September 25, 2016. Brunch – Harry’s Roadhouse. Dinner - Grilled Pork Chops and onions, steamed broccoli, and Casarecce Pasta with fresh Pesto and cherry tomatoes and peach cobbler

September 25, 2016. Brunch – Harry’s Roadhouse. Dinner - Grilled Pork Chops and onions, steamed broccoli, and Casarecce Pasta with fresh Pesto and cherry tomatoes  and peach cobbler

We spent the night at Amy and Vahl’s house in Eldorado. I woke a bit before 8:00 and watched Fareed Zakaria on CNN and then the Sunday morning news programs.  

At 10:00 we drove to Harry’s Roadhouse for brunch.  I ordered a plate of duck confit hash with potatoes, carrots, and onion topped with two poached eggs.  Suzette and Vahl's ordered another special a puff pastry filled with  eggs.  Amy ordered her usual Huevos Rancheros.

  Suzette and Vahl's eggs en croute

 My duck confit hash with poached eggs

We also shared a buckwheat pancake that was delicious with real maple syrup.

Suzette and I then drove to Stephens where we saw nothing thing and then we drove to Meow Wolfe, which is a giant installation piece that fills an abandoned bowling alley. It is ha d to describe,  it must be experienced.  Vahl’s description may be best, “It is like going down the rabbit hole into a new fantasy world.”  My favorite room was one rotating circular hands of changing color with three vertical sets of red lasers that would activate sound when the stream of light off the laser beam was interrupted by ones hand.  So one could play music by crossing ones hand through the red laser beams.

We were feeling stuffed from breakfast, so decided to stop for a beer at Santa Fe Brewing on our way out of town  Suzette ordered an Oktoberfest Ale and I ordered a Pale ale flavored with Willamette Valley  hops.  We sat at a table on the porch and sipped them looking at the Jemez Moutains lit by early afternoon sunlight.  The weather had finally warmed to about 68 degrees as forecast.  A couple from Detroit soon joined us  and we talked to them about touristy things for a few minutes. 

We then drove back to Albuquerque to Costco and bought lettuce, piñon nuts, lemons, pecans, pasta, a rack of lamb, Greek yogurt, grated Parmesan Romano cheese, lemons,  and a dozen pork chops.  

We then drove to Lowe’s to pick up vanilla bean ice cream and milk and then home.  After we unloaded the car, we went to the garden and picked about 2 lb. of fresh basil leaves and Suzette made pesto in the blender with pine nuts, olive oil, basil, and shredded Parmesan/Romano cheese.  Suzette added some lemon juice to the pesto to try to hold its green color and not turn dark green and spoil. 

   The fresh pesto

We wanted to eat pasta with fresh pesto for dinner and decided to steam some of the broccoli I had bought at Sprouts last week for $.48/lb., That left the only decision between the rack of lamb and the pork chops.  I opened the lamb and immediately was hit with a foul spoiled meat smell.  Suzette smelled it and agreed. So we froze the lamb to return to Costco and I opened the pork chops, which were beautiful.  I selected four chops and wrapped and froze the other 8 or nine.  Suzette sprinkled the chops with large Crystal's of Mexican sea salt and Moroccan black pepper.  I sliced a yellow onion into four slices and Suzette grilled them on the grill.  I de-stemmed the flowerets of broccoli from the stalk and steamed them.  I could not think clearly about a wine.  We had drunk so much, so I decided to try the 2011 Gnarly Head Limited Edition Authentic Black from Lodi, CA that Suzette’s niece, Karen, gave us.

It was a heavy, inky dark wine with a decidedly chocolate flavor that stood on its own as a wine.  I liked it with dinner but Suzette she would rather have had a rose’.  

Peach Cobbler

We also needed to eat the peaches Ed had given us and Suzette had peeled and sliced on Thursday and sprinkled with sugar, so I made Laura’s Jiffy Cobbler recipe with 1 stick (1/4 lb.) of butter melted in a Pyrex baking dish, 1 cup of flour, ½ cup of sugar, 3 tsp. of Baking Powder, ½ tsp. of salt, which I then mixed dry and added about ¾ cup of milk instead of the 2/3 cup indicated by the recipe.  Then I whisked the milk into the dry ingredients until the batter was smooth and poured it into the Pyrex baking dish with the melted butter.  Suzette then laid 4 cups of sliced peaches with a slotted spoon that allowed the syrup drain from them on top of the batter baked the cobbler in a pre-heated oven at 375 degrees for thirty minutes.  

I cooked 1 lb. of the Cassarecce pasta and steamed the broccoli while Suzette grilled the onions and pork chops.  When the pasta was cooked I drained it and poured about ½ of it back into the pot and Suzette heated 1 T. of butter in the pot and added a liberal amount of fresh pesto to flavor the pasta. I then sliced the cherry tomatoes Suzette had harvested from the garden today after she picked basil and tossed them into the pot with the pasta and pesto.

We then plated our plates with a pork chop and grilled onions, pasta with pesto, and steamed broccoli and I poured glasses of the Gnarly Head black wine.

I enjoyed the pasta with fresh pesto tremendously.  The fresh grilled pork chop and onions were great also.

And finally the fresh baked cobbler served warm with vanilla ice cream made this meal rather memorable.  This is the first time I prepared a cobbler and I found it exceedingly simple.  The use of ¾ cup of milk gave the cobbler a more cake-like consistency, rather than the more doughy biscuit-like consistency of the original recipe.

Bon Appetit