July 9, 2020 Brunch – Lax and Whitefish on Bagel Snack – PPI Pho Miso Chicken Noodle Soup. Dinner – Chicken Pasta Primavera

July 9, 2020  Brunch – Lax and Whitefish on Bagel   Snack – PPI Pho Miso Chicken Noodle Soup.  Dinner – Chicken Pasta Primavera

I awakened at 6:15 and watched the news until 7:45, when Suzette and I walked ½ mile.

I returned and brainstormed with a client on a real estate transaction for about an hour.

I then toasted two slices of bagel, smeared them with cream cheese, and garnished them with thin slices of onion.  I then lay slice# of Gravad Lax on one and pieces of whitefish on the other and made a cup of Earl  Grey tea for a big breakfast.

Suzette and I discussed dinner before she left for Los Lunas and decided to make a pasta dish with the PPI roasted chicken.

I was not hungry until 3:00 when I heated the PPI Pho Miso Chicken Noodle Soup I had made yesterday for lunch.  Since I had stored it in the fridge I was able to skim most of the coagulated fat off the top, which made it much more edible.  It had thickened into almost a bowl of noodles as the three types of noodle had absorbed much of the liquid, so it had become a thick stew of noodles, chicken, zucchini squash, tofu and green onion.  I liked it a lot.

Suzette returned around 4:30 but I received a call from my best friend Dee Simpson who was suffering from the 108 degree heat in Austin.

I know how that feels. I lived the first 37 years of life in Fort Worth.

The Texas summer heat was the main reason why I moved to New Mexico.

At 5:30 I excused myself to help Suzette cook dinner.

Pasta Primavera

The theme of this meal and dish was to use whatever ingredients you have that have an affinity for the dish.

Part of the impetus for this meal was my ongoing desire to open the resistant lid of a large bottle of marinated artichoke hearts.  Suzette and I worked together to heat the metal lid in hot water and I twisted the lid off while she held the bottle after several tries and a fair amount of Suzette banging on
the lid with a spoon to break the seal.

We also had 6 or 7 marinated black olives from a Bistro snack plate lunch Suzette had brought home.  I deseeded and chopped the black olives and quartered about ½ cup of artichoke hearts.

 Suzette had brought home a fresh zucchini and yellow squash from her garden at her Center for Ageless Living, so we decided to cook them as part of the mix of vegetables.  I went to the garden and picked a handful of oregano and de-stemmed about 1 cup of leaves and chopped them a bit and

added to them about ½ lb. of diced chicken breast.  I then quartered and sliced the two squashes and
1/3 of an onion and diced two Roma tomatoes from El Super and four cloves of garlic from our garden.

Suzette started a pot of penne pasta boiling while I was chopping.

As soon as I finished Suzette sautéed the vegetables in olive oil and butter for about fifteen minutes until they were soft and then added the chicken and oregano and turned down the heat to allow the pasta to finish cooking fully.

Suzette wanted to add some greenery to the dish so she went to the garden and picked a basket full of tender arugula leaves.  While she was picking arugula I diced three slices of fresh mozzarella cheese into 1/3 inch cubes.

Suzette covered the bottom of a pasta bowl with arugula and I tossed ½ of the mozzarella cubes into each bowl on top of the arugula leaves.

When the pasta was fully cooked Suzette drained it and then mixed the pasta in a large ceramic bowl with the sautéed vegetables and chicken.

Suzette then ladled some of the pasta primavera mixture into each bowl and I grated Parmesan cheese on top of each bowl we were ready to eat.

We poured glasses of chilled 2018 J. L. Quinson Cotes du Provence rose ($8.99 at Trader Joe’s) and enjoyed a lovely dinner as we watched Rachel Maddow.

I love this time of the year when all the fresh vegetables ripen and you can cook wonderful Mediterranean dishes with the freshest ingredients.  All the ingredients except the tomatoes and onions and marinated olives and artichoke hearts came from either our kitchen garden at home or Suzette’s extensive gardens at the Center.

There is a heart warming feeling of permanence in being able to enjoy the bounty of nature  during
the chaos caused by this pandemic.

We had most of the bowl of pasta left, so I covered it with Saran and put it into the fridge.

We were down to our last chocolate chip cookie and aSuzette had bought a bag of shelled pecan halves to replenish the pecans, so after dinner I decided to make chocolate chip cookies.

I added the following ingredients to the Kitchen Aid mixer: ½ lb. of butter, ¾ cup of white sugar, ¾ cup of brown sugar, 3 eggs, 2 cups of flour mixed with ½ tsp. each of salt and baking soda, 1 ½ cups of chocolate chips and 1 cup each of toasted pecan halves and raisins.

I buttered two cookie sheets and dropped and baked about 32 cookies at 375 degrees for 10 minutes in three batches.  I finished the last batch just as our favorite Thursday TV show, Midsomer Mystery, was starting at 8:00 on PBS.  The cookies flattened out this time, which leads me to believe I added too much baking soda or not enough flour.

At 9:30 when the show ended Suzette went to bed. I watched the news and then read a bit of Speak Memory by Nabokov and then went to bed.

I awakened at 3:00 to blog this entry and then returned to bed.

Bon Appetit