October 10, 2020 Lunch – Huevos Rancheros. Tea at Los Poblanos Dinner – Beef Pho

October 10, 2020 Lunch – Huevos Rancheros. Tea at Los Poblanos Dinner – Beef Pho 

This was a unusual day of food.

It started with helping Suzette assemble our newly arrived Scott’s electric roto-tiller. I then toasted two slices of French baguette and smeared them with goat cheese and lay thin slices of onion and Gravad Lax on them and ate them with a cup of green tea.

 While I was eating Suzette found the 100 foot extension cord and I  then helped her till one of the raised beds.  The electric tiller worked beautifully. While I tilled the first raised bed she added grub poison and two bags of compost.  

Then she found the shorter 25 foot extension cable and after we connected the two, we tilled the second raised bed.

We finished by 10:30 and Suzette was hungry, so she made Huevos Rancheros, essentially fried eggs laid on a mixture of Refried Black Beans and Sausage laid on toasted corn tortillas.

We then showered and dressed and I watched some of the Texas V. Oklahoma 116th Red River Shoot Out, football match up, we left for the Brown Estate in the ritzy area just north of Los Poblanos in the north 

valley. It was a large approximately 6000 square house filled with all kinds of stuff.  We bought an Indonesian ikat table cloth for $45.00, a Spanish hand painted Olive serving bowl, five tea towels 

stenciled with images such as the sun, a melon, or a pineapple for $3.00 each, and a small painted ceramic box for $10.00.  Suzette’s intention is to fill the small box with some of the holy dirt we gathered at the Chimayo Santuary and send it to Luke with three tea towels as a house warming gift for his new house.

After we put our purchases into the Highlander we drove the three blocks to Los Poblanos.  We had agreed to meet Nancy and Cliff at 3:00 for tea.  Penny said she would meet us for a few minutes.

We arrived thirty minutes early so we walked around the gardens and sat in the park behind the La Quinta complex until 3:00 when we went to the reception area in front and met Nancy and California.  We were seated at a round six top table among the tables seton the wide portal surrounding on three sides, the reflecting pool in the front.

Soon Penny and Armin joined us and we talked for a while.  They had gone to the Brown Estate sale at 

9:00 when it opened and bought lots of things like an espresso machine.  Penny is among the group of avid estate sale attendees like us because she is buying for Los Poblanos and their extensive collections, just as Suzette is always buying for the Center and we are buying for our collections and house.

After we were served drinks, Armin showed Cliff and me the large library that forms the northern wing of La Quinta.  It is huge and filled  with thousands of books and 200 kachinas andan equal number of santos and retablos collected by Penny and Armin, plus lots of other things like pictures of Penny’s family, a Picasso vase and a painting by Orozco.

We spent a long time talking before we returned to the table. After Penny and Armin left, each couple ordered tea and we talked until closing time at 5:00.

We walked back to the parking area and said goodbye and drove home.

  

Neither of us was hungry.  I wanted to make pumpkin cookies andi soon found a Martha Stewart recipe for Pumpkin Whoopi Pies filled with Chocolate butter icing.

Suzette soon joined me in the kitchen and directed me to stew the pieces of pumpkin in water to cook it to the point that it could be emulsified into a purée.

While we cooked the pumpkin I gathered the dry and wet ingredients in two large mixing bowls. We then made the chocolate filling using some of the finely powdered Mexican chocolate we bought in Merida and added a tsp. of almond flavoring and put it in the fridge to chill and stiffen.

Here is the recipe.

We then blended the ingredients for the cookies in the Kitchenaid

We then chilled with the cookie batter because it was warm from using the hot pumpkin purée.

After an hour we lay parchment paper on cookie sheets and Suzette spooned batter onto the paper and we baked about twenty cookies.

At 9:00 we decided to eat some dinner, if you can call picking through the PPIs in the fridge dinner.  Suzette heated a bowl of Chicken Curry and rice and then ate a piece of cold Bobby Flay Chicken with mayo.

I heated the Beef Pho soup and ate a bowl with mung bean sprouts, fresh basil and cilantro leaves and hoisin sauce.

We watched Death in Paradise and went to bed at 10:00.

I awakened at 2:30 to blog and Suzette awakened briefly to eat some yogurt to help digest her dinner.

Both my alma maters lost today, Texas in the fourth overtime to Oklahoma and TCU to Kansas State 21 to 14 in what must have been a defensive battle.

I am glad I was taking tea at lovely Los Poblanos instead of suffering in front of the TV.

We will finish our Whoopie Pies tomorrow morning before we leave for Santa Fe for another Estate sale.

Bon Appetit