minced mint leaves and 2 T. of minced oregano that Suzette then added two or three whisked eggs to and mixed the ingredients and formed three burgers.

I then put the remaining T. of shallot and 3 T. of minced mint into a bowl and added 2 small minced cloves of garlic, 1 cucumber peeled, seeded, and diced, 1 tsp. of salt, and 1 cup of creamy Lala yogurt to make the tzatziki.

Suzette sautéed the Lamb burgers and the diced squash and chopped kale in separate skillets and fetched a bottle of Vara Albariño from the garage fridge. Suzette cut a pita in half to form two semi-circular pockets that I warmed to make it easier to open the pita without tearing the walls of the pita. Suzette plated our plates with the sautéed vegetables and a pita pocket filled with a burger. We each added some tzatziki to the pocket around the edges of the burger.

Dinner was delicious and I suffered no ill effects. I even ate some chocolate truffle and cherry ice cream garnished with several of Suzette’s homemade maraschino cherries and some of the alcoholic liquid in which they are packed.

We went to bed at 9:00 after watching Finding Your Roots and several comedians on You Tube tell jokes about Biden’s withdrawal and the effect on Trump’s candidacy, including Colbert and Bill Maher. Colbert’s comment, “There will be entire history books written about July 2024”, I thought was particularly prescient.

Suzette went to bed at 9:00 and I showered and blogged and went to bed by 11:00.

Bon Appetit

July 22, 2024 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Titan Meeting - Spinach Salad and Pepperoni Pizza. Dinner - Stir fried Rice with PPI chicken and steak, carrots and chiffonade cut snow peas.

July 22, 2024 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Titan Meeting - Spinach Salad and Pepperoni Pizza. Dinner - Stir fried Rice with PPI chicken and steak,  carrots and chiffonade cut snow peas.

I had trouble sleeping last night so I slept until 7:30. I watched the market take off and for a change it went up today.  The Dow ended up 128 and the NASDAQ up 280. And I regained about 1/4 of my recent loses with a gain of 1.66%

I ate granola with milk and yogurt and blueberries at 8:30, but I was hungry again at 11:00 so I ate a pain au chocolate and at 11:30 drove to the meeting at Central Trailer Supply.

Susie served a lovely spinach salad with grape tomatoes, carrot strips, cucumber slices, and pieces of yellow bell pepper with slices of pepperoni pizza from Costco. It was a lovely lunch finished with a wedge of chocolate bunt cake.

At 2:00 I drove home and was pleased to see that high tech was back in favor. In fact all of my gain for the day was in two stocks, Meta and Nvda.

I looked for my tax materials and found them after lunch, so I shall finish my 2023 federal and state tax returns soon.

I finally lay down at 4:00 and soon Suzette arrived and we were cheered by the unity of the Democratic Party around Kamala Harris.

I watched her speech to the NCAA champions in the rose garden and her later remarks at Biden Headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. Both were impressive by their clarity of vision for the campaign and empathy for Joe Biden, who has done something for the good of the Nation, something that Donald Trump would never think to do. 

We watched the news and then at 7:00 Suzette made fried rice with PPI chicken breast and grilled steak with carrot strips, and chiffonade sliced snow peas.

Suzette wanted plum wine so I fetched the bottle of plum wine we bought on our trip to Michigan.

The plum wine was very a very refreshing addition to the meal.

After dinner we watched the Antique Roadshow and then Lawrence O’Donell and went to bed at 9:00 feeling much better about our country than we did Saturday. Lawrence announced the breaking news that Kamala had secured commitments of votes of a sufficient number delegates (1976) to win the Democratic nomination at the convention and $81,000,000 was raised from small donors in the first 24 hours and commitments from large donors exceeded $250,000,000.

It looks like the Democrats might be able to win the election if the enthusiasm and support Kamala has gained in the last 24 hours continues for the next 106 days until the election.

From two old white men this election has shifted course dramatically and just might result in the first Black and first South Asian American being elected President.

Bon Appetit