May 27, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Pork Salad. Dinner - Leftover BBQ Pork country Style Ribs with Cole Slaw and Beans and Rice.

May 27, 2026 Breakfast - Granola.  Lunch - Pork Salad. Dinner - Leftover BBQ Pork country Style Ribs with Cole Slaw and Beans and Rice.

Today was a lazy restful day with a walk around the block at 12:30 and 5:30 that helped accumulate just over 3100 steps.

I was awakened by Suzette as she Jeff at 8:15 and around 9:00 i ate the leftover Chicken Noodle Soup with three added dumplings and ringlets of two green onions  for garnish. After two big bowls of soup and a mug of hot green tea I was ready for the day.

Lunch was the most adventurous meal as I cleaned out the last of the grape tomatoes, and romaine lettuce plus 1/4 of a cucumber and the last 1/5 of a red onion, plus four slices of roasted pork tenderloin diced. I made my favorite Dijonnaise dressing of Dijon mustard olive oil, and red wine vinegar plus a sprig of tarragon, a sprig og thyme, and a clove of garlic from the garden minced.

I also toasted and buttered three small slices of baguette and drank water with the salad around 2:00.

The market pulled back today and My portfolio lost about .18%, as Nvidia’s was under pressure again and Qualcomm lost over $20.00 per share.

Activity is beginning in the Lower Rio Grande Adjudication again with a settlement of the Original 141 US Supreme Court case of Texas vs. New Mexico, which I read a bit of today.

As for dinner, it was a repeat of the other night. Suzette heated up the BBQ ribs and mixed some of the beans she previously cooked with leftover rice and added 1/2 of the small amount of leftover Cole slaw and we split a Carlsberg green tall boy for a quick dinner. The only addition was that I had added the liquid from the fruit salad bowl to enhance the flavor and smooth out the BBQ sauce. 

It is not a very exciting day of food when the most exciting dish is BBQ sauce, but that was the tenor of the day, other than the fact that the weather was perfect for walking, cool in the shade and pleasingly warm in the sunlight.

Perhaps a day without strong physical or mental exertion is curative as I return to full capacity.

I did read the last 20 pages of The Lover and loved it.

Bon Appetit

May 26, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Mary and Tito’s Dinner - Chicken Noodle Soup with Dumplings and pork and Snow peas

May 26, 2026 Breakfast - Granola. Lunch - Mary and Tito’s  Dinner - Chicken Noodle Soup with Dumplings and pork and Snow peas

I ate a bowl of granola with milk and tropical fruit salad as the market opened.

I then worked on my taxes until 10:00 and then read The Lover, our book club book for this month until 12:00 when Peter arrived to go to lunch.

We drove to Mary and Tito’s and found a great parking spot near the door. We did not need to wait for a table either.

Peter ordered his new favorite, a bowl of red chili with beans and beef. I ordered a taco plate, but expanded it to three tacos today. We were hungry and we ate quickly without much conversation. We both love Mary and Tito’s.

I drove Peter back to my house to pick up the jar of herring in wine sauce I bought for him.

I then watched the market close and found that it was a good day with my portfolio increasing .88%.

At 3:30 I walked around the block in a very light drizzle, what Swedes would call “dissa”.

When I returned I watched the news until Suzette came home.

At 5:30 we agreed that I would make Chicken noodle soup with dumplings, pork, and snow peas, so we went out to the garden and picked a basket full of peas.

There were so many, Suzette was able save some to freeze, shuck some to gather peas for pea soup, and boil some to make a pea broth.

I diced a country style rib and we destemmed a small pile of snow peas, and I minced a shallot.

Suzette went to the garage and fetched the container of chicken broth.

I then sliced a cup of Napa cabbage and destemmed eight shiitake mushrooms and thinly sliced three green onions.

In the large casserole I sautéed the pork and shallot in peanut and sesame oil. Then we added the mushrooms and snow peas and cabbage. Then we added the pea broth and about 1 1/2 cup of chicken broth. We then added two bundles of rice vermicelli noodles and cooked the mixture for about ten minutes until the noodles began to soften. Finally I added about ten chicken broth Ling Ling dumplings and 1 heaping T. of red miso and the white parts of the green onion and cooked the mixture for another ten minutes until the dumplings were cooked and no longer doughy.

The soup was delicious and very similar to what we order at Lime Vietnamese Restaurant. There was some left even after a second bowl.

I took out the trash and put the chicken broth back in the garage fridge, which resulted in a total of over 3500 steps today.

After dinner we watched a history of Seabiscuit, the great race horse, and hen I drank another cup of green tea and watch Las Vegas sweep the Western NHL title in 4 games over the Avalanche.

I then blogged and went to bed at 11:00.

I felt good that we had replicated and even improved one of my favorite Vietnamese soups.

Bon Appetit

May 25, 2026 Breakfast - Granola and fruit salad. Lunch - Mapo Dofu and Rice. Dinner - Pork and beans

Slept until 8:00 this morning. Suzette left for work and I ate a bowl of granola with milk and tropical fruit salad and watched TV until 12:30 when I showered and shaved and dressed.

When Suzette arrived at 1:00 she heated the leftover Mapo Dofu and rice for lunch.

After lunch we planted the Spanish Broom plant Suzette recently bought in the back yard .

Then I rested until 3:00 when I started working on my taxes until 4:00 when we watched Ari. At 4:30 we went to view a house that Willy was looking to buy on 8th north of Lomas.

