October 6, 2016 Lunch – The Range Café, Dinner- Pesto Pasta, with tomatoes, mushrooms, green beans, red bell pepper, and onions and Grilled Artichokes with Tzatziki Sauce
This morning after my granola, yogurt, and melon, I made a pot of pho with the Diced PPI steak from Monday night, a Pho bullion cube, and a chopped stalk of celery, a carrot and a small red onion. I then did not get to eat it because I got busy preparing a will for Terry Jassmann and finishing an edit of our Motions for the Lower Rio Grande adjudication.
I turned off the soup and put it in the fridge and drove to the Range to meet Mike, Aaron, and Marty for a lunch meeting at 1:00. I was hungry and could not resist ordering Country Fried Steak with mashed potatoes and vegetables. This is a dish from my Texas youth where the axiom was that wherever you found yourself, no matter how small a small town café, you could always rely upon the Chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes to be a reliably consistent dish. I ordered it my favorite way with white gravy on the fried steak and brown gravy on the mashed potatoes. It was served with a 10 inch round fried pounded flat battered and fried steak covered with white gravy, a mound of mashed potatoes covered with a lovely mushroom Demi-glacé sauce and a goodly portion of steamed broccoli; about as good a country fried steak dinner as I have ever had. The Range did this dish proud and the only thing missing was the usual heartburn I used to feel after eating this dish in the old days in Texas. I guess it is the frying in fresh unsaturated grease these days.
Aaron and Marty ordered the Death by Lemon dessert and Mike ordered Range’s most famous dish, Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and vegetables which was a large platter with steamed broccoli and mashed potatoes with brown gravy, but instead of the chicken fried steak Mike’s dish had about a 1 ½ wedge of meatloaf covered with the lovely mushroom Demi-glacé brown sauce. Mike lived the dish but could not finish the meatloaf.
At 2:00 I returned home and did another edit of the one motion and drafted the other motion and sent them back to Scott for his review.
I prepared a couple of deeds and finished and sent the motions out to the counsel in the LRG adjudication for concurrence by 6:20. Suzette had started cooking at 6:00 ahead it mostly prepped and in large casserole by the time I got to the kitchen. She combined PPI pasta, diced onion, tomato, some green beans, the remaining ¾ of the red bell pepper, a pork chop I had thawed, and mushrooms with some pesto; pretty much all the vegetables we has left in the fridge. By the time I arrived it was simmering on the stove and ready to eat.
Suzette had also opened the chilled bottle of Carayon Rose.
Here is what Trader Joe’s says about this jewel of a rose at $4.99 that one can and wants to drink all day.
The Wine Idiot
When Trader Joe's is your wine cellar
The Wine Idiot Reviews: Carayon La Rose, 2014 ($4.99)
ROSÉ
Full disclosure: I love rosé. Seriously, one of the great joys of my life is a glass of crisp, not-too-sweet rosé sipped as the sun sets on a summer day. Bonus points if I'm at the Hollywood Bowl.
I'm aware, however, that rosé is not everyone's cup of slightly-alcoholic tea, which is why it's taken me so long to get around to reviewing one. That and I actually haven't found one at Trader Joe's that I absolutely LOVE. But I decided it was finally time.
Lacking any sort of direction (I was shopping at 6pm on a Friday so there weren't a lot of extra employees just waiting around the wine area to help me), I had to pick at random. I opted for a $5 bottle that proudly advertised itself to be from the "SOUTH OF FRANCE." Can't be bad, right?
Well, it's not a diamond in the rough, but it's a tasty cheap rosé and I'd probably buy it again. It smells light and crisp, and it's not overly sweet. Not that I have anything against sweet wine!! But a saccharine rosé doesn't pair as well with twilight, in my mind.
This is tangy--it's got a little sourness that kicks me in the back of my throat a little, but it's not overwhelming. After I got used to it (maybe 3 sips?), it went down smooth. Flavor-wise? I wrote down one word: strawberry. Granted, I have a limited vocabulary when it comes to wine, but I don't think this did a whole lot of flavor-morphing. It just tasted like strawberries--tangy, pleasant, not too sweet. And it is INCREDIBLY tasty with cheese and crackers.
Bottom line, this is a fabulous cheap summer wine. I'd definitely pick up a bottle on my way to the Hollywood Bowl.
I sliced in half all of the eight small artichokes I had bought at Trader Joe’s and removed the fuzzy hairs that cover the heart with a spoon and Suzette doused them in olive oil and grilled them over the open flame which not only imparts a wonderful flavor but also leashes them of the residual moisture that results in the flesh being more tactile and fleshy, rather than soggy.
We ladled pasta into bowls and enjoy it with the rose wine and the grilled artichokes and the Tzatziki style dipping sauce I made last night with ½ yogurt and ½ mayonnaise plus fresh lemon juice, ½ tsp. of salt, and ½ T. of fresh dill. Today the sauce had thickened in the fridge overnight, so I added ½ T. of olive oil to the dipping sauce.
I really enjoyed the warm grilled artichokes and ate three halves. Suzette ate one half, so we still have12 halves left. We talked about leaving them at Cynthia and Ricardo’s door and a few other options, but finally told Willy they were in the fridge with the pasta.
Willy will have a cache of food to eat while we are gone.
Bon Appetit
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