October 13, 2018 Breakfast – Toasted Bagel with Cheese and Herring, Richard’s Memorial Service, Dinner - Grilled Rib steak, Mashed Potatoes, Caprese Salad, and Sautéed Shishito Peppers

October 13, 2018 Breakfast – Toasted Bagel with Cheese and Herring, Richard’s Memorial Service, Dinner  - Grilled Rib steak, Mashed Potatoes, Caprese Salad, and Sautéed Shishito Peppers

This was an oddly food rich day.  I started at 7:30 toasting a ½ bagel that I had sliced into two slices and smearing each slice with cream cheese.  On one slice I smeared the last of the Norwegian blue cheese and on the other slices of Romanian fig wrapped cheese Suzette bought in a bakery in Bran.  I also slices two rounds of Bosque Bakery baguette on which I spread crema and garnished them with pickled herring and onions.  I drank several cups of Earl Grey tea with this protein rich breakfast. I also thawed a rib steak for dinner.

Then at 9:00 we drove to the Farmers’ Market.  The stalls were filled with the bounty of the harvest season and we filled out large Mexican shopping basket with a sweet peppers, a dense Cloud Cliff whole wheat Rustic loaf, eggplants, a fresh locally grown ginger root, and two bunches of carrots.

Here is a picture of Molly’s booth and a regular piece of ginger beside the fresh locally grown root.

Suzette wants to make stuffed sweet peppers and the garlic eggplant dish she likes and I want to make Ratatouille.

We then returned home and I worked with Aaron for two hours on our Railway land project in Los Lunas, while Suzette entertained Aaron’s four year old daughter, Alexis, by picking tomatoes and basil leaves in the garden and working on a craft project and a aborted effort to make a lemon pound cake due to the lack of flour.

The plumbers came at 10:30 to work on three plumbing issues. They took care of one issue, which was a leaking pipe in one of the bathroom showers, but getting our boiler going will require a new thermostat and they need to snake our sewer line to find the clean out valve.  So on Monday they will bring a camera and find the clean out valve opening.

At  1:00 the plumbers left and we changed clothes.  We drove to Pastians and bought a round pineapple coffee cake and then drove the Orsofsky’s House for a memorial service for Richard, who died in September.  Many of his family members were there.  I talked to John Black for a few minutes and caught up on the terrible loss he suffered in the 2008 melt down.  He said he got into litigation with his partners and loss 660,000 square feet of commercial buildings. A real horror story.

Everyone brought food, which is the custom at such events.  I filled my plate with rugula, a chocolate chocolate chip cookie, a white chocolate chip cookie, a small Mexican wedding cookie Anna made, two green beans, a carrot, a cucumber stick and spinach dip Joan Black put together, and two taquitos
with a dollop of guacamole.  We were hungry and I enjoyed eating on the back patio sitting in a chair in the warm afternoon sunlight washing down the food with sips of water.

We all then went downstairs to the basement entertainment area filled with chairs and listened to reminiscences about Richard by family and friends.  After the reminiscences at around 3:30 said goodbye and drove to Michaels for some craft items Suzette needed and then to Target.  We got home at around 5:00.  Suzette had not eaten much all day, so she was hungry, so we decided to cook an early dinner.  We changed clothes and started cooking at 5:45.

I made the Caprese Salad by alternating slices of tomato, red onion, fresh mozzarella and a fresh basil leaf and Suzette made her usual wonderful olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing with lots of fresh chopped basil.  Suzette heated the PPI mashed potatoes, sautéed the fresh Shishito peppers we bought today in olive oil and chopped garlic and grilled the rib steak to rare/medium rare.

I opened a bottle of Charles Shaw organic Pinot noir ($3.98 at Trader Joe’s ) also known as $4 buck Chuck and poured glasses of it.  We ate while watching football and the Reds play the Astros the first game of the American League final.  The pitching dual was amazing with two of the best pitchers in current baseball, Verlander for the Astros and Sale for the Red Sox.  The game was in Boston’s Fenwick Park, where we attended a game six years ago with Willy, a couple of days after attending Cynthia and Ricardo’s marriage on the night before Willy left for graduate school in Dublin.

My favorite dinner when trying to regain my strength after a myoglobin breakdown is steak.  Tonight’s meal was perfect. I loved every aspect of it.  The steak was grilled to perfection, the Shishito peppers were deliciously fresh and not salty,  the mashed potatoes were creamy and bonded with steak and pepper for unforgettable bites and the Caprese was fresh and crunchy.  We both loved dinner and found the Shaw organic Pinot Noir an acceptable, if not great, accompaniment.

Rather than eat peach flambé we opted for finishing our wine with pieces of chocolate hazelnut candy.

At the Seventh Inning stretch we scooped java chip ice cream into bowls.  Suzette drizzled her ice cream with Hershey’s chocolate sauce.  I drizzled my ice cream with Kahlua.

At 9:00 we switched the channel to the PBS series “Grantchester” until 10:00 when we went to bed.

Although it appears that my body is still dumping the myoglobin build up, I  am finally regaining my appetite and strength.  Voila!!

Bon Appetit