At 5:00 we watched a show on PBS analyzing the possible endings to the war with Iran.

Then at 6:00 we brought in the casserole full of the pork and beans Suzette cooked yesterday with black eyed peas, black beans, chopped up country style pork, and chorizo with several slices of toasted baguette.

We drank the rest of a bottle Kirkland Bordeaux Superiore.

 

At 7:00 we watched the antique roadshow.

Later while we watched the Hurricane play Montreal in game three of the Eastern playoffs, I ate a bowl of chocolate ice cream doused with maraschino cherry juice. 

We went to bed at 9:00.

Bon Appetit

May 24, 2026 Snack - Pain au Chocolate Brunch - Eggs Benedict. Snack - Herring Sandwich Dinner with Monica and Aaron - Grilled T-bone, Roasted Potatoes with Mint and Roasted Asparagus

May 24, 2026 Snack - Pain au Chocolate Brunch - Eggs Benedict. Snack - Herring Sandwich  Dinner with Monica and Aaron - Grilled T-bone, Roasted Potatoes with Mint and Roasted Asparagus

I awakened around 6:30 and watched the news and drank a latte macchiato and ate a pain au chocolate.

Then at 9:00 Willy arrived with his computer and we watched two of the ten PL Final day matches, mainly Tottenham’s match and West Ham’s match to see which would be relighted. Both won their match so West Han was relegated because it was 2 points below Tottenham in the standings.

Then we made brunch at 11:00. I made Hollandaise sauce using Julia’s  recipe but with three sprigs of tarragon to give it a slightly tarragon flavor and fried four slices of bacon and toasted three slices of the fresh Country style loaf we bought from Le Quiche yesterday at the Farmer’s Market. Suzette poached eggs in a boiling pot of water and white vinegar. The resulting combination of poached eggs on buttered toast garnished with fried bacon, covered with tarragon flavored  Hollandaise was magical. 

Willy then dug a hole for the Spanish broom plant in the back yard and left.

We napped until 1:30. 

At 2:00 I made a herring sandwich. I toasted a slice of the Country style bread and smeared it with sour cream and the garnished it with thin slices of red onion and Vita in Wine Sauce that I bought at Walmart Neighborhood Market.

I then completed the tax worksheet for the Florence Simon Trust and sent a copy to Billy.

At 4:00 we started cooking dinner. I sliced a pile of chestnut, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms and sautéed them in a pot until lightly cooked. Then Suzette added about 2 cups of the Cream of Mushroom Soup we made Friday and simmered the combination to reduce it into a sauce.

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I then diced seven or eight Yukon Gold potatoes and placed them into a Pyrex baking dish to which Suzette tossed them in olive oil and roasted the diced potatoes in an oven for an hour.

Suzette then rinsed the two bunches of large organic asparagus I had bought at Smith’s last week when I bought the T-bone steaks.  We snapped the rough ends off and Suzette rolled them in olive oil in a baking pan and roasted them in the oven to insure their even cooking, rather than cooking them over the propane grill flame.

At 5:30 we decided to make a canapé of Gravad lax on baguette smeared with goat cheese. As I was cutting the lax and Suzette was toasting the baguette slices, Aaron and Monica arrived with a bottle of Gruet’s Zozobra sparkling wine from the Memorial Day Wine festival at the Balloon Park. 

Monica then went to the garden and picked a basket of fresh mint. We destemmed the leaves of mint and I minced about 1 cup of mint that Suzette tossed with the warm roasted potatoes.

The Zozobra wine was warm so Suzette took it to the fridge in the garage and brought back a chilled bottle of Juve’ and Camps Reserva Cava. Suzette filled glasses of the light bubbly cava and we toasted to a happy Memorial Day Weekend and sipped cava and ate a lax canapé for the 20 minutes  it took to broil the 1 1/2 inch steak on the propane grill.

After I de-boned and sliced the steak we filled our plates with slices of steak covered with mushroom sauce and a pile of minted potatoes and I served each plate four roasted asparagus.

I then opened a bottle of Kirkland Bordeaux Superior red wine and we took the wine and our plates to the table in the garden under the gazebo and ate a lovely meal  with lots of pleasant conversation of cross-cultural aspects of Monica’s life in Romania and our American lifestyles, such comparing family gardens.  

After we finished our dinners I sliced andn toasted three slices of country style bread that I cut in half and put on a board with a wedge of Affinois cheese, a wedge of Manchego cheese and a wedge of Iberico cheese and opened another bottle of Bordeaux Superiore wine and we ate a cheese course in the garden until 8:30 when the mosquitoes arrived.

We said goodnight around 9:00 and after cleaning the kitchen a bit and putting up the leftovers and watching Las Vegas win the third game of the NHL Western Playoffs for the Stanley Cup, we went to bed around 10:00 after a day with two good meals.

I realize that we love good food and we enjoy cooking good food.

While we were prepping tonight’s dinner Suzette was preparing a pot of beans with onion, carrots, chorizo, and chopped country style pork ribs that she cooked while we were cooking dinner. So we often cook future meal ingredients while we cook current meal ingredients. That allows us to plan meals sequentially. For example, the beans will probably be eaten with the leftover BBQ ribs and BBQ sauce from last night and the roasted asparagus from today’s meal for our Memorial Day dinner tomorrow night.

Bon Appetit