June 3, 2020 Lunch – Vichyssoise with cheese sandwiches. Dinner – Crab Thermidor with sautéed asparagus, and snow peas

I ate a bowl of granola, milk, blueberries, and yogurt and rested for s few minutes and then rode seven miles south and back.

I worked until 12:30 and since Suzette was working at home we ate lunch together. I made a Jarlsberg cheese sandwich on a toasted whole wheat dinner roll and Suzette ladled our the last of the Vichyssoise into two soup bowls.

After lunch I drove to the library to fetch The Spy and the Traitor by Macintyre in hard back and then drove to the bank and back home.

I prefer a real hardback book to reading on my I Pad because you can put a bookmark where you stopped reading and do not need to fiddle with all the electronic controls to find your stopping place when you start reading again.

I rested and read from 3:30 to 5:30, when Suzette said she was going to the garden to plant arugula and kale and lettuce.  I followed her a few minutes later when I finished a chapter.

I helped up root some garlic to make room for the kale and helped plant the basil plant we wintered over in the laundry room.

When Suzette went in I fetched the hand shears and a basket and picked roses and eight or nine small snow peas from our new crop just reaching the trellis we placed in the garden for them to climb.

When I went in I suggested making crab Thermidor with the ½ lb. of crab we had left.  I found a recipe in the Pol Martin Cookbook. Here is the recipe.

We adjusted the recipe.  We did not include any shrimp. I went to the garden and picked three sprigs of tarragon and six or seven chives.

 Suzette decided to make a one dish dinner using two skillets.

I minced ½ shallot and minced the tarragon and chives and grated ½ cup of Jarlsberg cheese.

Suzette made a roux for the white sauce in one skillet with 2 T. of butter and 2 T. of flour cooked for 3 minutes.  We then began adding milk until the sauce turned creamy.  She added paprika and salt and white pepper to the sauce and I added the ½ cup of cheese. A white sauce or cream sauce enriched with cheese is called a Mornay Sauce

In the other skillet Suzette sautéed the shallot, herbs and vegetables and crab and added 1/3 cup of white wine and cooked those ingredients several minutes.

Finally, Suzette added the crab and vegetables to the cream sauce and mixed the ingredients into the sauce.



Suzette heated about 1 ½ cups of cooked sushi rice in the microwave and went to the garage and fetched a Picton Bay New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (Trader Joe’s $6.99) and I poured two glasses while Suzette spooned half the rice into each pasta bowl and then the crab Thermidor.  We loved the light dinner.

I enjoyed the light fruity Sauvignon Blanc wine with the delicate crab and vegetables in cheese sauce .

After dinner I made chocolate chip cookies with raisins and pecans.

I forgot to toast the pecans, alas.

I made a cup of chai and ate 3 cookies. Suzette also ate 3 cookies, but wit a cognac.

We watched two episodes of Someone will Feed Rich, Marrakech and Chicago and went to bed st 9:55 in a good mood.

Bon Appetit