Today was Suzette’s Honoring The Seniors of Valencia County Day at the Center for Ageless Living, which is always a fun event. This year there were over 100 attendees over 75 years of age. The center serves a free lunch and entertainment is provided by Senior Line Dancers and musicians and awards of recognition are given to the country's senior Olympians.
I went to East Ocean for lunch and ordered my favorite dish, Scallops in Lobster Sauce. The lobster Sauce combines egg, ground pork, chicken bouillon and green onion rings. Fresh chunks of sea scallop are cooked into the sauce to flavor it and it is served with a mound of fried rice.
The trick is to mix the sauce and rice together to fully emulsify the rice with sauce as shown in this photo, because that makes a beautifully flavored rice that can be picked up with chop sticks. The dish is served with sweet and sour chicken and is $6.75 for scallops and $5.75 with its usual shrimp. I love this dish, especially when the chicken bouillon is less salty.
At 2:30 Cynthia came by to check the progress of the kitchen remodel. Unfortunately, the cabinets are not yet in, but most of the painting is finished.
A little after 3:30 Suzette arrived and we drove to Total Wine at 4:00. I-40 was crowded and so was the parking lot at Total Wine on Uptown Blvd. but once inside, the store is so vast that there is little crowding, except around the bar where there is free wine and spirits tasting.
I picked 19 bottles of wine, mostly roses and Southern Rhone Reds plus a six pack of Ace pear cider, and Suzette picked up six bottles of sparkling wine for her cruise with her sister in October. All of my choices were $15.00 or less and with a 15% discount came to $284.00.
At around 5:00 we checked out and drove to Gruet Winery's tasting room for our monthly free wine tasting, now that we are members of its Wine Club. Suzette tasted the regular sparkling wine tasting and I tasted the Tete du cuvée tasting. Three different tastings offered, the other being a still wine tasting. The Tete du Cuvée tasting includes small tastes of each of Gruet's eight best wines for $13.00 and the sparkling offers seven of Gruet’s sparkling wines. We spent a lovely 1 ½ hours tasting all the wines and talking to Justin, who is the director of the a Wine Club, about the Wine Club and the wines. What fun!
After stopping at Costco for gas we drove home. While tasting we had decided to eat alight dinner of a melted cheese sandwich of Camembert cheese and duck foie gras on the fresh whole wheat sourdough bread made by Bosque Bakery that Suzette bought last Saturday at the Farmer’s Market.
While I marked each bottle with the price and date of purchase, Suzette buttered the bread and toasted it in a skillet on the Bayou Cooker and smeared one slice with foie gras and the other slice with Camembert and laid sliced of red onion between the slices of bread. I opened one of the newly acquired bottles of Famille Perrin Reserve Cotes du Rhone, a blend of Granache and Syrah produced by the famous Southern Rhone wine making family that makes Chateau Beaucastel. Chateau Beaucastel is around $80.00 to $100.00 per bottle, while Famille Perrin is $7.99 per bottle. With the 15% discount it is $6.79 and my current favorite red wine.
Suzd a handful of cherry tomatoes from our garden to eat with the sandwiches and I poured glasses of red wine. The wine overpowered the mild flavors of the sandwiches, but reminded us of lunches in the South of France.
After our dinner al fresco, we went inside to watch Charlie Rose’s This Week and Washington Week and I made a dessert of fresh green and mission figs stuffed with goat cheese that I served with Santiago Station Cabernet Sauvignon. The softer fruitier wine went better with the cheese and fresh fruit.
Later we ate bowls of ice cream with chocolate sauce, watched a movie and went to bed at 10:30.
Bon Appetit
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