December 1, 2019 Breakfast – Smoked Salmon Omelet. Lunch – Turkey and Dressing. Dinner – Turkey and Dumpling Stew.

December 1, 2019 Breakfast – Smoked Salmon Omelet. Lunch – Turkey and Dressing. Dinner – Turkey and Dumpling Stew.

This was a very relaxing food oriented day. I started by watching Soccer Man City tie Aston Villa and then the news programs. The most exciting match was not on the TV; Leicester beat Everton 2-1 to go into second place.

After Robin and Willy awakened around 8:30 we decided to make a smoked salmon omelet. I was watching TV while she made the omelet with chopped salmon, goat cheese, and red onion. She toasted whole wheat bread and fetched the IKEA orange and elderberry marmalade and added several re-heated stalks of PPI asparagus left from Thanksgiving and several slices of avocado to each plate and Willy made a pot of Earl Grey tea and we ate a pleasant breakfast.

Willy and Robin left to visit Amy and Vahl in Santa Fe after breakfast.

Suzette had bought a 1.75 liter bottle of 151 proof grain alcohol a week ago and two 5 lb. bags of fresh lemons this week, so this morning we decided to make Limoncello.  Sunday’s are great times to make larger cooking projects because we are not encumbered by work and if there is a lot of prep, I can watch TV as I prep ingredients. For the limoncello  Suzette doubled the recipe.  The first step is to infuse grain alcohol with lemon peel without any of the white inner husk, so I carefully removed the outer peel from 18 lemons, which took about three hours.

While I was peeling lemons, Suzette made two loaves of banana bread with several bruised bananas and a lemon pound cake with the juice from some of the peeled lemons.  We nibbled slices of each and I liked them both.

Suzette mixing the dough for the lemon pound cake.

                                                               The banana nut cakes

We did not have enough alcohol for a double recipe of limoncello, which should yield 6 liters, so at 1:00 we decided to drive to Total Wine and buy another 750 ml. bottle of 151 proof grain alcohol.  Suzette also bought a bottle of her favorite scotch that was on sale and I bought three bottles of wine, an Italian white, a Kudo Pinot Gris (both with 90 point ratings) and a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc named Kiaora with an 89 point rating on which  I received a 15% discount, because the wines were Total Wine Winery Direct wines, exclusively distributed in the U.S. by Total Wine.  Sometimes
Winery Direct selections are a plus and sometimes they are a negative.  It is complicated.  If Total Wine is lucky and finds a good wine at a good price and sells it without an extra mark up, it is good.  If Total finds a poor vintage from a good producer it is bad.  You need to do a bit of research before you buy and hopefully find several independent assessments of that year’s vintage before buying.  That research can be done on the internet in the store very quickly, especially if you have an app such as Vinvivo.

We then drove to El Super and shopped for produce and vegetables.  We bought oranges, mangos, parsley, green onions, red leaf lettuce, small avocados, cauliflower, crema, carrots, three ears of white corn on the cob, whole wheat tortillas, tomatoes, Persian cucumbers, and limes.

On the way home we stopped at the duck ponds at Tingley Beach and walked to the river and along the river for a few minutes.

When we returned home around 3:00 we were hungry, so we heated up some PPI turkey and dressing doused with gravy.  We heated the turkey dinner in the microwave and when it was heated added a spoonful of Suzette’s cranberry sauce and drank a glass of Oyster Bay New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that Robin had brought us.

At 6:20 Suzette was ready to cook dinner.  We decided to cook turkey and dumpling stew.

Suzette requested me to dice ¾ cup of onion, 1 cup of celery, and 1 cup of carrot. While I diced those, she shaved the kernels off the three ears of cornL she strained the turkey broth into a Le Crueset casserole and added about 1 pound of the remaining turkey white meat, the vegetables and then cooked those ingredients about 30 minutes.

While the soup was cooking  Suzette made dumplings with her biscuit recipe with Baking powder, flour, and butter and dropped them into the soup after cooking the vegetables.  She covered the casserole with its lid and simmered it until the dumplings were cooked.

This was a very successful recipe.  It is a natural progression we often follow when we have PPIs after cooking a large quantity of meat, whether beef, fish, or turkey.  We make broth with the bones and keep some meat to give the soup added flavor after extracting the original bones and add vegetables.  The result is something like French Onion Soup or fish stew or turkey and dumplings. In essence a second meal.

The soup was so filling we did not eat a second bowl, although I added a small dumpling and more broth to achieve the proper balance of vegetables and meat to dumpling and broth. This was a rare evening when I did not eat anything else after dinner, which says a lot about the quality of Suzette’s Turkey and dumplings.

We watched football, House Hunters, and 60 Minutes, most of the afternoon and evening.  The most fun was watching Denver win its game against the LA Rams with 3 seconds left. The Rams scored to tie the game at 20 points each with about 19 seconds to go.  After Denver received the kick off its young quarterback then threw a long pass down field with under 10  seconds and there was pass interference within 35 yards of the goal and with 3 seconds left Denver kicked a field goal to win the game 23 to 20.

Bon Appetit