October 20, 2018 An Amazing Day. Lunch – Cider Festival. Dinner –Stir Fried Garlic Eggplant with Green Beans and Pasilla chili.
This was an interesting day in lots of exceptional ways.
It started with Chelsea tying Man United in the last minutes of added time to stay undefeated.
I opened a new bottle of orange and elderberry marmalade from IKEA and toasted and buttered two slices of French baguette to spread it on.
At 9:00 we drove to Santa Fe, stopping first at a Stephen’s semi-annual sale. We did or see anything we wanted, so at 10:50 we drove to Eaves Ranch where the cider festival was being held. There were about ten purveyors pouring tastes of cider in the streets of the constructed Western village with its general store, saloon, and jail. The Eaves Ranch movie set was featured in many movies, such as Ballad of ?? Hogue, Eldorado, and Pat Garrett and Billy the kid. It was a charming old western town with the adjacent Cerritos Hills as its backdrop. My favorite was Santa Fe Ciderworks’ Morrisey cherry flavored cider.
We were served a chopped beef sandwich, beans and Cole slaw for lunch, during which there was a re-enactment of a gun fight. Here is a photo of the gun fighters.
After lunch at a bit after 1:00 we drove south on 14 all the way to July 4th Canyon just west of Tajique. The crimson maples were showing their colors. It was very special. We walked the Crimson Maple Trail and enjoyed the warm sunny weather. I was able to walk slowly without much pain, hiking in a straight line that avoided twisting my hips to climb over obstructions.
We drove south to Mountainair, where U.S. Hwy 60; cuts across the Manzanos to Hwy 47 and turned north and drove back home; a distance of 250 miles for the day.
When we got home at around 6:00 we decided to make Suzette’s favorite Chinese dish, Garlic Eggplant, for which we had bought fresh locally grown Iciban, green, and Italian red eggplants at the Farmers’ market last Saturday.
I sliced one of each eggplant into 2 ½ inch by ¼ inch strips and finely diced ½ poblano chili, and then sliced a boneless pork sirloin steak into strips an de-skinned and sliced an Italian sausage into strips.
I then made 1 cup of rice by heating 2 cups of water and ½ tsp. of dehydrated chicken stock to a boil and adding 1 cup of basmati rice and reducing the heat on our smallest butter to its lowest setting and simmering the rice for 30 minutes, while Suzette stir fried the eggplant strips in oil to cook them.
We called Mike and invited him to join us for dinner and the game and he came over at around 7:00 when the score in game 7 of the Brewers vs, L.A. Dodgers was 2-1 in favor of the Dodgers, so still quite exciting.
Suzette suggested expanding the dish a bit and I suggested adding green beans, which were starting to go bad and needed to be cooked.
We quickly snapped the green beans and added them to the wok with the eggplant, chili, meats and a seasoning sauce consisting of hoisin instead of oyster sauce, cornstarch, soy sauce, and Chinese cooking wine. We covered the wok to let all the ingredients steam and cook for about ten of fifteen minutes, which gave us time to sort out the beverage choices for dinner. Mike chose red wine and drank the open French Malbec from Cahors. I fetched a Fat Tire beer for Suzette and I made a cup of green tea for myself.
Willy came by briefly to start some laundry, but did not stay for dinner, which meant there was enough food for seconds for each of us.
The dish was wonderful. The fresh green beans added crispness and a vegetable component, the extra meat gave the dish Savor and bulk, and the chili blended in to simply give the dish added gustatory warmth.
The slightly sweet sauce (due to the substitution of sweeter Hoisen sauce for Oyster sauce) was dark and rich, cloaking and helping to blend the ingredient’s individual flavors, a basic characteristic of good Chinese Cuisine.
The Brewers v. LA game became less interesting after LA caught a Brewer hit to the warning track that would have scored several runs and Puig for LA hit a 3 run homer to make the score 5 to 1, which is how the game ended.
So I searched the channels and found that Ohio State, number 2 in the rankings, was losing to Purdue 21 to 6. We started switching between the two games but were progressively drawn into watching Purdue outscore Ohio State and win the game 49 to 20. It seemed that Ohio States’ quarterback was having a bad night, missing passes and throwing an interception for a pick six, while Purdue’s passing and running mix constantly kept Ohio State off guard. It was fun to see one of the biggest football upsets of the year, especially since TCU’s hope of a winning season ended with a lost to Ohio State a month ago, its lost to Texas, and its lost to Oklahoma today.
At 9:30, after a full day of great new adventures, including our first visit to the Eaves Ranch movie set and Suzette’s first visit to the grove of crimson maples in July 4th Canyon, and a great dinner, we said goodnight to Mike and went to bed.
A geology note. The east side of the the Rio Grande Valley is lined with mountains created by a rift of up lifted limestone seabed that created habitats for flora and fauna normally seen farther north into Canada. As the earth warmed after the last ice age pockets of habitat seemed to have been left in the Manzanos and Sandias, such as the deciduous maple forest in the Manzanos and Canadian jays at the top of the Sandias.
