March 17, 2018 Lunch – PPI Pork with apples and onion and spinach. Dinner – Grilled Ribeye steak, Sweet Potato slices and asparagus with Béarnaise Sauce and Ratatouille.

March 17, 2018 Lunch – PPI Pork with apples and onion and spinach. Dinner – Grilled Ribeye steak, Sweet Potato slices and asparagus with Béarnaise Sauce and Ratatouille.

I started the day with yogurt, granola, and Tropical fruit salad.

I then wrote my memoir for the book club.

Suzette came home for lunch.  We heated the PPI Roasted Pork, onions, and apple slices and added the last of the black beans and calabacitas and finally stirred in a pile of spinach leaves for a very tasty meal., especially with glasses of Gruet Rose Brut champagne.

I spoke to Amy for a while this morning and when she mentioned that they were coming to Albuquerque and going to Costco, I invited them for dinner.  When she asked, “What can we bring?”, I told her we were going to grill sweet potatoes and ribeye steaks, she suggested, “What if we bring asparagus?

“That sounds great. We can do an all grilled dinner.”, I replied.

So after lunch Suzette made a Quince and blackberry cobbler for a dessert for dinner and the at 1:30 returned to her seminar on Ageless Living.

I called Willy to tell him that Mom and Vahl were coming for dinner, finished my memoir, and at

about 4:00  rode to Montano and back against a 10 mpg head wind.

When I finished my shower and dressed and went to the kitchen Amy and Vahl and Willy had arrived and Suzette was slicing sweet potatoes, the two ribeye steaks, and the asparagus for grilling.

Suzette had poured glasses of Gruet Rose Brut champagne, leaving a glass and enough champagne for me.

I poured the last champagne in my glass and went to the garden and picked a T. of fresh Tarragon and a  garlic chive stalk.  When I returned I put the tarragon and the chopped garlic chive in a small enameled sauce pan with ¼ cup of white wine! ¼ cup of white wine vinegar, a dash of salt and a dash of white pepper and heated it rapidly to reduce it by ½.

Amy and Suzette put the PPI Ratatouille in a sauce pan and heated it.

I fetched a pound of butter from the garage fridge and in a larger enameled sauce pan whisked three egg yolks.  When the tarragon and wine was reduced I took it off the heat and put the egg yolks on and started adding 1 T. slices of butter and then the slightly cooled wine reduction.  I added about 19 eseoz. of butter and about I then asked Amy to stir the sauce.  I went to the wine fridge and looked for a bottle of Pinot Noir.  I settled on a 2007 Londer Anderson Valley Pinot Noir, which I poured because Suzette had brought in the grilled steak and asparagus wrapped in aluminum foil to keep warm.  When Suzette brought in the sweet potatoes we were ready to eat.  She sliced the steak and we each took slices of steak and sweet potato and several asparagus and doused them liberally with creamy Béarnaise Sauce and added spoonfuls of Ratatouille to our plates.

The Ratatouille  was very hearty and delicious.  The béarnaise was delicate. The grilled steak, sweet potato slices, and asparagus were rather paleo.  Except for the Bearnaise Sauce and wine we could have been eating this dinner 40,000 years ago.


But the Béarnaise sauce and wine brought us back to the present and elevated the meal to a really good meal.  The 2007 Londer was incredibly smooth and elegant.  It had lost all indication of the fires that year.  Sipping it reminded me why Anderson Valley Pinot Noir is my favorite American Pinot Noir, and perhaps my favorite Pinot Noir period.

After we finished the pinot, Amy opened the bottle of 2016 Ferrari-Carano Fume Blanc. When I tasted it I was surprised by its body and complexity.  The label revealed that the winemaker had aged a portion of the Sauvignon Blanc in oak barrels with malolactic fermentation, which gave the wine a buttery, vanilla taste and made for a rather pleasant wine with enough character to hold its own as an after dinner drinker.

We never made it to dessert.  Amy said she loved fruit cobbler for breakfast, so I packed a large slice of cobbler in a plastic plate and covered it with Saran for them to take home.

Later Suzette and I tried the cobbler. It was a little dried out, so it appeared that I slightly over cooked.  Suzette moistened her cobbler with heavy cream and sipped a cognac with it and said it was delicious.

I drank a cup of tea and a sip of Calvados with mine and enjoyed its cake like quality.  It definitely was not gooey, but what had happened was that when the juice dried out it created a very tasty sweetened crust on the bottom of the dish.

                                            Note the brown crust on the bottom of the dish

We watched a bit of Saturday Night Live and went to bed.

Bon Appetit