We woke up around 8:00 a.m. and visited with Mike and Catherine and Devin in the living room for a while before they had to go to their family Christmas celebration. Catherine brought us some goodies from Paris, where she lives and works for a website named girlsguidetoparis.com/. She is a friend of Kit and Jean Claude and was introduced to Mike by them. They brought us a small can of paté de foie gras d’oie (goose liver pate) from a specialty shop that sells foie gras named Valette, a ceramic jar of fleur de sel from Le Saunier de Carmargue [from the Aigues-Mortes (stagnant water) sea salt facility at the Rhone delta that has been in continuous production for at least the last 2400 years] and a bag of herbes de Provence marked with a label that said Bonheur (happiness) that I think may have been purchased at the small specialty store named Le Petit Bonheur le Chance. Three perfect gifts for foodies like us that will be greatly enjoyed.
When Mike, Catherine and Devin left we decided to make an
omelet with some of the PPIs. I sliced
up three large white mushrooms and two thin slices of yellow onion and minced
it and went to the garage fridge and fetched the block of Manchego cheese while
Suzette minced about ¼ cup of PPI ham.
Suzette then made a lovely ham, cheese, onion and mushroom
omelet that we ate with glasses of PPI Marques de Riscal white wine that a
guest had brought us last night.
Suzette was talking to Cynthia and they decided to get
together for dinner. So in the morning I
added some red wine to the two day old marinade of eight lamb chops (Costco
$6.99/lb.) made from olive oil, rosemary and garlic greens.
Around 5:30 we loaded up the PPI Mulled wine, roasted sweet
potatoes, pecans, lamb chops, some of Suzette’s pecan caramel cupcakes and
sautéed greens and drove to Cynthia and Ricardo’s house for dinner. Cynthia and Ricardo had made a fire in their
horno fireplace in the back yard, which is where I put the pot of Mulled wine. After it heated a bit, we tasted it and
decided that it was too sweet and too lemony, so we added about ½ bottle more
of Concha y Toro red wine to it and let it heat a bit more next to the
fire. Our second cup of mulled wine was
much better and we relaxed in front of the fire and talked and drank for a
while. After a while we decided to cook,
so Cynthia put the vegetables into the oven to warm and Ricardo turned up the
heat on the grill. Suzette and Ricardo
took over the grilling and I went in to the kitchen to watch Cynthia prepare a
salad of fresh greens, two kinds of tomatoes and cubed avocado. In about twenty minutes everything was ready. Cynthia put the warm dishes on the stove and we served ourselves buffet style.
Everything was delicious.
I did not use add any salt or pepper to the marinade because I like the
elegantly simple flavor of the lamb when it has been marinated and loses some
of its pungency and is delicately infused with the olive oil and wine and
herbs. We drank glasses of the PPI
Concha y Toro Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot blend and enjoyed sitting in their warm
kitchen.
After dinner we ate the caramel pecan cupcakes Suzette made with
cream cheese dough. 
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