We woke up at T. R. and Linda’s house and drank tea and coffee and watched a bit of Fareed Zachariah. Then a bit after 10: we left, turning right and going south. We soon came to the Woman’s Club, where we saw an Antiques Show sign so we turned in, parked, and went in.
The stuff was almost of the highest quality, not expensive, fancy, but interesting and priced below retail. I immediately saw a beautiful Hopi woman’s shawl that the dealer said was probably made in the 40’s for $275.00 that I liked very much. We walked on around the room and Suzette found a painting of Taos Pueblo by a California woman artist named Mendenhall for $300.00 that she ended up buying to add to her collection of New Mexico women artists.
After two aborted attempts to find the Candy Wells exhibit on Museum hill, we discovered it was showing at the Fine arts Museum on the Plaza we drove downtown. It was noon and we were hungry so we first went to Chez Mamou for lunch. Although the skies were turbulent we sat on the narrow patio beside the restaurant and although Chez Mamou probably has the best French baker in New Mexico we chose to not eat any breakfast pasties or bread with our meal, very un-French. Suzette got really excited when she saw a frog leg appetizer cooked in a white wine sauce and I became excited when I saw duck confit on the menu. Suzette ordered the frog leg appetizer and I ordered a duck confit salad.
Suzette ordered a glass of French Sauvignon Blanc and I ordered a glass of Malbec from Cahors.
My salad was dressed with a creamy balsamic vinegar depressing that I liked and the shredded duck confit was pleasantly warm.
Suzette's white wine dressing with fresh chopped tomatoes and shallots was wonderful also. That is whupy we like French restaurants and my duck confit salad was $14.95, no more than than at a more mundane restaurant.
The waitress almost got upset with us when we refused her offer of bread with our meal.
We enjoyed our meal, but soon after we left the restaurant the skies opened and it began to rain. We hurried to the portal and made our way to the Fine Arts Museum at the corner of Washington and Palace.
We saw the Candy Wells show that was interesting but not great. The problem with art museums, such as the fine arts museum, is that much of their collection is donated after dealers have high graded the collections. This was the case with this show. The majority of Wels’ watercolors were painted before 1935 and were his earlier more formative works. Here are several of the better works, but we agreed we would not trade our Wells for any of them.
We then went downstairs and saw the permanent collection and to the new wing and saw a good traveling show of drawings from England, including several by Rembrandt and several by Bridget Riley. Many drawings were studies for larger and more complete works, so you could see the artist’s formative thoughts. In most cases the description of the piece included a picture of the finished work. My favorite work saw a slashing abstract swatches of black ink on white paper by Frank Kline that caught perfectly his abstract expressionist style.
We drove home after seeing the Museum and I rested for an hour.
We started cooking around 5:15. We decided to grill steaks and sauté mushrooms for a garnish for the steak and to sauté fresh zucchini from the garden with onion, sweet potato, and spinach. I wanted a green vegetable, so the menu was complete when Cynthia offered to make a fresh garden (farmers’ Market) salad.
Suzette made the zucchini dish and I sautéed the mushrooms.
A bit after 6:00 Cynthia and Ricardo arrived with the salad. I served them glasses of the open French Chablis, which they seemed to like as an aperitif. Then I opened the bottle of 2014 La Crema Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir that Mike had brought us last time he came for a meal, since Suzette wanted Pinot Noir with the meal. The Pinot had the softness of Pinot Noir, but lacked the bright fruitiness of the Anderson or Willamette Valley pinots. It melted into the food, rather than accompanying the food, but everyone, including me, drank it.
We had stopped at Lowe’s for Vanilla ice cream on the way home and I bought a container of Tahitian Vanilla Gelato. After dinner Suzette made us desserts of a scoop of the gelato served with a spoonful of the fresh damson plum compote she made last wee. The plums were from Megan’s tree down the alley, so the compote had a bright reddish purple color.
We said goodbye at 8:00 so we could watch Granthouse on Masterpiece theatre on PBS. We then watched remember me, a weird almost supernatural Masterpiece Mystery series, starring John Clease.
I watched the final Stage of the Tour de France. No surprises, Fromme 1st, Uran 2nd, and Bardet 3rd. The first time in 12 years that a Frenchman was on the podium.
Bon Appetit
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