August 22, 2020 Brunch – Sausage, Egg, and Potato Burrito. Dinner – PPI Pork and Sauerkraut

 August 22, 2020 Brunch – Sausage, Egg, and Potato Burrito. Dinner – PPI Pork and Sauerkraut 

I slept in a bit this morning and read Grant and dozed.  I am the most interesting part of the book for me, which is that period just after the Civil War that included the effort to free the blacks from bondage and provide them equal rights that we think broadly of as Reconstruction and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.  I am finding many parallels between 1866/1867 and now.  A racist President.  Horrible treatment of blacks by whites. Actually it was worse during Reconstruction because the South was put under military rule to suppress the violence to blacks and Republicans who supported the Union.

I spent the morning organizing my desk and examining my shell collection.  I took out all my Tiger Cowries, to show the Hawaiian sub species Schilderiana.  It is the one on the left.

 

 

  Suzette was working in her office but around 10:00 she

 came into my office and said she was hungry.

I suggested sausage, egg, and potato burritos, to which she agreed.

So I began by chopping 3 to 4 oz. of onion and a small PPI baked potato.

Suzette had started by putting about ½ cup of sausage into the large skillet and turning on the heat. She then became distracted by a phone call, so I added the onion and potato and three T. of butter.

 When Suzette returned to assume her usual duties at the stove I went to the garden and picked six or seven sage leaves.  I chopped and added those to the  skillet and Suzette added the three eggs she had whisked to the skillet and toasted two flour tortillas on the open gas flame of the stove..

  As usual, Suzette made herself a Bloody Mary and I made myself a glass of Clamato with the juice of ½ lime.

Suzette scrambled the eggs and poured them out onto the two tortillas.  Hers in a line so her tortilla could be rolled into a burrito she could pick up and eat and mine onto the flat tortilla so I could eat it open faced

After brunch we made our list of items to gather for the trip we will take this week to a remote camp site for Suzette’s birthday.  We gathered some items and then I rested again and read until 4:00, when I moved my shell case to my office for the virtual shell meeting.  I lay out my five tiger cowries and a few venustas to identify.

I made a gin and tonic and gathered a handful of pita chips and several handfuls of roasted peanuts in a bowl for snacks during the Zoom meeting and dialed in at 5:00.The meeting lasted until 7:45.  I went to check on Suzette and called to her but she had fallen asleep.  It was too late to cook, so I fetched the pot of pork and sauerkraut from the garage and heated a plate of it and toasted a slice of German whole wheat bread and spread it with the Russian dressing I made for the Reuben sandwiches we made earlier this week and slid the bread under the heated pork to make an open faced Reuben sandwich.

Suzette appeared at this time and joined me for dinner.  She sliced a cooked sweet potatoes half and lay spoonfuls of pork and sauerkraut on top of it and heated the dish and joined me for dinner.

The food was filling and delicious but without the ceremony of prepping and cooking the food I could not help thinking of us as an older German couple eating this meal in a small hut in the German forest. Sort of like Van Gogh’s dark image of the Potato Eaters.

We watched a CNN program chronicling the 100 years of women’s struggle for equality since passage of The 19th Amendment.  

I took the pot of pork back to the garage and brought in the Clafoutis and ate a bowl of it with a cup of chai.

Suzette went to bed at 10:00 when the show ended and I stayed up and watched a bit of RDG and then Doctor T. and went to bed at 11:00.

Bon Appetit