October 25, 2018 Lunch – Greenside Café, Cedar Crest. Dinner – Chayote and Pork Stew on Couscous


I started with two slices of bagel with cream cheese and smoked whitefish.

I picked up Charlie a bit before 11:00 and drove to the Greenside Café in Cedar Crest where we met the other members of the book club for lunch. The obvious choice for any Texan was Greenside’s  superb Chicken Fried Steak, which Charlie ordered.  Here is a picture.

I wanted to venture into some more interesting areas of the nenu and finally decided the spinach and ricotta filled ravioli in a artichoke white sauce was the most challenging dish on the menu and ordered it.  Also, Suzette’s eschewing all pasta for the last 1 ½ years had left me hungry for some fresh pasta.  The dish turned out to be just what I expected Sans a dash of chopped parsley as garnish.  The ravioli were tender, confirming that they were probably fresh,  the spinach and ricotta stuffing was melt in your mouth soft and the white sauce was thin enough to coat but not too thick to interfere with its function of melding the flavors of the chunks of artichoke with  the sauce and the pasta.  Here is a picture.

Ken ordered the chicken breast mole, which was my alternative choice and he reported to be very delicious.

Several others ordered the  Sanger de Christo sandwich, which was aMonte Cristo with a berry dipping sauce and home made potato chips.

All in all I found Greenside to be a really good restaurant.  It is a readers’ choice favorite on the east side of the mountains.  I highly recommend it.

After lunch we drove to Rob’s house for our book club meeting.  I recorded comments, which are available at info.LTBC if you are interested. At the end of the meeting the host serves a dessert.  Rob served slices of pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake with whipped cream.

At 3:30 when the meeting ended we drove home.

Suzette was at home when I arrived at 4:15 and did not want to cook.

Finally, we decided to make Couscous, which we do not consider cooking, because it is so easy to make and serve the chayote and Pork stew I had made on Wednesday with it.

We decided to chop up two carrots and a tomato to add to the Couscous.  Suzette heated 1 1/2 cups of water with 2 T. of butter in a sauce pan band added the carrots and I added the diced tomato and we cooked those ingredients for a couple of minutes before adding 1 cup of couscous.  We left the heat on the lowest setting for a minute or two and then turned of the heat.  In a few minutes the Couscous was ready, except I do not like dry Couscous, so we added ¼ cup of water and turned on the heat again to low to moisten the Couscous.  In another few minutes I turned off the heat to the Couscous and it was the way I wanted it, cooked and moist.

While the Couscous was cooking we heated the sauce pan full of chayote stew.  It actually included ½ poblano chili and 2/3 onion diced plus two chayote peeled and sliced and two smoked pork chops diced.

We scooped spoonfuls of Couscous into pasta bowls and covered it with spoonfuls of stew.  The dish was delicious, especially after adding a sprinkle of salt.  It was a true stew with both melded and separate flavors.

Suzette drank a beer and I drank water.  We enjoyed our spontaneous dinner very much.

Later I ate the last bit of the Java Chip ice cream doused with a Kahlua and topped with two maraschino cherries.

Bon Appetit