November 19, 2015 Lunch- Vietnam 2000, Dinner – Book Club

November 19, 2015 Lunch- Vietnam 2000,  Dinner – Book Club

I went to ABQ Health Partners, my new medical provider for a flu shot at 11:00 and, since I had not eaten any breakfast, decided to brunch down the street at Vietnam 2000 afterwards.  I ordered No 21 as I walked in, saving the owner the trouble of bringing me a menu, and seated myself at my favorite table by the window with the exquisite view of the Sandias, with their last vestiges of the first snow of the Winter.

I was hungry and ate the entire bowl of vermicelli rice noodles, grilled pork, fried egg rolls, salad, herbs, and fish sauce as I enjoyed the view and the new New Yorker’s Talk of the Town.  

After lunch I drove to Pastian’s Bakery and bought a dozen day old dinner rolls, a dozen butter flake rolls and a bag of broken biscochitos.  

I then drove to the bank to withdraw money from the ATM and then home.  It was a relatively warm sunny afternoon, so at 3:00 I rode to Rio Bravo.  I noticed that many of the sand hill cranes in the fields were standing up on hillocks warming themselves in the warm afternoon sun.  Here is a picture of some of them.

I started preparing the snacks for the book club at 4:30 by making guacamole with 4 or 5 avocados I had bought in the last few days that had softened to a creamy texture, plus three cloves of garlic from our garden we had stored in the fridge, pressed, 1/3 of  a small onion minced, a couple dashes of Cholulu hot sauce, a small handful of fresh chopped cilantro and the juice of two limes.

Suzette arrived shortly after 4:30 with the coffee pot from her office.  She tried to put the spiral cut ham into the steamer oven, but it was too large to fit, so she filled the roasting pan with water and put it in the oven.  After one hour of baking the internal temperature of the ham was still only 98 degrees so we baked for 1 ½ hours until 7:00, which is when the Book Club was scheduled to begin.  Suzette filled bowls with pretzels, corn chips, potato chips, cranberry sauce, mayonnaise for the ham, chocolate covered peanuts, Lindt  Lindor chocolates, and mixed nuts.  I fetched three kinds of mustard and prepared the cheese board by peeling the ½ round of French brie, Pont L’Eveque, Beaufort, and a small round of P’tit Basque and unwrapped the blue cheese and opened the container of Old Windmill Thyme flavored goat cheese spread.  I also assembled cheese slicers, knives and spreaders.  Suzette also put the biscochitos in a bowl and we heated 8 of each type of roll in the steamer oven and put them beside the ham.  Finally I sliced and toasted about 24 slices of Fano French bread and we put those in a pyrex baking dish covered with a tea towel. 

The table was set by the time Charlie Palmer arrived at 7:00.  We were nine and we gathered around the dining room table and talked and ate snacks and I put out a bottle of Du Boeuf Block Parcel French burgundy and the chilled bottle of Archer’s Summit rose when Keith Gilbert arrived.  When Tom Genomi arrived I poured him a glass of Wind Haven Pinot Gris.  

We had an interesting discussion around Up Front Bill Mauldin’s WWII book of commentary and cartoons he drew for Stars and Stripes while he was stationed in Italy and Southern France in 1944 and 1945.

I explained that I had been introduced to American Studies when I took William Goetzman’s course at UT in Austin in the 60’s which kindled an interest in first person narratives of history and described how my next two year’s book selections, Kit Carson’ Autobiography and Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums fit into that category. 

After the discussion around the book and a hilarious quiz by Keith Gilbert in which he gave a Bill Mauldin's 2010 Commemorative stamp to each person who correctly guessed the author of quotes related to WWII, I served coffee and my chocolate dessert with pouring custard.  We said goodnight by 10:00.  The dessert was moist and light from the folding in of the relatively stiff egg whites and storing the dessert in Suzette’s new glass domed pie container in the cool mud room, instead of the fridge. 

I was not sleepy, so I  stayed up and watched James Taylor on Austin City Limits, Jane Fonda be interviewed by Colbert, and an interesting panel of ISIS experts, Tim McGantis of the Brookings Institute,  Ian Fisher of the New York Times and a scholar who served on a government Foreign Affairs Committee discuss the situation and history in Iraq and Syria.

Finally, at 12:00 I went to bed after a day of stimulating food, exercise, and discussion. 

Bon Appetit