November 29, 2016 Lunch – Turkey Dinner, Dinner – Panda Buffet in Las Cruces

November 29, 2016 Lunch – Turkey Dinner,  Dinner – Panda Buffet in Las Cruces

I ate yogurt, granola, blueberries, vitamin powder, and milk for breakfast.  Today I let the milk sit with the yogurt until the yogurt enzymes eat the lactose and turn it into a light yogurt, which I find interesting.  It takes about ten minutes usually with a good yogurt.

I worked and packed up some food and my suitcase until 11:30. Then I filled a plate with PPI turkey, wild rice and fruit dressing, sweet potatoes with red chili marshmallows, corn flan and a scoop of gravy and heated that in the microwave using the sensor reheat function, which I like very much, because it works well.  I enjoyed yet another Thanksgiving turkey dinner with ½ glass of Clos du Bois Sauvignon Blanc.


At 12:11 I left for Las Cruces in the Mini Cooper an arrived at Scott’s house at Radium Springs in less than 3 hours, which is a new record for me.  The sand under the RR trestle in the roadway to the Radium Springs Hotel where Scott lives was deep, so I drove the last fifteen miles into Las Cruces to the Motel 6, where Sammie had reserved me a room.

I rested and read until 5:30 and called Scott, who drove to town to take me to dinner.

Today proves that there is good food everywhere there are capable cooks who care about what they serve and use the freshest ingredients.

I offer as an example Panda Buffet in Las Cruces.  Don’t let the name fool you, this a small family run restaurant that features fresh interesting Chinese food cooked with fresh good quality ingredients.

There are about thirty hot items and about 15 cold items and four ice creams and four soups, so a rather wide selection of items.

Lunch is $6.69 and dinner is $8.69 and for that you get a really fine selection of items.  Among the items I saw or tried were twice cooked pork with vegetables, Orange chicken with fresh orange peel and orange juice in the sauce, baked fish, baked mussels (green lip mussels coated with a congealed cream sauce and a dash of paprika that was out of this world delicious), my favorite - sautéed mung bean sprouts with mushrooms and a few chopped vegetables, an interesting stir fried battered pork with mushrooms, beef and broccoli, dry fried shrimp, coconut shrimp, and many other dishes.  I avoided the spicy dishes after getting blown away by the spiciness of the ladle of Hot and sour soup I added to the bowl of wonton soup.  I ate as much as I could and then, when Scott looked at me askance as he brought bowls of ice cream and pudding to the table for his dessert, I tried those desserts also.  The chocolate and vanilla puddings were the typical Sysco large batch institutional pudding with their preservatives and ersatz flavorings, but the ice creams In five gallon boxes in a freezer unit were wonderful.  There was chocolate, vanilla, coffee, and green tea.  I tried all but vanilla and loved them all.

I ate too much but enjoyed Panda Buffet tremendously, especially for the price, and consider it one of the best food values in any city.

Scott is an enthusiastic Trump supporter, perhaps because he is poor and sees that the system is rigged against poor people, but after Scott told me about some of his medical difficulties due to lack of proper medical care I realized that there was not much Trump was going to be able to do to fix a broken medical system and felt even worse for the poor who can not get good medical care.

My fondest hope would be for Trump to make one of his first infrastructure projects, building a new water treatment system for Flint, Michigan, one of the states that gave him his victory and arguably is in greater need of a drinking water system than any other city in America.

I wonder if America has the will to fix the broken systems we now are saddled with, such as the healthcare system, the infrastructure system, and our political system and whether Trump is the man to successfully address those challenges.

We shall soon see.

Bon Appetit