November 7, 2017 Lunch – O’Neill’s Pub Dinner – Roasted Cornish Game Hen, PPI Ratatouille, and Wild Rice with Mushrooms

November 7, 2017 Lunch – O’Neill’s Pub   Dinner – Roasted Cornish Game Hen, PPI Ratatouille, and Wild Rice with Mushrooms

Peter Eller called in the morning and suggested we go to lunch and discuss the Santa Fe Auction m Saturday.  I picked him up and we drove to O’Neill’s Pub at 4310 Central SE.  I have not eaten lunch at O’Neill’s so it was interesting to me to go there.  I ordered fish and chips with sweet potato fries and Peter ordered Bangers and Mash.  We each ordered a beer.

But the big deal was not the food, which was delicious, it was the catalog for Gerald Peters' Santa Fe Auction this weekend.  We reviewed the catalog and discussed a number of pictures being offered for sale and made a plan to attend the auction this Saturday.

After lunch I went home and signed and mailed two tax returns for the California property that was sold this year.

At 6:00 Suzette arrived and we started dinner.  I boiled ½ cup of wild rice in 1 and ½ cups of water with a squirt of beef broth and a bay leaf.  Then I diced 1/3 cup red onion, 2 cloves of garlic, three white mushrooms, and five portabella mushrooms. I went to the garden and picked a sprig of tarragon and about ten Sage leaves and diced them.

I then picked about two cups of spinach from bag and rinsed it.

Suzette cooked the Cornish game hens on a metal rack over a pan of water for an hour at 375 degrees. When the hens were ready, we removed them from the pan and I poured the cooking medium into a large skillet and the put the mushrooms and herbs into the skillet and cooked them until they softened. I then added the Wild rice and cooked it for several minutes and then added the spinach and turned the spinach until it cooked.  Suzette heated some Ratatouille in the microwave.

I had chilled a new bottle of 2015 Chenevieres Chablis (Total Wine $20.00 less 20%) that Suzette opened and I poured.  It was really a good tasting wine, a light metallic flavor with no roughness and with a hint of sweetness. It confirmed that we should try to find better bottles of wine to drink.

After dinner I ate 2 pieces of 72% dark chocolate with the last sip of Trimbach Grand Reserve Plum brandy as we watched Finding Your Roots on PBS.

We went to bed at 9:00.

Bon Appetit