August 4, 2014 New Fountain, Lunch Chama River Brewing Co. Dinner Hamburger Steak with Blue Cheese and Sautéed Mushrooms with Green Beans and Cucumber Salad

August 4, 2014 New Fountain,   Lunch   Chama River Brewing Co.   Dinner Hamburger Steak with Blue Cheese and Sautéed Mushrooms with Green Beans and Cucumber Salad

I met Ioanna and Aaron for lunch at Chama River Brewing Co. on Pan American Hwy.  We all ordered the

Tenderloin Cobb Salad	15.00
Grilled beef tenderloin, mixed greens with chipotle vinaigrette, bleu cheese, tomatoes, hard-boiled egg, avocado and bacon

which is an excellent summer lunch dish, combining warm slices of grilled tenderloin with the cool salad.

Although the meat was a little tough this time, we all enjoyed our salads.

When Suzette arrived at home today she immediately went out to the garden to finish her fountain project, while I continued to work at my computer.

Suzette came back in a little after 6:00 and asked what I wanted for dinner and I responded a hamburger steak with blue cheese, which we had orchestrated with our purchases yesterday of hamburger meat and a half wheel of American blue cheese at Costco.  Suzette asked, “How big do you want your hamburger?

I answered, “Big”.

So Suzette made two ¾ lb. burgers and grilled them while I made a cucumber salad with a fresh cucumber from our garden and the addition of white balsamic vinegar, 2 Tbsps. of red vermouth, ½ tsp. of sugar and ¼ tsp. of salt and 2 Tbsps. of white onion and the leaves from two sprigs of oregano.

I then sliced three of the portabella mushrooms I had bought at Sprouts on Thursday and more onion and two cloves of garlic and more oregano I had picked from our garden and Suzette sautéed those in a bit of olive oil and butter.

When Suzette flipped the hamburgers she placed a slice of blue cheese on each so that it would melt into the meat.

I wanted a good bottle of wine, so I fetched a bottle of 2010 Clos du Val Cabernet Sauvignon from the Stags Leap area of Napa Valley.  Clos du Val is much more affordable at $22.69 at Costco than its pricy neighbors, Chimney Rock, Stags Leap and Shafer, and an equally smooth drinking wine in my opinion.  I guess I would agree with the description on the label that it is a world class wine.  It surely has an elegance and lovely finish that I like.

When the hamburgers came off the grill Suzette plated them and garnished them with the mushrooms.  I decided I wanted a green vegetable so I quickly de-stemmed some haricot vert that I had bought at Sprouts and put them into a plastic bowl with a bit of water and a pad of butter and microwaved them for 2:44 minutes to blanch them and we added those to our plates.  I added a dab of catsup to mine because that is what I have always done since I began eating hamburger steaks as a child growing up in Texas. 

In fact, I remember a great catsup story.  A part of my family mythology includes the food story about when my Dad, who also grew up in Texas, went to New Orleans on his honeymoon with my Mother they went to Arnaud’s and ordered Oysters Rockefeller and Dad asked for catsup.  The waiter got the Chef and the chef asked Dad why he wanted to put catsup on the Oysters Rockefeller and Dad said, “I like anything better with catsup.”  That is how I felt when I added catsup to the delightful combination of melted blue cheese and sautéed mushrooms.  The combination of the cheese and mushrooms was delicious alone, but tasted better with catsup.  I guess that is why we call such acquired tastes ‘Cultural”, because we do not question them, or more appropriately they are so hardwired into our DNA that we cannot thing to alter them.

 When we carried our plates out to the gazebo by the pond in the garden for dinner I discovered that Suzette had reworked the fountain area, that had been dysfunctional for the last year or three, so that a graceful arch of water came out of the mouth of a newly added ceramic fish that sat in a pot of sweet potato plants and fell into the Pacific Giant Clam shell at the end of the pond and trickled lazily out of the shell into the pond.  I am sure our two goldfish liked the fountain as well as I did.  Here is a picture:   

After dinner we sat and drank another glass of wine which was just as good without food, a great sipping wine, and watched our new fountain as the sky darkened and the solar lights Suzette installed came on to illuminate the pond and fountain and our fish played in the pond.  I offered a toast to Suzette’s diligence and creativity.  One of Suzette’s employees, Nancy gave her the three fish that spout water, so perhaps one day we shall have two fish spouting water out of their mouths into the Giant Clam Shell.

Later in the evening, I ate the last of the spumoni ice cream with a bit of lemon curd for dessert.

Bon Appétit