December 4, 2020 Lunch –Turkey Stew Dinner – Grilled Steak and Asparagus with Home Fries

December 4, 2020 Lunch –Turkey Stew  Dinner – Grilled Steak and Asparagus with Home Fries

There are light food days and heavy food days.  Today was a light food day.

I do get tired of granola occasionally, so today I reverted to my favorite French Continental breakfast, two slices of French baguette toasted; one spread with butter and marmalade garnished with slices of Jarlsberg cheese. I spread cream cheese on the other and garnished it with thin slices of red onion, Gravad Lax , and capers.  The necessary element of this breakfast is a good cup of hot chocolate.  I make my hot chocolate with a few T.s each of cold coffee and milk heated for 49 seconds in the microwave to heat but not boil.  I then distort in and dissolve a packet of Swiss Miss cocoa and a heaping tsp. or two of plain cocoa, such as Starbucks or Droste and then add boiling water to fill the cup.  This breakfast is delicious and filling for me.

 I took a shower and dressed in my biking clothes at noon and ate a bowl of PPI Turkey Stew for lunch at 1:00 and watched the Market close.  It was a rather lackluster day with big tech under pressure most of the day, but the rotation to helped other stocks I own to do like energy companies do a bit better.  The price of oil has risen from $36 to $46 during the last month in anticipation of a worldwide recovery that has already started in Asia and an OPEC agreement to limit production.  For example, I own 342 shares of Pioneer National that is one of the major fracking companies in the Permian Basin, whose stock rose $7.61 today, plus a few shares of Exxon-Mobil and Conoco and Shlumberger. The Dow was up about 250 points and the NASDAQ was up only 87 points.  So even though many of my big tech stocks were down I made a .25% gain, which absorbed more than half of my withdrawal of $9,000, so I am still near my all time high.

 

I took a three pack of steaks and a bag of pearl onions out of the freezer in the garage so we could make Boeuf Bourguignon.

 Joe, the plumber, and his assistant came at around 2:30 to work on the heating system, especially in the back bedroom, that is Suzette’s dressing room.  They bled the radiators to eliminate air bubbles and installed a new thermostat and checked the boiler. The heat was getting to the radiators fine.  I think the problem is that I removed a large radiator years ago and replaced it with an electric floorboard heater so there is less radiant heat output in the room because Suzette chooses to not use the baseboard heater.

When the plumbers left at 3:30 I rode to the post office and posted a letter to Canada and then to the bank to deposit the rent check for the downstairs at 524 Romero. 

Shortly after I arrived home at 4:45 and made a rum hot toddy and sat down Suzette arrived.

Suzette saw the steaks and I told her I wanted to make Boeuf Bourguignon and also had brought in the pearl onions. Suzette suggested grilling one of the steaks and the last of the thick asparagus I had bought at Sprouts last Friday with sautéed Mushrooms and home fries.  This is a dinner we make often and have developed a team effort to create. I will describe the team effort to show how we work it.

I usually prep and Suzette cooks, but for this meal we share both functions because Suzette also operates the Cuisinart.  While I sliced the mushrooms, garlic, and shallot for the mushroom dish, Suzette snapped the ends off the asparagus and put the tops into a freezer bag with olive oil, salt, and pepper to coat the asparagus and then peeled and then sliced several sweet potatoes and russet potatoes in the Cuisinart and placed them in a Pyrex baking dish, covered them with Saran and cooked them in the microwave.  She then placed a large cast iron skillet and a medium non-stick skillet on the stove and put a mix of canola oil and olive oil in the large skillet and a mix of butter and olive oil in the medium skillet. She then put the cooked potato slices into the large skillet and the shallots and garlic into the medium skillet, while I de-stemmed thyme leaves from several frozen sprigs and fetched the carafe of Amontillado sherry from the dining room and opened the bottle of 2017 Gloria Ferrer Pinot Noir we bought at Costco several weeks ago for $12.00 and opened it and poured two glasses of it and put them on the table.

After a minute or two of cooking I took over the stove duties when we put the mushroom slices into the medium skillet and Suzette took the steak and asparagus outside to place them on the grill.

I flipped the potatoes so each slice would brown and added sherry to the mushrooms to create a light 

sauce.  After Suzette put the steak and asparagus on the grill she came back in and decided to add some of the lavender we had harvested and dried this fall to the mushrooms.

I kept flipping potatoes, exposing the uncooked areas to the hot oil and turned of the heat on the mushrooms when I judged them to be sufficiently cooked, so they would not shrivel up and harden.

When Suzette brought the grilled steak and asparagus back into the kitchen I sliced the steak while Suzette plated the potatoes and asparagus and fetched the cranberry sauce . I then put slices of steak on each plate and we each spooned mushrooms onto their steak.  Suzette added spoonfuls of cranberry. After I took pictures we sat at the table and ate a amazingly wonderful dinner that did not take more than 45 minutes to an hour to make with our team effort.

The Gloria Ferrer was tight at first but after about 20 minutes opened up and had a decidedly fruity flavor, like cabernet Sauvignon grape juice had been added, which explained the wine’s deeper red hue.  

I loved the wine and will buy more if still on sale.

After dinner we watched the final episode of The Great British Baking Show and ate Belgium chocolates as we sipped the last of the bottle of red wine because the wine complemented the chocolate and v.v.

Suzette went to bed at 10:00 and I stayed up until 10:30 to start this blog that I fInished between 3:00 to 4:30. 

Bon Appetit