November 30, 2015 breakfast – Granola with yogurt and fruit, Lunch - Clam Chowder, Dinner at Charlie a and Susan’s house

NNovember 30, 2015 breakfast – Granola with  yogurt and fruit, Lunch - Clam Chowder, Dinner at Charlie a and Susan’s house

Breakfast was straight forward, Kirtland Greek yogurt, some of the pineapple and oranges I cut up yesterday with the juice from the fruit plus a little mango nectar.

I then went to the Emergency Room at Presbyterian Hospital to be x rayed and luckily my arm was not fractured from the fall from my bike last week.  Then I went home and fixed a can of the Progresso clam chowder with the addition of the PPI clam sauce from last week’s Little Neck Clam dish, some thyme from the garden, and the Tbsp. of PPI Amontillado sherry from last night. I also made cheese sandwiches with some P’tit Basque and Beaufort cheese on toasted pieces of French bread.

I called Charlie and Susan and invited myself over for dinner.  I started to get dressed to ride until I found out it was 43 with an wind chill of 38 so from 4:00 until 6:00 I rested and read The Mayflower by Pritchard.

At 6:00 I gathered up a bottle of Chilean Santiago Station Devil Back Cabernet Sauvignon I bought yesterday for $4.00 at Total Wine, the remaining twenty or so stalks of asparagus, and a couple of ears of corn I bought at Sprouts last week and walked over to the Palmer’s.

Charlie and I drank gin and tonics and nibbled on pistachios and cheese and crackers while Susan steamed the asparagus and heated up some PPI Boeuf Bourguignon and a Mexican rice Susan had made with a Rick Bayless recipe garnished with fresh chopped parsley.  Susan also made a fresh green salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and mushrooms.  We dressed the salad with a commercial Cesar Salad dressing that was quite good.

The boeuf bourguignon was delicious with mushrooms and pieces of fried bacon and tender shredded beef that had been cooked until the meat fell apart in red wine.  

We talked about many things but the most interesting thing was the strength training Charlie is doing on a weight machine he has 15 minutes a day that has doubled the strength In his bad leg that was injured by polio when he was young.  

We talked about the Middle East and a myriad of other topics, mostly political.  I awakened at 2:00 with the realization that American exceptional is a curse on the world order in one sense. All we need to do is to look at Russia’s form of Russian exceptionalism in Syria as it comes up against Turkish  exceptionalism, not to mention the support of traditionally Sunni nations in the region, such as Saudi Arabia.  Nation is even an imprecise term because in many cases we are dealing with tribal and sectarian religious allegiances, not nations in the Middle East. 

Exceptionalism is not a sound basis for a foreign policy if it gets in the way of negotiated multilateral solutions.  As most responsible diplomats say, “there can be no solely military solution without diplomacy.”

For dessert Susan served ice cream and chocolate brownies baked at Whole Foods with Darjeeling tea.

I opened the wine buy Charlie and Susan passed on the wine.   It was fine, but rather fruity and jammy, lacking that definition that many good Napa cabs have at ten times the price.

At 9:00 I said goodnight. 

Bon Appetit