May 3, 2014 Beef noodle soup and photos of garden

May 3, 2014 Beef noodle soup and Garden photos

This morning we went to the Farmer’s Market at around 8:45, which this week was located in the parking lot behind Java Joe’s because the City still has the park at 8^th and Central fenced off to grow grass for the summer.  A lovely new addition to the new location is a crepe making stand erected by Java Joe's, next to their restaurant beside the parking lot where they were making fresh buckwheat crepes,  I felt like I was at a Farmer's Market in Brittany, France.

Suzette gave out cards announcing her Summer Solstice Local organic food meal which is set for June 21^st this year.   I bought a 12 oz. bottle of honey produced in the south valley in the shape of a bear with a squeeze top for $6.00.  I also bought an almond croissant from my favorite French baker for $3.50.  Suzette dropped me off at home and I ate ½ of the croissant with a couple of cups of tea with milk and sugar.   I could only eat ½ of the rich buttery croissant before I began to feel poorly, so I lay down and read the new New Yorker for a couple of hours and then I rode to Rio Bravo and back and showered.  At around 2:30 I became hungry and decided the best way to readjust my gut to New Mexico was to eat some fresh vegetables from our garden.   The garden is beautiful and voluntarily productive this year.  Here are some pictures.

I decided to make a noodle soup using all fresh ingredients from our garden.  I picked a stalk of lovage, five stalks of celery, a yellow onion, two carrots, a basket full of chard and a garlic plant.  I chopped up the garlic, onion, celery and carrots and sautéed that mirapoix in butter and olive oil.  Then I added  water to the pot and a beef bouillon cube.   After another twenty minutes I added some slices of rib eye beef steak and about five baby portabella mushrooms sliced.  Still later I added the noodles (a bunch of rice sticks, a bundle of mung bean noodles and a round of vegetarian wheat noodles and finally I added the chard and lovage and cooked that for another twenty minutes. 

The soup's flavor could have been greatly enhanced with some brown miso and tofu, but I ate a quick bowl of soup, while watching California Crimson comfortably win the Kentucky Derby and ran to the Bike Coop to fetch my tandem by 5:00.  Greg did such a good job working on my old Andy Gilmour tandem that I stayed for an hour and watched him, mesmerized, as he worked through the issues needed to be addressed: tightening the front stem, hammering the outer sprocket to straighten it, greasing the chain, adjusting the gear shift settings, examining the sprockets and chain for wear, tightening the 48 spokes on the rear rim and the gear box closure that holds the ball bearings for the cranks for the peddles, and re-taping the handle bars. 

Bikes are like cars, the more you do the better they perform.

When I got home I ate another bowl of soup and began to feel a bit better.  Suzette could not eat anything except a buttered piece of toast and commented that there must be a bug going around that has affected us (When I offered to open a bottle of red wine so we could eat some of the new wedge of delicata cheese with bread and wine, she made a very weird face and said she could only eat a piece of bread).   

I am not sure whether I should thank the bug or the need to readjust to New Mexico’s food and water or Michael Pollan’s new book Cooked, but one or all of those factors has influenced me to eat the right kind of food and it is happening.  I knew when I paid $6.00 for 12 oz. of local honey, which is delicious by the way. 

     

Suzette went to bed around 9:00 and I lay down and fell fast to sleep at 10:00.

Bon Appétit