October 5, 2017 Lunch – East Ocean. Dinner – sautéed PPI Pesto coated chicken breast, tomato, onion, spinach, Patty pan squash, mushroom, white wine, pesto, and half and half

October 5, 2017 Lunch – East Ocean. Dinner – sautéed PPI Pesto coated chicken breast, tomato, onion, spinach, Patty pan squash, mushroom, white wine, pesto, sour cream, and half and half

I ate yogurt, granola, milk, peach, and blueberries and then rode to Rio Bravo and back with Suzette.

I met Aaron at East Ocean for lunch.  Aaron ordered Sweet and Sour chicken and I ordered Moo Goo Gai Pa, a delicious combination of nine stir fried vegetables and threads of chicken sauced in a thickened chicken stock sauce.

After lunch I drove to Sprouts and bought Pork spare ribs for $1.99/lb., a cauliflower for $.69/lb., green beans for $1.99/lb., a bunch of Italian parsley and a bunch of green onions for $.50 each.

I then drove home, watched Cramer’s stock market analysis on Mad Money because I had a good day in the market.  Cramer said that on a day such as this when the market went up ½%, it pushes up the major stocks, such as the fang group because they are so widely held by the large stock funds.

Suzette called around 4:45 to see if I wanted to go to Costco with her.

I said, “Yes.”

So we went and we shopped for the Bistro and we bought a 2.5 lb. bag of spinach.

When we returned home, we decided we needed to use the two PPI pesto rubbed chicken breasts in a dish.  Suzette came up with a dish from the ingredients we had.  She diced the two chicken breasts, a few cloves of garlic, two tomatoes from the organic garden at the Center, and ½ onion while I sliced three Patty pan squashes from our garden and four portobello mushrooms.

 She then sautéed the onion, garlic, tomatoes, and mushrooms in butter and olive oil and then added the chicken and made a sauce by adding pesto, sour cream, half and half, and white wine.

She placed the squash slices in a Pyrex loaf pan covered with Saran with a bit of water and cooked the squash in the microwave.  I removed the stems from a large handful of spinach and placed it in pasta bowls with the cooks squash.  Then Suzette ladled the chicken pesto mixture over the vegetables and garnished the dish with a handful of grated Parmesan Romano cheese

The cooked squash and fresh spinach

The chicken pesto mushroom, and tomato sauce

We discussed what wine to drink.  I had chilled a La Granja Spanish white Viura/Verdejo blend, but we decided to drink the new 2016 Clos Chapon Vouvray I had recently bought at a Total Wine that was chilled in the garage.

The dish was delicious and the wine was fantastic.  As far as I know all Vouvray whites are 100% Chenin Blanc and almost all have a distinctly lemony citrus flavor.  This was a sec, which means it was dry, which means its acidity was well balanced with its fruitiness and it had a lower level of residual sugar than many other Vouvray so was not sickingingly sweet, which was a blessing.  We love dry Vouvray, because of the balance of lemon, citrus, acidity, and fruit.  We both loved the wine ($15.00 less 15% at Total Wine).

Let me say something about a clos.  A clos is a walled field of grape plants.  I like closes because I think it is easier to maintain the characteristic of the terroir within the field.  For example many of the hillside vineyards that are not walled require the carrying of the soil back up the hill to refill the field every year.  It seems to me that the disruption of the hillside through erosion alters and disrupts the terroir, so I gravitate to wines raised in walled fields.

We recalled our visit to Vouvray several years ago.  We drove to the Vineyard we were interested in and bought wine and then stumbled onto a wine festival in a large looped cave in Vouvray, where at least twenty local producers were pouring and food vendors were selling charcuterie.  We really enjoyed ourselves for over an hour trying all the different wines, including traditional method sparkling Vouvray with  varying amounts of residual sugar, which we sipped with warm foie gras sandwiches.  A real emersion experience into the wine of Vouvray, which is a really small hillside town on the north bank of the Loire River just a few miles east of Tours.

Suzette and I split the last piece of Susan’s Orange Bunt cake with Grand Marnier icing with the last sips of Vouvray and it was a fantastic experience because the lemony citrus flavor of the wine complemented and merged into the citrus flavors of the cake.  Very special.

So in conclusion, good food and good wine makes for a great meal.

One additional note.  When I was growing up in Fort Worth our family's favorite wine was a medium sweet Vouvray, which my folks bought by the case, I guess you could say I became addicted to Vouvray at a young age.

Bon Appetit