October 16, 2020 Lunch – Duck Noodle Soup. Dinner Baked Penne with fresh bitter greens.

 October 16, 2020  Lunch – Duck Noodle Soup. Dinner Baked Penne with fresh bitter greens.

I have not been hungry for breakfast during the last few days.  Perhaps my body is starting to go into hibernation in the winter.

At 10:00 I used the PPI duck stock from yesterday’s dinner to make a noodle soup with three types of noodles, rice sheets, bean thread, and a bundle of wheat noodles. I added old vegetables and fresh spinach plus tofu and a bit of red onion.  

 

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As it turned out the soup did not agree with me. Perhaps the use of old vegetables.

Suzette came home around 4:30 and we decided to plant lettuce and radishes in one of the raised beds and cover it with plastic.  

  After we finished that I suggested making Baked Penne for dinner.  Suzette said she would help.

I started a pot of water heating to boil pasta.  We went to the garden and picked two eggplants and a basket full of greens, mostly Chard, kale and arugula.  As I de-stemmed the greens, Suzette composed the dish in 

a 9 x 13 Pyrex baking pan.  

Suzette sliced and sautéed about 1/3 lb. of white mushrooms and sliced and grilled the two eggplants.  

Then she assembled the dish with layers of eggplant, requeson cheese, sautéed mushrooms, boiled pasta, and grated Pecorino-Romano and Parmesan cheeses.       Then she baked the dish in the oven for thirty 

minutes to melt everything together.

The result was fabulous.  Suzette lay a layer of the de-stemmed fresh greens in the bottom of pasta bowls and lay large squares of baked pasta on them.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

I opened a new bottle of 2015 Flor a Vino Reserva Chianti Classico I bought at Trader Joe’s a few days ago for $6.99.  We liked it.it was a lot lighter and smoother than the Aquino Chianti Reserva that Trader Joe’s sells for $5.99.  It looks like time to move up to a better Chianti.

 

 

 

After dinner we made bananas Foster with butter, light brown sugar, a tsp. of fresh lavender, two bananas sliced and sautéed in the butter and sugar sauce and then some rum added and flambeed.  Suzette dipped large scoops of vanilla ice cream and she poured the bananas and sauce over the ice cream for a delicious dessert.

We agreed that we did a really good job making dinner tonight.  Later we watched Pete Souza’s film about his years as Reagan and Obama’s WH photographer,  How I see it.  It was moving and made one feel what it was like to have a truly empathetic President in Obama.    

I can’t wait until Biden becomes President, because he is a genuinely empathetic person.

Bon Appetit