Another satisfying day of healthy food.
I made oatmeal with dried cranberries and brown sugar for breakfast
Etienne came by to visit me and bring me six bottles of Tularosa Vineyards Tempranillo. We talked for a while and then went to Ron Peterson’s to meet Peter and return a shotgun choke Etienne had bought earlier.
We tried repeatedly to reach Peter without success. After we finished returning the choke and obtaining a refund we walked out to return to Etienne’s car and found Peter walking toward us.
Peter suggested several places near Peterson’s gun shop, but when I mentioned going to Taj Mahal and my paying for lunch everyone agreed. We waited a few minutes for a table and when a table became available Peter arrived. So we immediately went through the line. It was about 12:30 and everything had been refreshed. I took a piece of tandoori chicken and several slices of onion, some Chicken Tikka Masala, some chick pea Chana masala and lots of spinach saag.
I felt like we were really old men discussing our ailments. Etienne has come to Albuquerque to have his eyes examined, Peter had had had a procedure on blood vessels in his legs and I was still recovering from gall bladder removal. What a crowd of old geezers!
This was Etienne’s first visit to Taj Mahal and he was really impressed, although we all enjoyed it.
After lunch Peter took me to Sprouts to buy an eggplant and a bunch of green onions, so I could make Mapo Dofu for dinner.
I went home and checked my stock portfolio. It was down a bit, but it appears that the huge swings associated with the extreme volatility of the end of December have calmed.
I rested in bed until about 5:00. This was a sleepy restful day.
At 5:30 Suzette arrived and I began preparing the Mapo Dofu, I diced ¼ onion, ¾ poblano Chile, 2 T. of ginger, 1 T. of ginger, 1 lb. of pork steaks, the eggplant and 1 zucchini.
I heated about 2 T. of peanut oil and 1 tsp. of sesame oil in my wok and then added the meat, poblano Chile, garlic and ginger. After the meat began to turn gray, I added the other vegetables and stir fried everything together. I fetched five dried shiitake mushrooms, and about 1 oz, of black wood ear threads and rehydrated them in 2 cups of hot water for about ten minutes. I then fetched and diced 10 oz. of medium tofu.
I added the mushrooms and wood ear and their liquid and the tofu to the wok and lifted and folded the mixture to combine the ingredients.
The liquid almost came to the top of the ingredients. Often the liquid covers the ingredients. In that case I do not cover the wok to allow the ingredients to evaporate liquid as the they stew. Today the liquid level was just below the top of the ingredients so I covered the wok to hold in the liquid so the ingredients would stew.
After about 30 minutes I deemed the mixture ready. I put some of the black rice I cooked last night
into a Pyrex loaf pan, covered it with Saran and heated it for 2minutes and 22 seconds in the
microwave. I also heated water and made a cup of jasmine tea. Suzette fetched beers from the garage and we filled pasta bowls with rice and Mapo Dofu. I needed salt, so I fetched the bottle of soy sauce and drizzled a bit onto my pile of food.
This was such a satisfying meal that I stopped eating before I finished my pile of rice and Mapo Dofu. I also drank an additional cup of tea and then a cup of camomile tea with honey and lime juice.
Suzette went to bed at 9:00 but I stayed up until 10:00 transfixed by the news that the FBI had opened a counter intelligence investigation of President Trump shortly after he fired Comey to try to determine if he was working for Russia.
After a lovely day of food I went to bed happy.
Bon Appetit
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