April 24 and 25, 2016 Sunday Brunch – French Toast and Bacon, Dinner – Vichyssoise with Garden Micro Greens Garnish

April 24 and 25, 2016. Sunday Brunch – French Toast and Bacon, Dinner –  Vichyssoise with Garden Micro Greens Garnish

Monday Lunch – Vinaigrette, Dinner – Grilled Marinated Lamb Chops with Steamed Cauliflower and a Tomato, Cucumber, and Onion chopped salad with a Sweet and Sour Dressing

Sunday morning Suzette worked in the garden.  After the news shows I joined her and we strengthened the strings contained the tender young shoots of peas, planted pole beans and lettuce, and folded the plastic sheeting we used to cover the raised beds during the winter.

At 11:00 I went to the kitchen to help Willy make brunch.  He wanted to make French Toast with the slightly stale French baguette pieces left in the fridge. We decided to fry bacon also.

We put 8 thick cut Kirtland Applewood smoked bacon slices into a large skillet and fried them. Then Willy and I mixed two eggs with about an equal amount of milk plus a T. of sugar, a dash of vanilla and two dashes of cinnamon in a pie pan.  He heated butter over medium heat and soaked the bread in the batter and then cooked the French toast over moderate heat until it firmed and turned a golden color. He also cooked the bacon to crisp.

I squeezed three glasses of fresh orange juice.  We watched Leicester beat Swansea 4 to 0 to take a big step closer to the Championship of the Premier League in England and then ate lunch.  Will Phipps came by to take Willy to soccer at 12:00.  We were both busy during the afternoon.  I worked on a pleading in my water case and Suzette went shopping for clothes for our trip.  

We snacked on ham salad on Ritz crackers around 5:00 so we're not terribly hungry and definitely did no want to cook.  We decided upon a bowl of cold Vichyssoise and Suzette went to the garden and picked tatsoi, cress, and chives, chopped them and! garnished each bowl of Vichyssoise with the chopped micro green salad;. a wonderful complement to the cool soup. As Suzette said, “Soup and salad all in one bowl.”  We liked the cool flavorful soup with its bits of chopped greens.  

April 25, 2016 I ate my usual yogurt, granola, milk, and blackberries for breakfast.  Aaron Lohmann came by at noon and delivered a check for my first distribution from the land development we are doing with the Village of  Los Lunas and SODA, so we invited Willy to join us and we went to Vinaigrette for lunch.  

I ordered my usual Frisée Salad.  Today I finally ordered it properly.  I said I wanted extra lardons and wanted them crisp.  The lardons were crisp and delicious, rather than soggy and greasy.  Aaron ordered an Omega Salad and Willy ordered a vegetable salad with half of a Reuben sandwich.  We all enjoyed our lunches.  I have concluded that what sets Vinaigrette apart from other restaurants is its sauces; its dressings, soups, and the sauces it makes for its sandwiches.  I said hello to John Lewinger and waved at our neighbor, Sandy.

   Willy's Rueben and salad

For dinner I had a package of about a dozen lamb chops I bought at Costco last Friday for $6.99/lb. and had marinated in red wine (St. Clair 2004 Refosco  that we had deemed undrinkable), 1 ½ T. Olive oil, and the leaves from several sprigs each of oregano and Rosemary.  The lamb had been marinating in the meat drawer of our fridge for two days in a freezer bag that I had flipped several times.  So they were a little mushy or saturated with marinade

We are at one of those inflection points before we go on a trip when we stop buying food and try to use everything fresh, which often creates strange combinations.  This Dinner was a good example of that.  At 5:00 I realized we were not going to eat the rest of the 6 or7 lb. baked ham in our garage fridge or the bucket of Vichyssoise that we have left, even though we have been eating them for the last week.  I had been calling Susan Palmer to give her and Charlie the soup and ham and finally reached her Monday at 5:00.  She was kind enough to come over with a large plastic bowl sufficient to hold the gallon of Vichyssoise,  We toured the garden and pointed out the cress, tatsoi, and chives that we had used for the micro green garnish plus all the salad greens and invited her to come pick.  

Susan demurred taking any ham, so I sliced about three lbs. of  it into sandwich thin slices and, following Susan’s suggestion, froze the bone with the generous amount of connected meat for use in the future to cook a pot of beans.  After Susan left, having solved the ham and soup problem, we turned our attention to the rest of the fresh vegetables in the fridge.  There was a head of cauliflower I had bought at Sprouts last week, a couple of cucumbers, and several large slicing tomatoes that became immediate candidates for consumption, so we decided to steam the cauliflower to eat with the lamb and then Suzette could mix  the remaining cauliflower with preserved lemon for a cold salad for another meal with the PPI lamb chops.  I decided to make one of my favorite salads of diced, cucumber, onion, and tomatoes marinated in a sweet and sour vinaigrette dressing.  We had two nice shallots, so I substituted a shallot for onion and chopped 2/3 of a large cucumber and two medium tomatoes.  Suzette made a wonderful German style white vinegar, olive oil, and sugar dressing and I tossed the ingredients in the dressing in a bowl.  I had picked six or seven chives during our garden tour with Susan that I thinly sliced and added to the salad mixture for color and another onion flavor. 

I deflowered the head of cauliflower.  Suzette put them into the steamer and started steaming the cauliflower flowerets. 

Then Suzette grilled the lamb chops to medium rare and I fetched a bottle of 2012 Famille Perrin Reserve Cotes Du Rhone red wine (Total Wine $7.99 or $8.99 less 20% on sale) from the basement and opened its screw cap. When the chops and cauliflower were  ready we had a lovely meal and watched the Antiques Roadshow and the Democratic Pennsylvania Town Hall meetings of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

After dinner Suzette made us chocolate ice cream sundaes by adding warm chopped hazelnuts she toasted in a small skillet with some sea salt to scoops of chocolate ice cream drizzled with Hershey’s syrup and garnished with fresh blackberries.  I put a dash of cognac on my sundae and Suzette sipped a glass of cognac with her sundae.  We finally sat down and watched the last of Hillary’s interview with Rachel Maddow and began to relax and realized we were beginning the transition from work to vacation, even though we both have two busy days of work left.

We decided to soak in the hot tub to accelerate the relaxation and went to bed a bit after 10:00.

Bon Appetit