August 13, 2019 Lunch – PPI Mahi Mahi with vegetables in foil with rice. Dinner – Provençal Scallops with Voodles

I have settled on yogurt, granola, milk, and fruit for breakfast. Today the fruit was ½ mango diced and ½ banana sliced.

I had an early telephone appointment so I showered and dressed at 7:30 and ate breakfast during the telephone conversation.

I then walked about ½ mile without a sugar pill at 10:30 and fixed lunch at 12:00. I heated the fish in foil with about 1/3 cup of brown rice and enjoyed a filling and healthy lunch.

I took a short nap and then worked until 3:45, when I started looking at the news.  President Trump deferred the tariffs on China until December 15, which triggered a monster surge of 372 points in the market in which I gained back almost all I had lost in the last two days.

I am not up much in the last 1 ½ years but I am up.

I thawed out eight scallops and chilled a bottle of Famille Perrin Reserve Cotes du Rhône White and rested until Suzette came home at 5:30.  She was tired so I cooked.  I selected a Provençal recipe for tuna from the Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Here is the recipe I followed.

Suzette and I discussed the recipe.  She did not want a cream sauce (bechamel).  I chose one without a cream sauce that was very Provençal.

I went to our garden and picked four stalks of oregano, six or seven stalks of thyme, and six or seven chives an de-stemmed the leaves  of the thyme amid oregano and minced them.  Then I diced four ripe tomatoes Suzette picked from her garden at the Center for Ageless Living. Suzette washed and dried the scallops on paper towels. I sliced and diced ½ yellow onion, ½ shallot, and ½ clove of elephant garlic from the garden at the Center and 1 clove of regular garlic from our garden.

There is a special joy in cooking Provençal dishes in the summer when the ingredients are fresh and full of flavor.

We heated 3 T. of olive oil and 2 T. of butter in a large skillet and I added the onion, garlic, and shallot and simmered those ingredients for about five minutes and then added the tomatoes and herbs except for chives and simmered them.

All the ingredients simmering together

While the vegetables were cooking I cut each scallop in half through the middle to yield two round slices and lightly dusted them with flour and we sautéed both sides of them for a couple of minutes in a medium skillet in olive oil until their edges began to brown and then added the scallops to the other ingredients.

I added ¼ cup of white wine and Suzette added salt and pepper to the vegetables.

Suzette had made voodles by cutting thin slices off 1 1/2 zucchinis with a vegetable peeler and put them into a Pyrex loaf pan with a T. of water.she then covered the Pyrex pan with saran and put it in the microwave.  After about ten minutes of simmering I thought the flavors of the scallops and vegetables were integrated, I cooked the voodles for 2minutes and 22 seconds on high temperature.

The voodles after they have cooked and plate

I went to the garage and fetched a bottle of Sagnol rose and poured it. It was a bit drier than I recall and Suzette thought it was bad.perhaps I should have opened the white Cotes du Rhône.

This was a perfect summertime meal, light and bursting with the fresh flavors of ripe vegetables and herbs from the garden.  I am reminded of Mother’s tales of visiting Simone Beck at the compound she shared with Julia Child and her husband, Paul in Provence.  What fun they must have had cooking dishes such as the one we made tonight.

Voila

After dinner Suzette heated a bowl of her awesome blueberry and peach cobbler with cream for dessert, while I drank another glass of rose as we watched the history of food in America.  Tonight the show focused on WWII and provisioning of soldiers with Hershey bars and M&Ms that did not melt and K rations created by Kellog and the post-war automobile era with the creation of fast food restaurants by the McDonald brothers.

I nibbled a few bites of cobbler before we went to bed at 9:30 to read and blog.

Bon Appetit