Bon Appetit
st minutes of added time to stay undefeated.
Then I made a wonderful omelet with three eggs, diced sausage, green onion, sliced baby potatoes, portobello mushrooms, and Jarlsberg cheese.
I opened a new bottle of orange and elderberry marmalade from IKEA and toasted and buttered two slices of French baguette to spread it on.
At 9:00 we drove to Santa Fe, stopping first at a Stephen’s semi-annual sale. We did or see anything we wanted, so at 10:50 we drove to Eaves Ranch where the cider festival was being held. There were about ten purveyors pouring tastes of cider in the streets of the constructed Western village with its general store, saloon, and jail. The Eaves Ranch movie set was featured in many movies, such as Ballad of ?? Hogue, Eldorado, Pat Garrett and Billy the kid. It was a charming old western town with the adjacent Cerritos Hills as its backdrop. My favorite was Santa Fe Ciderworks’ Morrisey cherry flavored cider.
We were served a chopped beef sandwich, beans and Cole slaw for lunch, during which there was a re-enactment of a gun fight. Here is a photo of the gun fighters.
After lunch at a bit after 1:00 we drove south on 14 all the way to July 4th Canyon just west of Tajique. The crimson maples were showing their colors. It was very special. We walked the Crimson Maple Trail and enjoyed the warm sunny weather. I was able to walk slowly without much pain, hiking in a straight line that avoided twisting my hips to climb over obstructions.
At 4:00 we headed home, taking the southern route.
We drove south to Mountainair, where U.S. Hwy 60; cuts across the Manzanos to Hwy 47 and turned north and drove back home; a distance of 250 miles for the day.
When we got home at around 6:00 we decided to make Suzette’s favorite Chinese dish, Garlic Eggplant, for which we had bought fresh locally grown Iciban, green, and Italian red eggplants at the Farmers’ market last Saturday.
I sliced one of each eggplant into 2 ½ inch by ¼ inch strips and finely diced ½ poblano chili, and then sliced a boneless pork sirloin steak into strips an de-skinned and sliced an Italian sausage into strips.
I then made 1 cup of rice by heating 2 cups of water and ½ tsp. of dehydrated chicken stock to a boil and adding 1 cup of basmati rice and reducing the heat on our smallest butter to its lowest setting and simmering the rice for 30 minutes, while Suzette stir fried the eggplant strips in oil to cook them.
We called Mike and invited him to join us for dinner and the game and he came over at around 7:00 when the score in game 7 of the Brewers vs, L.A. Dodgers was 2-1 in favor of the Dodgers, so still quite exciting.
Suzette suggested expanding the dish a bit and I suggested adding green beans, which were starting to go bad and needed to be cooked.
We quickly snapped the green beans and added them to the wok with the eggplant, chili, meats and a seasoning sauce consisting of hoisin instead of oyster sauce, cornstarch, soy sauce, and Chinese cooking wine. We covered the wok to let all the ingredients steam and cook for about ten of fifteen minutes, which gave us time to sort out the beverage choices for dinner. Mike chose red wine and drank the open French Malbec from Cahors. I fetched a Fat Tire beer for Suzette and I made a cup of green tea for myself.
Willy came by briefly to start some laundry, but did not stay for dinner, which meant there was enough food for seconds for each of us.
The dish was wonderful. The fresh green beans added crispness and a vegetable component, the extra meat gave the dish Savor and bulk, and the chili blended in to simply give the dish added gustatory warmth.
The slightly sweet sauce (due to the substitution of sweeter Hoisen sauce for Oyster sauce) was dark and rich, cloaking and helping to blend the ingredient’s individual flavors, a basic characteristic of good Chinese Cuisine.
The Brewers v. LA game became less interesting after LA caught a Brewer hit to the warning track that would have scored several runs and Puig for LA hit a 3 run homer to make the score 5 to 1, which is how the game ended.
So I searched the channels and found that Ohio State, number 2 in the rankings, was losing to Purdue 21 to 6. We started switching between the two games but were progressively drawn into watching Purdue outscore Ohio State and win the game 49 to 20. It seemed that Ohio States’ quarterback was having a bad night, missing passes and throwing an interception for a pick six, while Purdue’s passing and running mix constantly kept Ohio State off guard. It was fun to see one of the biggest football upsets of the year, especially since TCU’s hope of a winning season ended with a lost to Ohio State a month ago, its lost to Texas, and its lost to Oklahoma today.
At 9:30, after a full day of great new adventures, including our first visit to the Eaves Ranch movie set and Suzette’s first visit to the grove of crimson maples in July 4th Canyon, and a great dinner, we said goodnight to Mike and went to bed.
A geology note. The east side of the the Rio Grande Valley is lined with mountains created by a rift of up lifted limestone seabed that created habitats for flora and fauna normally seen farther north into Canada. As the earth warmed after the last ice age pockets of habitat seemed to have been left in the Manzanos and Sandias, such as the deciduous maple forest in the Manzanos and Canadian jays at the top of the Sandias.
Bon Appetit
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