September 1, 2019 Lunch – Bun Cha Gio Dinner Party at Jennifer and Dale’s house

September 1, 2019 Lunch – Bun Cha Gio Dinner Party at Jennifer and Dale’s house

We worked on seat re-upholstering in the morning until 10:00 when Suzette left for work.   Then I rode my bike to Rio Bravo without any discomfort at a moderate speed on two sugar pills.

At 12:30 I ate the PPI Bun Cha Gio from Friday’s lunch with Peter at Vietnam 2000.  At 1:30 I drove to Lowe’s Hardware to return a box of staples and stopped at Lowe’s market and picked up two cans of Northern White beans for the bean salad.

When I returned home at 2:30 I diced four tomatoes, a red onion, about a dozen stalks of chives, diced a can of pimientos, and sliced a can of black olives and picked five or six stalks of mint and removed the leaves from the stalks and put them into a colander and rinsed them. When Suzette came home at 3:30 she made the cilantro and mint dressing by pureeing a bundle of cilantro and handfuls of mint in the blender for the bean salad and I opened cans of black beans and garbanzos and the Great Northern beans and we made a bean salad with a large can of black beans, a 15 oz. can of garbanzo beans, the two cans of white Great Northern beans and the ingredients I had chopped mentioned above.

I also chilled a bottle of Da Vinci Pinot Grigio and Suzette showered and dressed. 

We rested for an hour until Cynthia and Ricardo came by at 6:45 with a plate of dolmas and a lovely creamy tzatziki sauce.  I opened a bottle of Gruet Blanc de Noir champagne and we toasted their sixth anniversary and viewed the various shot locations in the house from the living room where we sat on our furniture.

At 7:00 we packed a bottle of H & H Cotes Du Rhone rose (Total Wine), the Da Vinci Pinot Noir and a bottle of Origon gran reserva Spanish blend of 60 % Syrah and 40% Tempranillo (Trader Joe’s $5.99) and drove to the Alverson/Bean’s house for their annual deck party.

They were grilling portoballo mushrooms, filet mignons marinated in BBQ sauce and a lovely large filet of sea bass drenched in butter and a light chili sauce.

There were about 25 people, many of whom I knew.  I talked for a while to Ann Learner and Skip Drinkert and Jennifer and Dale and Suzette and I spoke for a while with the irrepressible Roxanna.

The food was served around 8:00.  People had brought dishes.  Besides our bean salad there were salads from Dion’s and a crumble and Jennifer made calabacitas and Dale her son made a platter of boiled ears of fresh corn.

We ate and sate on the bancos surrounding Dales’s four roof top raised bed gardens of tomatoes, yellow chilis, and eggplants.  At 8:30 the fireworks at the country club started and went for about fifteen minutes.  They were great this year and being two blocks closer and only one block away from ACC they seem to burst just beyond the trees that fill the median in Laguna almost over our heads.

We talked a bit more and then at 9:15 after Dale let Suzette pick some vegetables, we left and went home and said goodbye to Cynthia and Ricardo at around 9:30 and went to bed.

Bon Appetit