I ate granola, fruit salad, and yogurt and worked with Suzette in the yard to get it cleaned up and arranged torches and chairs and cushions for tonight’s party.
We looked at the Chinese plates and chose the two that I would give to Amy so she would have 8 plates and I would have seven.
I called Mike Verhagen and told him I could not go to lunch today but invited him to the party and explained
I worked and Mike came to fix the fence and I helped him find the materials.
At 11:00 I went to the bank and then went to Vinaigrette to meet Amy and Willy for lunch.
When they arrived at 11:45 the ordered ginger turmeric sodas. I decided to not get the greasy Frisée Salad and instead ordered a duck confit, arugula, and goat cheese salad. Amy ordered a seasonal special salad containing peach slices, prosciutto, a burrata. Wikipedia says “Burrata is a fresh Italian cow milk cheese (occasionally buffalo milk) made from mozzarella and cream.[1] The outer shell is solid mozzarella, while the inside contains stracciatella and cream, giving it an unusual, soft texture. It is typical of Apulia.”
Willy ordered ½ of a sandwich and ½ of an omega salad with avocado.
I showed Amy and Willy the old family photographs Billy recently sent me and Audrey’s original artwork for greeting cards she designed for Hallmark that Billy gave me for my birthday.
Amy gave me the announcement for Helen’s funeral in Oklahoma and told me that there would be a memorial service in Fort Worth. Helen was Amy’s father’s second wife. We used to visit them in Corpus Christi when they lived there. I was saddened to hear of her death.
The older generation that gave birth to us seems to be passing and the generation that we gave birth to coming into maturity. Willy told us about his first live interview on TV last night and showed us a picture from the Internet. We had seen him on KRQE’s 10:00 news last night and were thrilled by his performance. There was a horrible traffic death when a stolen car being chased by a police car struck and killed a 15 year old boy walking home from the movie theatre at Coors and Ellison. The reason Willy was interviewed is because Mayor Keller recently adopted Vision Zero as a goal for Albuquerque, which is an international planning commitment to make streets safer for pedestrians so pedestrian deaths will be reduced. Willy is the director for Vision Zero planning for Bernalillo County. I told how proud I was of him.
I liked the the duck confit salad interesting and unusual, yet very direct.
The duck confit was shredded and chopped up into small pieces and mixed with goat cheese and the arugula. The result was a thick pasty agglomeration in a big pile. Here is a picture of it.
We were served focaccia bread and olive oil. Next time I will drizzle the salad with olive oil.
Amy’s salad was lovely with its sliced peaches and burrata.
After lunch I returned home and delivered the two plates to Amy and she delivered the Holly Roberts photo to me.
I then rested until 4:00. After checking the Market, which turned out to be a bad day, I called Suzette and we determined that I would go get the ice to ice the cold drinks and corn chips for the guacamole later so the ice could go into the ice chests she was bringing home. I them made the guacamole with five semi-ripe large avocados we bought at Costco the other day, four oz. of chopped onion, three cloves of fresh garlic from our garden, about ten drops of Valencia Mexican red Chile sauce, juice of two limes, and a cup of cilantro leaves.
After I covered the guacamole with Saran and put it into the fridge around 4:45 I drove to El Super and bought three oranges, Persian cucumbers, and Roma tomatoes for $.50/lb., limes for $.33/lb., 4 mangos for $.99, 4 12 oz. bags of corn chips for $1.29, and two 20 lb. bags of ice.
At 5:30 when I returned Suzette had arrived and we put the ice into the chests and we iced the drinks and beer.
At 6:30 I baked a cookie sheet full of panko coated shrimp I had bought at Costco at 400 degrees for ten minutes on each side and then turned off the heat and kept them warm in the oven until 7:00 when Suzette put them into a serving bowl surrounding a ramekin I had filled with Oriental sweet chile sauce.
Suzette transferred the guacamole to a round serving bowl and filled a bowl with corn chips.
Mike came at 7:00 with three cheese wedges, a Saint Andre, a Cambozola Blue cheese, and a Brie.plus a nice bottle of Montepulciano d’ Abruzzo. He opened the cheeses and put them on a
cheese board he brought with two knives he brought and a lovely box of brown rice crackers that I put in a monkey pod wood bread bowl. We put the cheese board and crackers on the dining room table with the guacamole and chips and the shrimp.
Soon lots of folks arrived bringing food and wine and beer. We put the desserts on the round table in the TV room and the appetizers on the dining room table. Here is a picture. I was really impressed with the quality and creativity shown by everyone. Suszie made her classic deviled eggs as usual, Dianne made delicious egg rolls as usual except this time the stuffing included impinge bean sprouts along with a soy dipping sauce. Roxanne?? and Allen brought baked chili puffs, Susan brought Dolmathes. And Macon brought a Very .Mexican dish, watermelon cubes dusted with ground red Chile The best dish of the night was brought by Jennifer Bean, a Baked pastry crust covered with apricot preserves, crumbled blue cheese and cranraisins. It was sensational, especially with red wine. There were lots of other wonderful dishes. Mickie brought the best dessert, a peach cake made with fresh peaches from her garden. Lana made her usual pleasing roasted walnuts imbedded in a sheet of caramel. There were lots of other dishes that arrived while I was outside talking and opening bottles of wine. The most interesting person I talked to was Allen who was an NCAA golfer like my dad and started Bacchus Distributing with Ed Louden. They are both heroes of mine for introducing fine wines to New Mexico, although I had not known of him or his wine and golf history until tonight (Ed never told me he had a partner). I met several other people, but by no means everyone and they were mostly very interesting. There were several new neighbors who came. The neighborhood is starting to turn over a bit with lots of new interesting people.
I watched some of the Individual Time Trial in the Tour. Amazingly, Allaphillipe beat Geraint Thomas by 14 seconds to win the stage and stay in yellow.
Diane and Jim and Mike stayed a bit later than 10:00. Mike stayed after Diane and Jim left and we talked until 11:00 when we went to bed.
Bon Appetit
No comments:
Post a Comment