I ate my usual breakfast of granola, milk, yogurt, and blueberries.
I called Peter Eller and we decided to eat lunch together, although he insisted that he pay for lunch because of my excellent effort helping his friend he referred to me with a legal matter.
I decided upon Vietnam 2000 because the weather was warming rapidly and it serves my favorite summer time dish, Bun Cha Gio.
Bun Thit Cha Gio is actually what menu item No. 21 states. The menu translates item No. 21 as “Rice Noodle with Fried Egg Roll and Grilled Pork”. But that does not begin to fully describe the complexity of the dish. For example, it fails to mention that the bottom 1/3 of the bowl is filled with chilled mung beans, chopped lettuce, cucumber strips, green onion slices, chopped cilantro, and Oriental basil. Nor does not mention that the rice noodles (bun) are boiled to semi-glutinous perfection and served a little above room temperature. Although it accurately describes that the noodles are garnished with fried egg rolls and grilled pork, it does not explain that the fried egg rolls are fried until their crispy rice wrappers flake off like good French pastry at the touch, nor does the title explain that the slices of pork are marinated in an Oriental BBQ sauce and char broiled until their edges become flavorfully crisp and charred. Nor does the menu description describe that the dish is served with a bowl of sweetened Vietnamese fish sauce that emulsifies and unifies the dish and mixes the separate ingredients’ flavors and breaks the glutinous bond of the noodles that allows them to begin to slither and combine with the other ingredients. Eating this dish is always an adventure for me and the first time I eat it every year is a special occasion like the swallows returning to Capistrano.
Before lunch I stopped at Sprouts to buy more over sized organic asparagus but they were out of them, so I bought the regular asparagus for $1.98/lb., some granola for $2.99 and a plastic 6 oz. carton of blueberries for $1.67.
After lunch after taking Peter back to his house I went home and took a nap until after 4:00.
Suzette spent the evening with her girls’ group, so we did not plan a dinner. When I returned home from meditation at 7:00 I heated the PPI aluminum foil baked Rockfish with a bit of steamed white rice and ate it with scoops of mango salsa I made last night and a porter beer.
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| The mango salsa |
I decided to cheat a little and ate a wedge of fruit cake that I had soaked with rum at Christmas garnished with a swirl of Reddi-Whip. The fruit cake was so tender it fell apart at the touch of a fork. Voila.
The fruitcake
Bon Appetit
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