July 30, 2017 a Fun Seafood Day. Lunch, New Recipe Salmon and Quail Egg omelet Susan’s Seafood dinner party

July 30, 2017 a Fun Seafood Day. Lunch, New Recipe  Salmon and Quail Egg omelet   Susan’s Seafood dinner party

I made Tropical fruit salad as I watched the Sunday news programs and ate a bowl of granola, yogurt, fruit salad, and milk.

Then I made the cherry and blueberry clafoutis for Monday night’s dinner but I made a mistake by scalding 3 1/2 Cups of milk and ½ cup of heavy cream instead of three cups, so I added four eggs, which allowed us to fill six additional ramekins with clafoutis.  Suzette added the two squashes she had brought from her Los Lunas garden to the oven to bake with the clafoutis.

Then at 10:30 Suzette was hungry and we wanted to ride bike so we decided to make an omelet with the quail eggs one of her clients had given her while the clafoutis was baking.  The quail eggs shells were beautiful, mottled brown and white on the outside and an azure blue on the inside.

Here is a picture.

The quail eggs 

This was our first quail egg omelet, so it took us a few minutes to work out the prep strategy.  We finally decided to sauté the PPI grilled salmon teriyaki from our meal last week, fresh squash and garlic from our garden, some onion and red bell pepper, and two fresh tomatoes from Suzette’s garden at the Center for Ageless Living and then poach the quail eggs in the vegetables.

So I diced ½ of a small onion, the two sunburst orange tomatoes, ¼ cup of red bell pepper, and about
½ cup of squash while Suzette fetched a skillet and melted about 3 T. of butter in it.  We then added the vegetables and sautéed them until they softened and then Suzette pulled the approximately ½ lb. piece of salmon into pieces and added them to the skillet and stirred the vegetables and salmon to coat with the vegetable butter sauced that had developed as she sautéed the vegetables.  Then Suzette carefully broke eight quail eggs on the edge of a knife blade I held over the skillet and dropped the eggs into the sautéed vegetables and we waited a few minutes to let them poach.  Suzette the ladled the ½ of the mixture onto each of our plates and we filled glasses with cool water and took our plates to the gazebo and had one of the best meals I have had in months.  This was the first quail egg omelet I had ever had.  Several of the egg yolks had broken which enriched the butter sauce with yolk.  Quail eggs have more richness to my taste than chicken eggs, so the richness of the dish, especially the sauce was intense.


A few minutes after we finished brunch we rode to Rio Bravo and returned home around 12:30.  I took a shower and shaved and Suzette suggested we watch a movie she had found on Netflix
titled“Butter” made in 2011 that garnered five stars.  We made our respective drinks and watched the movie.  After the movie I went to Susan’s house to help her set up tables and chairs for her party.

Then I went home and Suzette and I sliced Armenian cucumber slices, carrot slices, jicama slices, and radishes, for dipping into guacamole and made guacamole with eight small avocados, ½ of a small onion, three cloves of garlic squeezed, juice of two limes, a few dashes of Cholula hot sauce, 1/3 cup of chopped cilantro leaves, and 1 tsp. of salt.

Suzette fetched the large Chinese steel tray and filled it with a Chinese bowl filled with the guacamole, the vegetables spears, and Mexican fresh fried corn chips we had bought at El Super.  I chilled one of the bottles of Gruet’s newly released TamayavVinyard rose’ we had bought in Santa Fe last weekend.  Gruet’s new rose’ is elegantly dry with only a hint of pink color, like Whispering Angel.



I took the extra chips and rose’ over at 5:00 and at 5:30 Suzette followed with the appetizer tray.

Karen Wagner arrived at 5:15 and washed a load of pots and prep bowls.  I set up the drink station on the back patio and filled the wine tub with ice and Suzette added a pitcher of water to it.  It was the perfect size to hold four bottles of wine.  Susan had bought 3 bottles of Matua Sauvignon Blanc from
New Zealand and six bottles of Chateau St. .Michelle Riesling. As people arrive other bottles were added to the mix like a Chateau St. Jean Chardonnay.  Then I cubed two large avocados for the gazpacho.

There were twelve folks and the food folks brought and that Susan fixed was spectacular.  I ate lots of clam dip as an appetizer, then Susan served gazpacho with langoustine and the cubed avocado.

Charlie made wonderful shrimp scampi in garlic, parsley, and olive oil that was served with fresh linguini.  Susan served about five pounds of king crab legs and a bucket of chiappino with squid, mussels, bay scallops, and shrimp in a tomato and wine broth that was really fabulous plus a platter of cold asparagus.  Someone brought a shaved cabbage and carrot salad. Suzette and I drank Gruet Rose with our dinner.  I met and talked to an interesting fellow named Larry, who was a psychiatrist and has retired now and is a life coach for many of his former patients who was raised overseas, mostly Iran, because his father was in the foreign service and went to Rice.

There were other interesting folks like the fellow from Wisconsin who was raised in a traditional German household.

After dinner two fruit crumbles and three home made ice creams made by Karen were brought out with Lee’s two fresh fruit pies, one blueberry and peach and the other fresh peach.  Although I was really full, I ate some of the peach pie and a scoop of Karen’s wonderful pistachio nut cardamon flavored ice cream.

By 9:30 after obliterating my new diet and overeating to excess all the wonderful food,  I was fading fast and we walked home, put up the PPI food and fell into bed.

Bon Appetit