April 12, 2018 Lunch – Taj Mahal. Dinner – Roasted Chicken with skillet sautéed Potatoes and Onions and steamed broccoli

April 12, 2018 Lunch – Taj Mahal. Dinner – Roasted Chicken with skillet sautéed Potatoes and Onions and steamed broccoli

I ate my new favorite bagel for breakfast, a whole wheat everything bagel from Donut Mart.  For the sake of full disclosure the owners are my clients, but that means that I have learned that they have a commissary where they make the bagels the way they learned to make them when they owned Dunkin’ Donut stores in L.A.  they are wonderful.  They also sell a very rich and creamy cream cheese, which I can not find anywhere else in Albuquerque.  So I toadted ½ of the bagel, smeared it with cream cheese and garnished it with slices of onion, the newly made Gravad lax (which is wonderful. It melts in your mouth and has no salty flavor) and capers.  There was a half cup of Suzette’s coffee and steamed milk left on the counter, so I added a bag of carnation hot chocolate and hot water to make it into a cocoa coffee and had a lovely breakfast.

I called Aaron and we met at Taj Mahal for lunch.  I arrived early and saw Dennis, my old accountant, and we talked until Aaron arrived.

The food was its usual excellent quality. I was not very hungry, having eaten breakfast, so I took less than I usually take, but all the usual items, a tandoori chicken thigh, three beef meatballs in a curry sauce, some chicken curry, some saag, some zucchini squash curry, raw red onion slices and riata. A pretty full plate after all.  Aaron tended toward the vegetable pokura today and tikka masala.

We both drank water and discussed VinDacia stuff.

After lunch I went to the Law Library at UNM and then home.
When I arrived I called Suzette and asked her to bring a chicken.  Then I finished a pleading for my water case and sent it to my client.

I got busy and was on the phone when Suzette arrived with the chicken at 5:30 so she prepped dinner. She steamed broccoli and diced and sautéed several of the PPI baked potatoes with diced yellow onion with some of the Mexican salt we were given at Kuuk after our meal in Merida in butter and olive oil.  When I got off the phone dinner was almost ready, so I selected a bottle of La Granja white Spanish blend of Verdejo and Viura grapes that I bought at Trader Joe’s for $5.99 on Wednesday.  I had stored it at room temperature upstairs, so I had to ice it.  When we opened it it bubbled slightly like a Portuguese Vinho Verde, which made me wonder if La Granja was now adding CO2 to their white wine or if I had left it a little too long in the car while I ate lunch at East Ocean with Robert on Tuesday.  Anyway, it did not seem to affect the flavor of the wine, which seemed to be a bit less fruity than usual, if anything, perhaps because of the effervescence.

We enjoyed dinner, especially the occasional crystal of salt with a sautéed cube of potato.  Also, the chicken was roasted perfectly and was juicy and extremely tender and tasted wonderful, especially with the sautéed crispy bits of roasted potatoes and onion.  The Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery uses a German combination oven that adjusts heat and moisture during the cooking process.  After five years of roasting chickens the cooks at the Bistro have perfected the roasting process.

I remember when I was very young, we would stay in New York with my mother for a month in the summer, often at the Barbizon Hotel at 63rd and Lexington, near Central Park, where she lived when she was single in the 30’s and we would order a Broasted chicken from one of the delis near the hotel that had a large glass enclosed combi cooker in which rotisserie cooked chickens were prepared.  The chicken tonight tasted exactly like that broasted chicken I first tasted in NY when I was six years old.

Suzette wanted dessert, so she heated two pieces of the Swedish marzipan wrapped rum cake pastry in the microwave for 20 seconds.  I made a cup of tea and poured out the last ½ oz. from the bottle of Berneroy XO Calvados I buy for $29.99 at Total wine. It is my house Calvados, because it has no bitterness, just the subtle flavor of apples, alcohol, and Normandy.

I learned something new tonight.  In Neil Oliver’s book, The History of Ancient England there were Viking invasions of England as early or earlier than 350 BC .  He states that the speculation is that the invasions led to settlements in Yorkshire and near Edinburgh, because of the burial sites found there.  His theory is that they did not come from Scandinavia, but from Normandy in France based on burial sites found there.  He then mentions that Normandy derived it name from the Northmen who settled in that part of Gaul. I previously had read The Vikings by Oxenstierna, who chronicles the Viking raids across Europe beginning around 750 and recall him saying that the Norman invasion in 1066 pitted Vikings against Vikings.  So, I actually learned two new things.  Viking invasions and settlements in the British Isles and Europe date back to prehistoric times.  And that much of the confusion over which groups settled in which areas is due to Romans and especially Roman historians referring to all those living in the area of France and Belgium as Gauls. I am getting the feeling that much of Europe is populated by Scandinavian people.  For example, Oxensteirna mentions that Andalusia in Spain was settled by Vandals and Russia was settled by Vikings, who the Russians called the Rus, with their trading center located at Novgorod.  Normans in Normandy.  The Rus in Russia.  Vandals in (V)Andalusia. The map of Europe begins to take on a wholly  different and more Viking flavor.  Especially, when you add things like  Estonia being a colony of Sweden and Alfred the Great of England around 750 A.D. giving the Danes the Thames River Valley for their promise to protect him in the south and southwest of England.

There are probably lots more examples, but these are sufficient to convince me that Vikings settled all over Europe.

Here is some information from Wikipedia on Novgorod.

Veliky Novgorod (Russian: Вели́кий Но́вгород, IPA: [vʲɪˈlʲikʲɪj ˈnovɡərət]), also known as Novgorod the Great, or Novgorod Veliky, or just Novgorod, is one of the most important historic cities in Russia,[15] which serves as the administrative center of Novgorod Oblast. It is situated on the M10 federal highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg. The city lies along the Volkhov River just downstream from its outflow from Lake Ilmen. UNESCO recognized Novgorod as a World Heritage Site in 1992. Population: 218,717 (2010 Census);[8] 216,856 (2002 Census);[16] 229,126 (1989 Census).[17]

Veliky Novgorod
Veliky Novgorod is located in Novgorod Oblast
Location of Veliky Novgorod in Novgorod Oblast
Coordinates: 58°33′N 31°16′E
Country
Russia

Statistics
Area
90 km2 (35 sq mi)[7]
Population (2010 Census)
218,717 inhabitants[8]
- Rank in 2010
85th
Population (January 2011 est.)
218,681 inhabitants[7]
Density
2,430/km2 (6,300/sq mi)[9]
Time zone
MSK (UTC+03:00)[10]
First mentioned
859[11] or 862[12]
Previous names
Novgorod (until June 14, 1999)[13]
Postal code(s)[14]
173000–173005, 173007–173009, 173011–173016, 173018, 173020–173025, 173700, 173899, 173920, 173955, 173990, 173999
Dialing code(s)
+7 8162[citation needed]
Website
www.adm.nov.ru
Veliky Novgorod on Wikimedia Commons
Veliky Novgorod
Великий Новгород
The medieval walls of Novgorod withstood many sieges
UNESCO World Heritage Site
At its peak during the 14th century, the city was the capital of the Novgorod Republic and one of Europe's largest cities.[18]

Said more delicately, the White Russians are Vikings who settled and traded along the Volga from what is now St. Petersburg to the Black Sea.

We went to bed a bit after 9:00.

Bon Appetit