We walked to the Farmer’ Market and bought feta cheese from Old Windmill Dairy and 2 beautiful heirloom tomatoes and 2 beefsteak tomatoes for the Caprese Salad for tonight.
Then we drove to Albuquerque water garden and bought 2 water hyacinth plants, a flowering aquatic plant called Manza, eight gold fish, and two filter plants, plus some dirt and carried them back home and put the plants and fish into the pond and Suzette left for he nail appointment.
A check came in the mail so I took it to the bank and then drove to Trader Joe’s and bought two bottles each of Crayon, Ferme Julien, and La Granja Rose’ and one bottle of Chateau Haut Sorillon red Bordeaux plus a wedge of French Roquefort cheese and a four pack of medium artichokes.
I went home and when Suzette arrived after stopping at Costco foe fresh mozzarella, we decided to make a lunch of egg salad on a tomato. Suzette fetched the Roma tomatoes from the garage and made two slices at 90 degree angles to open the tomatoes into four petals. She then heaped a large scoop of the egg salad she had made across the center of the pedals. I added a pickle that we Suzette had made Thursday evening. I also toasted a piece of Jewish rye and smeared it with crema and laid three pieces of the Larsen’s sherry flavored herring on the toast to make an open faced herring sandwich. Even though Suzette had followed her Mother’s recipe, we decided the pickles tasted too salty and vinegary, so Suzette added some sugar to the pickles to balance the sweet and sour and salty.
After our lunch to the garden I napped until 4:30.
We had a 6:30 dinner at Janis and Tom’s and we had to prepare the dessert and Caprese Salad. Plus we wanted to take the pickles.
Suzette made the Caprese Salad and I made the Clafoutis
Clafoutis – I measured 6 heaping T. of flour, 10 measured T. of powdered sugar, three eggs and a mixture of 2 cups of whole milk and 1 cup heavy cream scalded plus the two lb. of pitted and halved cherries that had been marinated over night in two T. of cognac and one T. of Framboise liquor. We baked it in a 375 degrees oven in a buttered and sugared ceramic baking dish for an hour.
Suzette made the Caprese Salad by slicing the tomatoes we bought at the Farmers’ Market and one one side alternating slices of fresh feta and on the other alternating fresh mozzarella slices and tomato. I went to the garden and picked five stalks of oregano and 12 basil leaves. I destemmed the oregano leaves and chopped the leaves from three stalks and finely diced ½ red onion. Suzette placed the basil leaves between the slices of tomato and fresh mozzarella on one side of a large glass platter and sprinkled the oregano leaves over the feta and tomato slices on the other side. She then sprinkled some of the minced red onion onto both sides of salad and mixed a balsamic and olive oil dressing and drizzled it over the salad and covered it.
When the Clafoutis was baked we took it out of the oven and placed the Caprese Salad, the Clafoutis, the jar of pickles, and a bottle of Autrobois French Rose in the car and drove the two blocks to Janis and Tom’s.
When we arrived Diane and Herb and Corky and Janie had arrived. We took our items to the kitchen and then returned to the back patio where all the action was. There was a ping pong table and a cozy sitting area and a dining area under a wooden gazebo on the patio. Janis is an interior decorator and everything was very tastefully arranged on the patio that was surrounded by planted beds.
I sat and talked to Herb about his 25 acre Garcia project at the northeast corner of Rio Grande and I-40 and the changing nature of retail development and played a game of ping pong with Suzette. Janis had putted out a three well condiment tray with red salsa, green salsa and guacamole plus a basket of chips on the table that between the two couches in the conversation area, which I nibbled on.
After trying the Rose’ I enjoyed a margarita that Janis had made and everyone else was drinking with the spicy salsa and chips.
When it was time to eat, Corky left for a Jethro Tull concert, Tom grilled lovely ½ lb. hamburgers with slices of Kraft cheese melted onto them. Janis put a table cloth on 1/3 of the ping pong table to turn it into a buffet table and out our pickles and Caprese Salad on it and Diane put her lovely butter lettuce and watercress salad with mandarin oranges on the table. The table was set and there was a bottle of red and a bottle of white on it plus sliced onion, catsup, mayonnaise and mustard. The red was a Chilean Malbec Reserva. I drank the red, which had good acidity.
An interesting fact that Janie told me was that she was a Little sister of the ZBTs at Vanderbilt when I mentioned that I had been a ZBT at university of Texas. I did not find out exactly what that organization was because we did not have a little sister organization at UT and because I asked an inappropriate question, “What did Little Sisters do for ZBT?”
Any way we enjoyed talking politics with Diane as we ate and caught up on all the latest political gossip and developments in New Mexico democratic politics.
For dessert Janis served vanilla ice cream with a Kahlua espresso sauce
In a parfait cup on a plate with a scoop of clafoutis.
We talked until 10:30 which was probably past our bedtimes, but a completely lovely Evening in honor of Memorial Day. It was fun to enjoy a patio party to celebrate the holiday that marks the beginning of Summer.
Bon Appetit
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