September 12, 2016 Lunch – Costco Polish Dog, Dinner – German Pork Roast and Sauerkraut served with Mashed Roasted Vegetables and potatoes

September 12, 2016  Lunch – Costco Polish Dog,  Dinner – German Pork Roast and Sauerkraut served with Mashed Roasted Vegetables and potatoes

Yesterday was a less than exciting day of food.  We worked most of the day, I had two appointments and Suzette directed the Garden Tour and worked in the gardens at the Center.  

Suzette started the 4 ½ lb. pork roast covered with the 2 lb. of sauerkraut I bought at Sprouts on Wednesday cooking in the crockpot in the morning.  Then we did make B, L,T sandwiches for breakfast.  We went to the KUNM concert at the Museum at 3:00 but it was rained out for us and we left at 5:00 and came home.  I thought we would make a quick dinner and return to the KUNM concert so we cooked a quick hamburger steak covered with cheese,  Comte’ for Suzette and Cambozola for me.  I sliced a red onion and sautéed it with the hamburgers and cooked two ears of corn in Saran in the microwave.  Suzette picked fresh tomatoes from her garden and we sliced one in half and each took 1/2.

After dinner I cooked the four artichokes we bought at Trader Joe's on Saturday.

It started raining again so we did not return to the concert.

Today was a bit better.  I ate granola, yogurt, and blueberries for breakfast.  Then I went to Bankruptcy Court and had two appointments in my office.  Finally at 12:45 I went to Costco for gas and a Polish Dog.

I then went to Fano and bought a fresh baguette, took my billing to Shahin, and then drove to Sprouts, where I bought, olive oil, green grapes for $.69/lb., string beans, granola, and parsley. 

I returned home and napped for a while and then was pleasantly surprised by the upsurge recovery of the stock market that got my portfolio back above 10% gain for the year after a disastrous drop on Friday.

At 5:30 I brought in the crock of pork roast and sauerkraut and began heating it in the crockpot.  Suzette came home then and started boiling potatoes for mashed potatoes. After she made the mashed potatoes she added the PPI roasted vegetables and processed the whole lot in the large bowl of the Kitchen Aid blender.

Suzette decided to make Catalonian chard, a dish from Jose Andres' Tapas cookbook.  I diced 1 Granny Smith Apple, Suzette went to the garden and picked a basket of chard and washed it and I thence-stemmed it and cut the leaves into bite sized pieces.  We did not have piñon nuts, so Suzette chopped 1/4 cup pecans.  She the sautéed the apples until soft and added the chard, the pecans and 1/4 cup of black raisins.

I sliced, toasted and buttered 5 slices of French baguette and at 6:45 we ate dinner.  

It was simple comfort food.  What I noticed most was that the long cooking of the pork and sauerkraut allowed the meat to cook and then the vinegar of the sauerkraut penetrated Ito the meat as its fibers broke down and flavored it and the juices released by the meat softened the harshness of the vinegar flavor of the sauerkraut until the two ingredients melded into one uniformly flavorful dish of Pork and Sauerkraut ".

We watched two episodes of Antique Roadshow from Richmond and the second episode of the Great English Baking series and went to bed at 10:00.

Bon Appetit