March 4, 2021 Lunch - Liverwurst Sandwich and PPI Salad. Dinner - Fried Rice with Broccoli, green bell pepper, chicken, onion, and mushrooms

March 4, 2021 Lunch - Liverwurst Sandwich and PPI Salad. Dinner - Fried Rice with Broccoli, green bell pepper, chicken, onion, and mushrooms

I was busy so did not have time to the horror besetting me and my heirs in the market .  This has ceased to be a K shaped recovery for me.  By the end of the day my portfolio was down an aggregate of 10% in the last week.

Trying to be zen like about it, I went about my business. I corresponded with Doctor Henry Gates Jr. today regarding crypto Jews among the Hispanics of New Mexico, which was a thrill.  Here is the correspondence:

I ate my usual breakfast of granola with fruit salad, milk, and yogurt.

Then I drafted a very complex purchase agreement that took me until almost 3:00. 

I was hungry but am trying to lose weight so I ate the bowl of PPI salad from two nights ago’s dinner with a Liverwurst sandwich I made on a piece of German fullkorns bread.

I then drove to the bank to deposit a check and then to Pastian’s Bakery and bought a bag of whole rolls and a loaf of whole wheat bread.

I returned home at 4:30 and meditated at 5:00.

I actually worked again until after 6:00 when Suzette arrived.  Since we had both eaten late lunches, we decided to make the chicken salad first.  I chopped thawed basil, 1/3 onion, a Granny Smith apple, two green onions, a peeled and seeded cucumber, and finally peeled and sectioned the pomelo.  Because we are throwing in lots of unusual ingredients, this will be like no other chicken salad we have ever made. And Suzette took the fact that we had added citrus to salad when she made the dressing for the chicken salad.  She combined Mayonnaise, honey, and yogurt to create a dressing more suitable for citrus, than the her typical with white wine vinegar.

Stir Fried Rice with Chicken, bell pepper, broccoli, and onion

After we finished the chicken salad around 7:30, we turned our attention to dinner. 

There were lots of loose cloves of garlic and we had just bought a fresh ginger root, so I minced about eight garlic cloves and about a half dollar sized piece of ginger because there was at least two cups each of sushi rice and cubed chicken white meat.  There were also two heads of broccoli and 1/2 of a green bell pepper. I deflowered a bit more than 1 head of broccoli and 1/2 of the bell pepper half plus 1/3 of a yellow onion.

I mentioned mushrooms and Suzette brought me the four remaining white mushrooms, which I diced into 1/2 inch cubes.  

The way I cook Chinese stir fry is to segregate ingredients by hardness and cooking time and I always make a thickening seasoning sauce to add at the end.  Since we were expecting Willy to arrive at 8:00 and we were working together to get ready for our trip Suzette helped with the cooking by fetching bowls and ingredients as I sat and chopped.

The first bowl I filled included the onion and minced ginger and garlic.

The second bowl I filled with broccoli flowerets and diced green bell pepper. In a third bowl I placed the diced mushrooms and Suzette filled a fourth bowl with the two cups of diced chicken.  I fetched the sesame oil, soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, rice vinegar, oyster sauce, and peanut oil.

Since Willy was coming I tried to replicate the fried rice dish prepared at Samurai Restaurant for his birthday parties. I heated about 2 T. of peanut oil in the wok and added the bowl of onion strips, garlic and ginger to flavor the oil. Then after a minute I added the bowl of broccoli and bell pepper chunks.  

After another couple of minutes I added the two cups of sushi rice plus about 1 T. of soy and 2 T. of Chinese cooking wine and a dash or four of sesame oil  which is the method utilized at Samurai, probably because it keeps the rice from sticking and creates some moisture in which the rice can break down into individual grains more easily. I chopped the large bunches of rice and mixed them with the liquid and we covered the wok with the wok lid to allow the broccoli and bell pepper to steam for a couple of minutes. Then we added the bowl of chicken and Suzette prompted me to slice the larger broccoli flowerets in half, which I did.  This allowed them to cook more quickly and created a more attractive dish. 

I covered the wok and we made the seasoning sauce with 1 heaping T. of cornstarch, five or six dashes of sesame oil, 1/2 tsp. of salt, 1 tsp. of sugar, three T. of Cooking wine, 1 T. of oyster sauce, 1 1/2 tsp. of rice vinegar, 1 T. of soy sauce plus 1/4 cup of water.

Suzette said, “What about the mushrooms?” 

So I then uncovered the wok and we added the mushrooms and another 2 T. of cooking wine and stirred them in to cook.  The texture of the ingredients was very dense because of the gluten in the sushi rice, so I added a bit more water to the seasoning sauce and added the sauce to the wok and covered the wok to let the sauce heat and thicken. 

Willy arrived during the cooking process and set up his dining table near the TV and fetched three pasta bowl.  Suzette fetched chop sticks and I filled and started the tea kettle.

I the uncovered the wok.  The sauce had not coagulated but had been absorbed into the rice.  We had to make a decision whether to try to add more liquid and try to make it a saucier dish or to leave it the thick glutenous mass that it was.  I decided to serve it as it stood without much if any sauce. I scooped large spoonfuls of the finished fried rice into each bowl.  The ugly pile of coagulated fried rice was delicious, saturated with the flavors of the sauce that the kernels of rice had absorbed and had emulsified the other ingredients into a mass in which each of their flavors expressed themselves but also hung together as a unified dish. I judged the dish to be a success. It tasted delicious even if it’s muddy brown color was a little off putting.

After dinner around 9:00 I chopped the last 1/2 bunch of Italian parsley and put about 1/4 cup of it into the plastic container Suzette had filled with the creamy hummus we had made for Willy and then Suzette put together a bag filled with pasta salad, chocolate cookies, and fruit salad for him to take home.

I put the remaining 1/2 cup of chopped parsley into another container Suzette had filled with the rest of the hummus for our trip.

We now had completed our food prep for the trip, having made tropical fruit salad, chocolate chip cookies, hummus, pasta salad and chicken salad.

Suzette backed a large bag with the whole wheat rolls and loaf of sandwich bread I bought at Pastians Bakery today.  We will fill the cooler with the salads and ice in the morning before we leave.

We got ready for bed and packed our suitcases and were in bed by 10:15.

I awakened at 3:00 a.m. to finish the blog and pick the bottles of wine for the trip.

Bon Appetit