November 25, 2016. Lunch – PPP Lasagna Dinner – Cream of Carrot Soup garnished with Pomegranate Juice and Sorrel Juice and Cesar Salad
We rested until about 8:30 trying to synchronize pictures from my phone into the iPad and inserting photos into the blog, which is still a challenge for Suzette. I am clueless and rely on her expertise.
I had a 9:00 appointment with Al that ended a bit after 11:00. Suzette had been working making pillows in her basement sewing space. We were both hungry, so we decided to heat up the PPI lasagna and eat it with the PPI Waldorf Salad Amy had sent us home with from Thanksgiving yesterday.
We then adjusted the plastic over the small section in the old garden where the basil and chard are planted and looked under the plastic covering the two newly planted raised beds. We were surprised to see how well the sorrel we planted in May was doing and picked two large handfuls.
Suzette worked in her sewing area and I rested until she awakened me at 3:00. I rode to Rio Bravo and back from 3:30 to 4:30 and at 5:00 discovered that the markets had been open today and my portfolio had benefited from the extension of the Trump Bump. My portfolio is now up 11% for the year and a little over 9% from the beginning of 2015. 2015 was a down year. We watched news until 7:00 and decided to prepare the thawed carrot soup. Suzette decided to dress it up with a drizzle of pomegranate and sorrel juice, so she puréed the sorrel, heat the soup and drizzled zigzag lines of pomegranate and sorrel juice over the top of the carrot soup for a lovely presentation and interesting flavor combination.
While Suzette was preparing the soup, I prepared a Cesar salad, using the slightly damaged old romaine lettuce, 2 tomatoes diced, 1/3 of a cucumber and an avocado sliced and diced and five or six anchovies fillets plus about ½ cup of grated Pecorino Romano cheese. I even found a few old croutons in the cheese compartment that I heated up.
We enjoyed the soup tremendously. Suzette had created a new wonderful dish out of a PPI. I rejuvenated the Cesar Salad dressing by adding fresh lemon juice and Spanish olive oil and dressed and tossed the salad.
I drank the last of the2010 Nessa Albariño that was past its prime and tasting more like sherry than Albariño. Suzette opened the bottle of 2013 Hatfield Creek Estate Zinfandel from the Ramona Valley AVA in Ramona, CA given to us by Karen, Suzette's niece by marriage. Suzette noted the Hatfield Creek had the high tannin characteristic of 100% California Zinfandels.
After dinner I made a batch of chocolate chocolate chip cookies with raisins and chopped pecans in addition to Nestles chocolate chips by adding Cocoa to the dry ingredients, which makes a drier denser dough that rises better.
I scorched the first batch of cookies, so Suzette read the manual and we changed the oven setting to convection bake, which was recommended for cookies and reduced the temperature 25degrees, as recommended, to 325 degrees and the rest of the cookies turned out beautifully.
We watched the documentary “Sour Grapes” about the first person to be tried and convicted for selling fake wine. It was a fascinating look at the fine wine auction business and the guys who collect and drink fine wine, usually from $6,000 to $100,000 per bottle. Bill Koch was in the movie because he did most of the initial research and he showed three bottles from the 1780’s and that had been in Thomas Jefferson’s cellar that he paid $100,000 each for.
I like wine and I collect some wine to drink, but I definitely do not pay much for it, nor do I collect or drink the great Burgundies and Bordeaux’s like the guys in the movie. The other interesting person in the movie was the French Burgundy wine maker Ponsot, who went on a personal crusade with Bill Koch to expose the wine faker. The wine faker, Ken, ended up being convicted and is now serving ten years in federal prison.
We ate a few cookies and I drank some tea and we went to bed around 10:30.
Bon Appetit
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