September 10, 2016 Breakfast – Lax Sandwich, Lunch – PPI Lasagna with steamed string beans, Dinner - Grilled Pink Grouper with Sautéed string beans, green olives, pimiento, and red onion and Roasted Vegetables

September 10, 2016  Breakfast – Lax Sandwich, Lunch – PPI Lasagna with steamed string beans,  Dinner - Grilled Pink Grouper with Sautéed string beans, green olives, pimiento, and red onion and Roasted Vegetables

We spent much of the morning planning a little get away to Taos next weekend.  Suzette could not find a room through AirBNB or at a reasonable price through Hotels.com, so I finally suggested calling Kachina Lodge, which I suspected had rooms available and we reserved a room for the weekend a price much less than the price quoted by Hotels.com.  I wonder if AirBNB and Hotels.com have raised prices because they have achieved a near monopoly on reservation services for Taos rooms.  As I learned in Economics, monopoly Power will tend to reduce competition.  Think Epipen.

At 10:00 I made open faced sandwiches of sliced lax, tomato, red onion, and capers on slices of Fano Baguette smeared with California goat cheese and garnished with a sprig of fresh dill.  I had made the gravad lax on Wednesday and cured it for 48 hours, which rather a long time.  I usually cure for 18 to 24 hours, but there is no noticeable improvement from the longer time except the fish gets a little more complete cure and it is thinner due to the extra day of weight under the brick sitting on it.

We were both free today, so we decided to go shopping together.  We decided to make a big circle.  We dove to La Montanita Coop at Carlisle and Central, where we bought carrot juice, turmeric powder, mimolette cheese, Wasa  hard rye bread.  The coop has a new manager and the store is better merchandised and the presentation of items is better than I have ever seen.  

We then walked to the Herb Store, where Suzette bought an herb named shalavari made from ground asparagus root to make a golden tea with the turmeric powder at the Garden Gate Day Spa in Los Lunas and I bought ½ oz. of Chaga mushroom powder to try in tea.  Ian drinking some in a cup of ginger and green tea as I write this blog and it gives the tea an interesting decidedly musty woodsy mushroom flavor.

We then drove north on Carlisle to the recycling center behind Walmart and dumped our empty bottles.  Then we drove to Fano, because Suzette wanted bread for the Center, but it was closed. We then drove the few blocks to Goodwill, where Suzette found the plastic children’s pool she needed to hold the mass of water lilies that will need to be removed from the pond in order to clean and repainted it with a sealant.  I found a green Polo shirt for $5.00.

Then we drove to Home Depot, where Suzette bought light bulbs and PVC pipe connections for a plumbing repair at the Center and I researched pool sealants in the paint department.

We then drove down the block to Southwest Wholesale, where Suzette bought lard, pimientos, and capers. 

We then drove home a bit after 1:00 to eat lunch since we had PPI lasagna that we made and really enjoyed Thursday evening.  Instead of Cesar salad, we decided to prepare the string beans I bought at Sprouts on Wednesday.

We snapped the green beans and Suzette steamed the with a bit of water in a Pyrex baking dish covered with Saran in the microwave for a minute or two.

We ate a few of the string beans with our lasagna, but saved most of them for dinner, because Suzette wanted to make a Salad Nicoise with the Pink Grouper I had bought on Wednesday and some of he potatoes from the PPI roasted vegetables from last Sunday.

After lunch and a short nap, at around 2:45 we drove to Total Wine and Trader Joe’s to replenish our wine cellar.  I selected about ten bottles of wine at Total Wine, including my new favorite, Rose of Pinot Grigio from the Venezia region of Italy, a bottle of Le Pont Bandol Rose’ which is my favorite rose at the moment, a couple of bottles of other roses and white Cotes du Rhone, a bottle of Bardolino  Amontillado Spanish Sherry for cooking, a bottle of Sheadling Scotch for Suzette, a white Nages duNimes rated 90 points for $10.00, and a bottle of Oakview Pinot Noir fromMonterrey County, Ca. we tasted at at the tasting bar for $14.99 less the 15% on all the wine. The total ticket came to a bit over $148.00.

We then drove toTrader Joe’s and after buying artichokes, a bottle of smoked paprika, and chocolate for Suzette’s Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery baker, we bought 14 bottles of wine and a bottle of our house cognac, Chanteclair VS, for $19.95. We selected two Aquino Chianti Riservas, two La Granja Tempranillo/Grenache blends and two Viura/Verdejo white blends, a French rose from Provence,  a Tuella Portuguese red from the Duero, a bottle of Chateau Sorillon Bordeaux Superieur was the most expensive bottle at $7.99  and a few other bottles. The total ticket came to $132.00.

As you may have guessed or know Total Wines stocks a greater selection and thus range of wines that tend to be priced at higher prices than Trader Joe’s selection.  So if you want to drink better wines you must shop at Total Wine, but for good solid every day wines you can not beat the quality and prices at Trader Joe’s.

We loaded up our three boxes of wine and food and drove home a bit before 4:00 because I wanted to watch the TCU v. Arkansas football game at 5:00.  Luckily,  the daily coverage of the Tour of Spain also started at 5:00, so we switched back and forth.  We decided to make dinner at half time around 7:00.  Suzette decided to alter the menu and serve grilled Pink Grouper with Roasted Root Vegetables and Sautéed Green Olives. Pimientos, red onion, Green Beans, and garlic.

I made the sauté dish and added a dash of marjoram to season it.

Suzette wanted to season the fish with a compound butter of anchovies, so I washed about seven or eight salted filets and chopped them finely and mashed them into 1 T. of butter to which Suzette added fresh pesto and put on the grouper before she grilled the fish.  It turned out that the grouper was bony and tough, not like the fresh grouper we buy at the fish market in Sayulita, Mexico, but we are 1500 miles and days away from Mexico’s Pacific coast fish.  I tried to filet out enough chunks to make a proper plate of food.  

I opened a chilled bottle of the Rose of Pinot Grigio from the Venezia region of Italy and we enjoyed a lovely dinner.  The three elements worked well together, just like they would have if joined together in a salad, but better because they were elements of a hot meal with an assortment of interesting and complementary flavored, the anchovies pesto glazed fish, the root vegetables and the sautéed olives, string beans, red onion, and pimiento made a lovely combination of flavors.

After dinner I ate some green grapes as we watched the battle between TCU and Arkansas, which Arkansas won in a thrilling Second Overtime finish.

Bon Appetit