I woke at 7:30 happy that I got in time to see Fareed Zacharia, but when I turned on the TV all the news was about the two mass shootings, one in El Paso and another in Dayton yesterday. I watched for a while and then made sautéed a patty of pork sausage, a slice of onion, and two eggs.
Suzette slept until 8:30 or nine and was shocked when I told her that there were two mass murders apparently by white nationalists.
We watched for a while and then took a ½ mile walk.
Then Suzette wanted to make basil pesto so we went to the garden and picked a basket of pesto leaves. I rested while Suzette processed the leaves with Pecorino Romano cheese, a bit of red Chile powder, and piñon nuts she roasted in a skillet on the stove to make her famous red Chile pesto.
At 11:30 we decided to make brunch. I had chilled the bottle of PureLoire sparkling Chenin Blanc we had bought at Total Wine several years ago to be drunk with the Dungeness crab I had bought yesterday at Costco’s Seafood Fiesta. We wanted a little more substantial lunch than just crab, so we decided to make a vegetable plate. Suzette said she wanted deviled eggs, so she hard boiled six eggs. Then she peeled them and sliced them in two and added mayonnaise and Dijon mustard to the yolks and filled the egg white halves.
While Suzette was making deviled eggs I made the sauce for the crab and vegetables. I squeezed the juice of ½ lemon into a metal bowl and added ½ finely diced medium shallot and let that sit for a bit to help cook the shallot. Then I added 2/3 cup of prepared mayonnaise, a spoonful of tartare sauce, two squirts of catsup, a pinch of white pepper, About 1 T. of finely chopped celery leaves, and a pinch of salt. I put the sauce in the fridge to chill and stiffen.
Then I sliced into spears, a tomato, ½ large avocado, two stalks of celery and two Persian cucumbers and laid them on a plate. Suzette placed pickled vegetables in the center depression of her deviled egg holder and added the 12 deviled egg halves in the twelve small depressions that surrounded the edge of the plate. We filled our Mexican ice bucket with ice and water and placed the wine in it and carried everything out to the garden table.
We ate a lovely and filling brunch as we each shelled ½ crab and dipped and ate bites of crab with pieces of avocado, celery, cucumber, deviled egg, and tomato as we sipped sparkling Chenin blanc.
We were full when we finished around 1:30, so we lay down for a nap.
I think I slept until 4:30. We were not hungry yet and so I read this month’s book club book, Year of Wonders, which I am enjoying, it described a woman’s life during the Plague year of 1667 in rural England.
Willy came by a bit later and started laundry and we could not decide on dinner. Originally I had bought salmon but we decided to freeze it and serve it Wednesday evening when Willy’s friends from Dublin visit.
When Willy left to go work out at the gym, we decided to go to El Super to get leeks, so Suzette could replicate the Vichyssoise recipe at the center.
We drove to El Super at 6:00 and the produce area was a wasteland, having been picked over by the weekend crowds and not fully replenished, perhaps because of no deliveries or short staffing on the weekend. I wanted broccoli and there was only the stalks people had broken off the crowns and there were no leeks. So we made the best of it. Suzette bought four nice cantaloupes at 4 lb. for $.99, two nice papayas that a produce man brought out from the back, Granny Smith Apple for $.79/lb. and three bunches of cilantro for $.99. We bought eggs, a mango, and Valencia hot sauce for home.
We returned at 7:30 and watched the last ½ of Poldark and then from 8:00 until 9:00 Grantchester Masterpiece Theatre presentations on PBS. Suzette reminded me when we were at El Super that we had Vichyssoise in the garage fridge, so we instantly had a plan for dinner when Willy returned at 8:45. At 8:00 between shows Suzette went to the garden and picked about ten stalks of chives and at
9:00 I finely sliced them and diced ½ of a large avocado to garnish the bowls Suzette filled with Vichyssoise and I poured Willy the last glass of Petit Petit, the bottle of a Petit Sirah and Petit Verdot blend we bought with dinner at Chez Mamou. Willy is not as demonstrative about food as I am but he ate two bowls garnished with chives and avocado as we ate and talked until 10:30 when Willy left, mostly about his friends who are visiting from Dublin and arrangements for their stay.
I attribute my demonstrativeness about food and even my food writing career to the time in my youth during which my mother had her cooking school in Fort Worth. I don’t recall when I started helping her prepare the dishes she was teaching that week, but I have a vivid memory of the family sitting in the kitchen dining nook where we took most of our meals and each member of the family in turn around the table describing the pluses and minuses of the dishes. I think that is where I became a food critic and developed my palate.
I suspect Suzette as the oldest daughter learned to cook by helping her mother prepare the meals for their large family of seven. I am still amazed how Suzette will, on nights when we have no menu go into overdrive in the kitchen and come up with some Pennsylvania Dutch recipe, such as braised sweet and sour cabbage and mashed potatoes with a meat.
Bon Appetit
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