November 22, 2015 Breakfast – Ham and Potato Burritos, shopping at Costco, and Dinner with Ricardo and Cynthia

November 22, 2015 Breakfast – Ham and Potato Burritos, shopping at Costco, and Dinner with Ricardo and Cynthia

Suzette made ham and potato burritos for breakfast.  Suzette made her usual Bloody Mary and I drank peppermint tea.  Mario arrived with a helper and moved the fridge from the TV room to the garage and moved the old fridge into the driveway.

I lay down for an hour’s nap around 11:30.

Around 1:00 we drove to Costco.  It was as crowded with holiday shoppers loading up for their big Thanksgiving dinners as I have ever seen.  The bakery was bringing carts of pumpkin pies out almost continuously and folks were filling their carts with all types of food and wine like there was some national feeding frenzy, which, of course, there is.

Suzette had to shop for Santa Rosa for a week’s meals, including Thanksgiving, so we filled a basket along with all the other folks.  We bought nice asparagus ($6.99),  a Rioja Consejo Reserva for $7.99, an eight can pack of Progresso New England Clam Chowder for $7.29, fresh Dover sole, dishwashing detergent, and heavy cream for our house.

After having eaten ham for three days, we decided to prepare fresh fish for dinner and the Dover Sole looked lovely and was only $5.99/lb.

When we returned home and unloaded the car, I prepared a bowl of the clam Chowder and enjoyed it.

Cynthia said she was bringing a squash dish, so we decided to look at how the plants we had planted and covered with plastic in the raised beds were doing.  We were pleasantly surprised when we removed the bricks weights and pulled back the plastic to see thriving beds of plants.  The bed of lettuces looked ready to eat and so did small red radishes, so we picked a basket of assorted lettuces and Suzette picked a bunch of red radishes.  We watered the beds and recovered them.

I went to the basement and fetched the bottle of Gavi Princessa and took the shrimp I had bought at Albertson’s last Wednesday from the fridge in the garage’s freezer.

At 4:30 Cynthia and Ricardo arrived with their baked Spaghetti Squash and a bottle of Redwood Creek Sauvignon Blanc and appetizers of olives and hummus with sliced vegetables and pita chips that she put out on the table and we were ready to play bocce.  When we picked lettuce, Suzette had raked and removed leaves from the bocce court.

We poured glasses of wine and went out to the bocce court for a game.  

When we finished the game to eleven, the sun had set and it was darkening quickly, so we returned to the kitchen.  

Suzette had decided to make rolled sole filets stuffed with a shrimp stuffing.  Suzette started by grinding the PPI hardened French bread slices from Thursday inti bread crumbs.  I peeled seven or eight shrimp and went to the garden and picked five or six sprigs of fresh thyme and three stalks of garlic chives.  I de-stemmed and put the thyme and shrimp into the Cuisinart where Suzette was mixing the stuffing with the bread crumbs, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and a bit of butter. When the stuffing was made, Suzette shaped it into enough minds to stuff the 7 or 8 sole filets and rolled the filets round each mound of stuffing.  We poured Vya white vermouth over each filet and Suzette rigged up the steamer oven to steam bake the stuffed filets.  

While the filets were cooking Cynthia made a salad with the lettuce from the garden, plus some sliced cucumbers she had brought for the hummus and she sliced the garlic chives and made her wonderful balsamic and Olive oil dressing in the salad bowl.

When the stuffed fish filets had cooked, we removed them from the steamer oven, but more importantly, Suzette removed the drip catch pan with all the cooking juices and vermouth, which amounted to about a cup.  Suzette then heated 2 Tbsp. of butter in an enameled sauce pan with one heaping Tbsp. Of flour for several minutes to make a roux. I then added the cooking juices slowly as Suzette whisked the roux into a Béchamel Sauce. Mew finished the sauce with a dash of vermouth and heavy cream.  Suzette then plated a stuffed filet and ladled sauce over each filet. We each spooned heated squash and salad onto our plates.  

Here are some photos.

  Cynthia, Ricardo, and the appetizers

  Suzette and the kitchen 

  Cynthia's spaghetti squash 

   The fresh greens' salad

   The stuffed Dover sole filets

    Cynthia's plate

 Ricardo opened a bottle o Pinot Grigio after we finished the Gavi Pricessa.

After dinner Suzette served vanilla ice cream with some of the rhubarb and blackberry compote she made last week.  The compote was delicious.  I like blackberries cooked better than fresh.

I served the last of a bottle of Londer sweet Gewertztraimer with dessert.

Bon Appetit