August 21, 2020 Lunch – PPI No. 21 from 2000 Vietnam, Dinner – Grilled Rib Steak, Tomato Couscous, and Creamed Spinach with Sautéed Mushrooms and onion

 August 21, 2020 Lunch – PPI No. 21 from 2000 Vietnam,  Dinner – Grilled Rib Steak, Tomato Couscous, and Creamed Spinach with Sautéed Mushrooms and onion

Today was an easy food day.  Without much effort we achieved remarkable results.  

For breakfast I ate a bowl of granola, yogurt, milk, and blueberries, my favorite and healthiest breakfast.

I went to an appointment after breakfast and returned at around 10:30.

I worked at my desk until 12:30, mostly watching the run up in Apple and Nividia.  Apple ended the day up $25.00 and Nividia was up around $20.00.  Although the DOW was up 190 points, most of my other stocks were down slightly, but my portfolio managed a super healthy gain of 1%.

In fact the month of August has been the best of my 50 year stock picking career. It is hard to explain why these two stocks and a couple others like Tesla seem to defy gravity’s downward pull during the dire current economic conditions.

For lunch I ate the leftover ½ of the No. 21 from 2000 Vietnam Restaurant I ate with a Willy yesterday with lots of fresh cilantro from our El Super order last Sunday and fresh basil from the garden.

After lunch I rested and watched the news.  The big news is that Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign guru, was arrested yesterday on a $30,000,000 yacht anchored off the coast of Connecticut owned by a Chinese billionaire for defrauding a lot of Trump supporters in his scheme to build some of Trump’s wall. The allegation is that he and three others who formed an organization to solicit donations to build Trump’s promised wall at the Mexican Border with the representation that they would use 100% of the donations to build the wall and then diverted millions of dollars of the total of $25 million dollars raised to their personal benefit.  The obvious implication from these facts is that Trump and those around him are con artists who instead of wanting to help people, are using them to their own benefit. 

I also read a bit of the Grant biography written by Ron Chernow. I am half way through at page 560 and just entering Reconstruction in 1866.  I really find it an informative history.  I have read Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton and made a promise to myself today to read his Washington biography.

At 4:00 I did another hour’s work and then watched the news at 5:00.

Suzette came home at 6:30.  I suggested we grilled the two steaks we had thawed yesterday.  When I looked in the fridge I saw the bunch of spinach we ordered from El Super and we decided to prepare Creamed spinach with Mushrooms and onions for dinner.

In the afternoon I had invited a Willy to dinner and knew he was fond of Malbec so at 4:00 I went to the basement and found an old dusty bottle of 2004 Los Cardos Malbec from the Mendoza Valley of Argentina that I chilled in the fridge.

At 7:00 I started chopping Garlic, slicing onion and portobello mushrooms, and de-stemming spinach for one dish.  We had decided to refresh the Couscous with fresh tomato so while I prepped the Creamed spinach dish Suzette diced a Roma tomato and added it to the plastic container containing PPI Couscous and salted and peppered the two 1 ¼ inch rib steaks, and put four T. of butter into a large skillet on the stove. Suzette rinsed and spun the de-stemmed spinach to clean it.

Around 7:20 Willy arrived on his bike.

I then sautéed the onion, garlic, and mushroom slices and Suzette put the steaks on the grill.  In a few minutes we added the spinach and a dash of thyme and Amontillado sherry and Suzette fetched the wok cover and covered the skillet to steam the spinach. Suzette then fetched the Malbec and I opened it and poured three glasses while she added heavy cream to the spinach dish and adjusted the salt.

Willy and Suzette had set the table under the gazebo and I sliced the two steaks that Suzette had grilled perfectly to medium rare.  

Then we each plated our plates with slices of steak, and spoonfuls of Couscous and creamed spinach, mushrooms, and onion.

We each took a glass of wine and went to the table in the garden. The wind was breezy, lifting the tablecloth up several times.

We all agreed that it was an amazing dinner.  The thicker steak seemed to be aged, the Couscous was moistened and infused with tomato pulp and juice, and the spinach was not sauced with a heavy cream sauce, but more like a light creamy wine sauce, as you can see in the photo above.  To top off the positive effect of the food, the wine tasted like meeting an old friend.  It added  a smooth grape and chocolate flavor to the bites of steak and mushroom almost like another sauce.

This a standard standard steak dinner that we cook more or less on auto-pilot as you can tell from the inter-connection of our functions, but  with the addition of a different rather special wine that made the dinner somewhat memorable.

We finished the bottle around 9:00 and Willy told us that bad weather was predicted so we cleared the table and said goodnight.  After Willy rode off we watched the news. I toasted two slices of lemon/lavender pound cake and smeared them with raspberry jam and drank a cup of chai with a small glass of cognac and Grand Marnier.

We went to bed at 10:00.

Bon Appetit