On Saturday Suzette made banana nut bread with chopped walnuts in the morning and stuffed acorn squash. I ate a large Cesar Salad for lunch as I watched An amazing rugby match between England and Scotland in which England scored the first 31 points and Scotland then scored the next 38 points and finally England drew a draw at 38 to 38. I then rode about 7 miles to Campbell Rd. and back. We had invited a Susan and Charlie for dinner because we were making Corned Beef and Cabbage. We first tried to cook it in the crock pot, but it would not heat properly, so we switched to a roasting pan in the oven. We started the corned beef and cabbage at 10:00 and added carrots and quartered Yukon Gold potatoes at 2:00.
Charlie and Susan came for dinner at 6:30. I put out crackers and Boursin herbed cheese spread, several cubes of fresh cantaloupe, and several cubes of Swiss cheese for appetizers.
After a bit we served dinner, corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and carrots with horseradish with slices of a wonderful soda bread dotted with currants that Susan made in a cast iron skillet.
After dinner we ate a few chocolate chocolate chip cookies and said goodnight at 9:15.
At 11:30 we cleaned the 2 lb. Dungeness Crab Suzette bought at Costco yesterday and Suzette made a salad of blanched diced asparagus with the addition of diced cucumber, and tomato dressed with Cesar salad dressing.
I made my favorite sauce for seafood, a combination of cocktail sauce and mignonette sauce; ½ shallot finely minced mixed with juice of ½ lemon allowed to sit in the fridge far a bit to cook the shallot. Then I added about ½ T. of horseradish, 1 T. of catsup, and a dash or two of Tabasco and about 2/3 cup of prepared mayonnaise.
I had chilled a bottle of Gruet Brut Rose champagne during the night that we carried to the table in the garden in an ice bucket filled with ice and water with the crab and salad plus plates and champagne glasses.
It was cool but sunny and comfortable as we sat with our backs in the sun light and enjoyed our first meal of the year in our garden. The most exciting thing besides the delicious lunch was the fact that we have about 15 baby gold fish in out pond. Finally we have a propagating population of fish after over ten years.
We nibbled on cookies and banana nut bread during the afternoon and Suzette finished the vanilla ice cream with a drizzle of Hershey’s syrup.
We had no specific plan for dinner. We had five lamb chops and an old eggplant in the fridge that needed to be cooked but no gas in our propane tank. We finally decided to remove the meat from the
bone and sauté the lamb meat with cubes of eggplant. We decided to add diced onion, tomato and garlic to the mix plus fresh oregano and chives. I suggested we cook spaghetti so we could serve the stew over spaghetti.
The resulting new dish was really wonderful.
I opened a bottle of the Origon Spanish Gran Reserva red ($5.99 at Trader Joe’s) that was made from 60% Syrah and 40% Grenache that went perfectly with the meal.
After dinner we watched Wall-E, which neither of us had seen in its entirety before and enjoyed it.
Bon Appetit
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