I can not believe it. This was another day that I created a new and interesting dish from PPIs.
It was a cold windy day, although not too cold or too windy to stop Chapado and his crew from installing a new flat roof.
At 10:00 I ate granola, fruit salad, and yogurt .
Peter Eller and I had agreed to eat lunch together. He called around 10:30 and said he was afraid I could not fit his walker into my mini and thought he would drive over and pick me up instead of me picking him up for lunch. I suggested that we eat lunch at my house, if he wanted to eat PPI Pasta with Italian Sausage, black olives, onions, and mushrooms and I would make a salad.
He said, “I would definitely consider that if it included a glass of wine.” I replied, I can offer you a glass of Nouveau Beaujolais.”
By the time Peter arrived around noon, I had composed two salads with diced tomato, cucumber slices, sliced radish, and cauliflower flowerets on a bed of red leaf lettuce and had heated the large bowl full of pasta.
When Peter got seated I served the salads and placed the heated bowl of pasta on the table between us and poured glasses of Nouveau Beaujolais. Peter was in heaven. He said that his friend Dottie was on a no carb diet and he was starved for pasta. It was the perfect lunch. We ate almost the whole bowl and I packed the small amount of remaining pasta for him to take home.
I also explained to him how special the wine was. Specifically, that the major producers in Franagree to release on the same day in every country in the world. The world release date was November 21 this year. I bought my bottle of George Dubouf Nouveau Beaujolais yesterday on November 25th at Trader Joe’s. I thought the wine was a clean tasting well made wine. Peter thought it had a lot of tannin in it. I suspect most new wines do have high tannins. We both liked this year’s offering.
After Peter left I drove to Pastian’s and bought three packages of Kaiser rolls to use to make stuffing. I then gassed up at Costco and drove to the bank to deposit a check and then home.
When I checked the Market when I returned home the Dow was up 54 points and the other two indices were up a little bit. My portfolio was down less than $1000, which is negligible.
I remembered that we had agreed to serve asparagus and I needed to go to Smith’s where they were on sale for $1.47/lb. I also bought a four lb. NY Strip roast for $4.77/lb. and asked the butcher to cut it into steaks, I bought 4 chicken leg quarters for $.99/lb., blueberries for $1.50 for 6 oz., 18 large eggs for $1,49, five lb.s of fresh asparagus, and a red bell pepper for $1.25 plus two 1 lb. loaves of whole wheat bread for stuffing.
I arrived home a bit before 5:00 as the roofing crew was leaving. Suzette was still at the building trying to help workmen install the appliances. I checked the news and saw that the predicted low temperature was 23 degrees, so I decided to pick the Chard and make Couscous to eat with either the PPI Roasted Duck or the chicken.
I went to the garden and picked a bag of Chard and de-stemmed it and cut it into bite-sized pieces and rinsed it.
Suzette arrived around 5:30 and approved of my idea to combine the PPI Duck with the chard couscous. There were two wings, a leg quarter and two small pieces of breast plus the skin from the neck. I chopped all of the meat and skin into small pieces and handed it to Suzette who sautéed the skin first and then added the meat and heated and crisped the duck and duck skin in a skillet with
butter while I sautéed ¼ of an onion in 3 T. of butter in a sauce pan. We heated water and Suzette
added 1 cup of Couscous to the sauce pan and stirred it to coat the Couscous. She then poured 1 ½ cups of boiling water onto the Couscous and then added the Chard to the pan and covered it. I took over the Couscous while Suzette watched the duck. I turned up the heat to develop steam, then I turned down the heat to a point that there was plenty of steam being generated in the pan. After about four minutes I tossed the Couscous and Chard. Then we were ready to serve. Suzette placed a pile of Couscous in the middle of a bowl and piled the sizzling duck on top to create a Moroccan style dish. I poured glasses of Charles Shaw Pinot noir ($4.99j.
Clients arrived just was I finished dinner and I worked until 8:45. I then made a cup of tea, which I
drank with the last slice of Suzette’s lovely apple and Quince tart and a sip of Calvados.
I stayed up until 11:00 to watch the Rachel Maddow Show and then blogged.
Bon Appetit
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