December 11, 2020 Lunch - Miso Noodle Soup with Pork Confit. Dinner – Baked Potatoes filled with Boeuf Bourguignon and Steamed Broccoli

 December 11, 2020 Lunch - Miso Noodle Soup with Pork Confit.  Dinner – Baked Potatoes filled with Boeuf Bourguignon and Steamed Broccoli 

Today was a more normal food day except I fouled up the miso soup by adding pieces of pork Confit.  I slept til 8:00 and ate granola, blueberries, yogurt, and milk for breakfast at 10:00.  There was no excitement in the stock market like the ABNB IPO yesterday.  In fact things settled into a slightly negative rut due to the lack of a Covid Rescue package and the eminent failure of any Brexit Agreement.  My portfolio was down for a while but climbed back to an about .005% loss by the end of the day.

Last night I butchered six or seven pork chops into cubes and a Suzette seasoned then with Italian herbs .  This morning she covered ½ of the cubes with oil and cooked them in the oven at a heat of 250 degrees.  At noon I took the first ½ out of the oil and put in the other ½ and put the second 1/2 into the oven until 3:00.  We now have a pile of Confit pork. 

At noon I prepared a miso soup with dehydrated dashi, sliced mushrooms, about nine or ten spinach leaves chopped, white miso, four chunks of pork Confit, wheat and brown rice noodles, 1 tsp. of dried pulque seaweed, about 4 oz. of firm tofu, some celery, the white portion of a green onion, slices f green onion, Chinese cooking wine, and a whipped egg in 1 tsp each of soy sauce and I tsp. Chinese Cooking wine plus fresh green noon slices.  Unfortunately, the toughness and Italian seasoning of the pork did not go well with the subtle textures or flavors of the miso soup.

I worked a bit after lunch until 4:00 when I walked to Kit Carson Park and back on one Twix candy bar without any weakness.

I then watched the news until Suzette arrived at 5:30. The news of the day was quite impressive. Trump and his political allies’ original jurisdiction suit in the Supreme Court to throw out the election results in four states that voted for Biden was denied  on the basis of stranding.  In other words, there is no  harm to Texas, the lead Plaintiff, from how the four defendant states handle their election. The Constitution reserves to each state the right to handle their elections so long as they do not violate the voting rights act.

The other big news was that the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in the US. Now people will start being vaccinated.

We had decided what we wanted for dinner.  It was the rest of the PPI Boeuf Bourguignon on top of a baked potato with steamed broccoli.

There was no prep or real cooking.  We only had to steam a stalk of broccoli and heat the already baked potato and Boeuf.  Suzette took on the cooking duties.  After de-stemming the flowerets from a head of broccoli and starting them steaming, she quartered the largest baked potato that filled a 6 X 9 inch baking dish and buttered it and cooked it for a couple of minutes.  Then she covered the potato quarters with Boeuf and covered the dish with Saran and heated the dish again to warm the Boeuf and potato together. The combination of Potato with Beouf is actually closer to the traditional way of serving Beouf with boiled potatoes described by a Julia Child in her Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipe.  

We had a half bottle of each of the 2015 Beaujolais Villages we had served with the Boeuf, so I poured it out into two glasses.  Suzette fetched the sour cream and plated two potatoes and Boeuf and broccoli and we had a smashing dinner.

We finished the Beaujolais, so we poured glasses of the open Casa Viejo Reserva from Rioja.  After dinner we sat and watched an episode of Househunters International about renting an apartment in Btussel, so Suzette fetched the Belgium chocolates so we could have a real life experience of Brussels.

At 10:00 we went to bed.

Bon Appetit