August 2, 2020 Lunch – Baked Sausage Stuffed Zucchini with a Caprese Salad. Dinner – Ratatouille and PPI Roasted Chicken

August 2, 2020 Lunch – Baked Sausage Stuffed Zucchini with a Caprese Salad. Dinner – Ratatouille and PPI Roasted Chicken

I awakened at 6:30 and toasted and ate a slice of Suzette’s Turnip bread with raspberry jam and watched news until 10:00.  Then I walked ½ mile and then helped Suzette in the garden until around 11:30.

We decided to make a nice lunch, a piece of the PPI Baked Sausage Stuffed Zucchini Suzette made last week and a Caprese Salad with the heirloom tomatoes we bought yesterday at the Taos Farmers’ Market.

The Caprese Salad was the best dish of the day with its large basil leaves and fresh slices of mozzarella and incredibly fresh and ripe heirloom tomato slices dressed with a simple balsamic and olive oil dressing.

Suzette placed two slices of stuffed zucchini in a Pyrex baking dish and added a bit of water in the dish and covered it with Saran  and sensor reheated them in the microwave until the water was bubbling.

I loved lunch.

After lunch I made Ratatouille. I diced an eggplant,  two onions, 1 ½ zucchinis, four cloves of garlic, and 1 ½ red bell peppers.

We then did a family Zoom for an hour at 2:00 and then I added 2 T. of olive oil and 2 T. of butter to the large pot and  started cooking the Ratatouille at low heat.

I went to the garden and picked a handful of oregano stalks and stripped their leaves and minced them and added about ½ cup of fresh oregano to the pot.

At that point I added ¼ cup of water to keep the ingredients from scorching and realized I had not added any tomatoes, because we did not have any.  Instead, I added 2 7 oz. packets of tomato sauce from Mexico that I had bought at El Super for $.25 each.  It was perfect. It added liquid and sauce and helped bind the other ingredients together quickly into a stew.

I love steak and Ratatouille so I fetched a three pack of steaks from the garage to thaw
and then napped until 5:30.

We had discussed eating the PPI roasted chicken with the Ratatouille for dinner so at 6:30 I sliced the remaining chicken breast into 1 inch thick slices and lay them on the tarragon, garlic and lemon slices that had been inserted under the chicken’s skin to season the chickening  in a Pyrex baking dish that we covered and heated in the microwave.

We heated the Ratatouille and I drank Benton Lane Rose and Suzette drank Gruner Vitlander with dinner.

After dinner we watched the final two episodes of Endeavor on PBS and then went to bed at 10:00.

Bon Appetit