September 13, 2016 Lunch - Pho Miso Noodle Soup, Dinner – Spaghetti Primavera and German Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad

 September 13, 2016 Lunch - Pho Miso Noodle Soup,  Dinner – Spaghetti Primavera and German Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad

I watched the market melt down again this morning and then rode ten miles to Montano and back and then ate a bowl of granola, yogurt, and blueberries.

It was a slow day of meeting filing deadlines in the office, such as filing a proxy, taxes for the California property, and a form in the water case.

Cooking today was characterized as autonomic or on auto pilot.

At 11:30 I became hungry, so I made my favorite soup as if on auto pilot.  I cut up three portobello mushrooms and several oyster mushrooms, and the 2 or 3 oz. of PPI steak, put rice stick and wheat noodles in a pot of water, added a Pho seasoning cube and a T. of red miso and stirred.  Then I went to the garden and picked a handful of chard, de-stemmed and cut the leaves into bite sized pieces and put them into the soup, and finally sliced two large Mexican green onions into strips and diced about 4 oz. of medium firm tofu into small cubes and added them to the by now simmering pot of soup.

Dinner was equally mindless.  Suzette called at around 6:00 to tell me she was on the way home and asked me to heat water for spaghetti for Spaghetti Primavera.  She wanted to make a vegetarian pasta dish with some of the tomatoes she had picked on Sunday from her garden at the Center in Los Lunas.

  Some tomatoes left after those for dinner were chosen

 I heated a large pot of water covered to accelerate it reaching a boil, found a package of spaghetti in the pantry, sliced a pleasing assortment of red, yellow and purple tomatoes, and went to the garden and topped a basil plant which yielded a large handful of fresh basil leaves. I had just sliced about 1/2 cup of basil leaves and put  ½ lb. of spaghetti into the boiling water when Suzette arrived.  She immediately grabbed the large skillet and asked for chopped onion and garlic.  I found 1/3 of a medium onion in the vegetable crisper that had already been cleaned and sliced it and pushed it into the skillet that Suzette had added olive oil to.  Then I sliced three cloves of garlic from our garden into rounds and pushed them into the skillet.  Suzette then put the diced tomatoes into the skillet and I pushed the sliced tomato into the skillet and cubed a ball of fresh mozzarella cheese I had bought at Sorouts last Wednesday. I then toasted 4 slices of Fano baguette and opened a bottle of Tuella red from Portugal’s Douro Valley ($5.99 or $6.99 at Trader Joe’s and worth every penny of it!) and we were ready to eat as soon as we drained the pasta, we put the mozzarella cubes into a large ceramic bowl and Suzette tossed the Primavera Sauce and pasta in the bowl with the mozzarella and I poured the wine and fetched the toasted pieces of bread from the toaster and the cucumber, tomato, and onion salad I made for the pork dish yesterday for a fresh salady addition and Suzette micro grated some Pecorino Romano cheese onto the pasta dish and I garnished each dish with a sprig of fresh basil.

   There is still some PPI cucumber, onion, and tomato salad left after dinner. It keeps well due to its vinegar, sugar and salt dressing that pickles it.

After dinner we watched a bit of Rachel Maddow and ate some ice cream.  I drank a glass of the new grappa Suzette brought me from Nova Scotia and she drank a cognac.

A simple and pleasant day of food.