January 19, 2018 Lunch – La Salita, Dinner – New Recipe, Potage garnished with Vegetable Couscous and Provençal Scallops

January 19, 2018 Lunch – La Salita,  Dinner – New Recipe,  Potage garnished with Vegetable Couscous and Provençal Scallops

I ate yogurt, granola, milk, and blueberries and banana slices.

Shortly before lunch Max arrived and Mike Called and we all agreed to meet at La Salita for lunch.

When we arrived at La Salita it was full even though it’s new location is about twice as large as its old location and we had to wait a few minutes for a table.

Mike ordered his usual turkey stuffed sopapilla, Max ordered blue corn enchiladas, and I ordered a build you own plate with a Swiss cheese filled Chile Relleno and a sour cream stuffed enchilada.  I used to get sour cream stuffed enchiladas at M & J Tortilla Factory, but have not had one in a long time and it was wonderful to be reacquainted with one at La Salita.  It went a long way toward making La Salita my favorite New Mexican restaurant.

After lunch I helped Max with his case and he inspected the house for necessary repairs.  It looks like we will be doing some bartering of contracting for legal services.

After Max left at 3:30 I rode 8 miles south toward Rio Bravo.  The temperature was a very pleasant 59 degrees.

Suzette was home when I return around 4:20.  After a long discussion of all the PPIs we came up with a rather unique plan for dinner.  We decided to heat the potage that I made last week and garnish it with the vegetable Couscous and Provençal scallops, from earlier in the week.  Suzette chopped up the 1/3 of red bell pepper and I diced the last 1 oz. of red onion and Suzette sautéed those ingredients in a large skillet until tender and then added the scallops and vegetable Couscous to the skillet and added about 1/3 cup of water to loosen up the thickened flour sauce on the scallops.  I did a similar loosening of the potage to get it back into a creamy consistency by adding about ½ cup each of milk and half and half.  I then adjusted the postage’s seasoning by grating about ¼ tsp. of nutmeg and adding a dash of white pepper and Chimayo medium red Chile.

Combining the two different PPIs created a uniquely new and wonderfully different dish, especially on a cold winter night.

I chilled a bottle of Sadet Vouvray for about ½ hour but it did not completely chilled, so we drank it with ice cubes to chill it.  The lemony, fruity Chenin blanc went really well with the creamy soup and scallops.

We watched news all evening including the government shutdown.

I popped popcorn and shared it with Suzette. It was out of date and gave me a slight upset stomach, but I watched with fascination the machinations of the Senate.

I also ate two squares of dark chocolate with almonds and a sip of Grande Mariner mixed with cognac.

I went to bed with the thought that we will soon see if Trump is a dealmaker who avoids a protracted government shutdown or will be divisive and play to his base by calling the democrats losers and blaming them for the shutdown.

Bon Appetit