April 10, 2021 Lunch - Steak Omelet with Mushrooms, onion, shallot, Manchego cheese, and asparagus. Dinner - Seared Salmon with Garlic Eggplant with sorrel

 April 10, 2021 Lunch - Steak Omelet with Mushrooms, onion, shallot, Manchego cheese, and asparagus. Dinner - Seared Salmon with Garlic Eggplant with sorrel

Today was a yard work day.  I did eat tropical fruit salad, granola, milk, and yogurt for breakfast.  I put four bags of top soil into one of the beds and raked it to level and helped Suzette clean the garden. Suzette worked much longer than I did, mainly watering the plants that needed water, such as the wisteria on the back patio and raking dead leaves into piles for the yard men to pick up.. 

After Suzette cleaned the birdbath with Clorox and flushed it with lots of water we noticed that the Cooper’s hawk returned to sit on its edge for several hours after we went inside and when we left to shop.  The hawk has not sat on the birdbath while we are in the garden yet.

I went back in at 10:00 and prepared a steak omelet with steak, garlic, onion, mushrooms, the six or seven PPI steamed asparagus. I sautéed the previous ingredients in butter snd olive oil and then added the PPI cooked mushrooms and poblano chili left from our steak dinner and then four whisked eggs and finally seven ot eight slices of Manchego cheese. After the omelet set, I flipped one half onto the other half and cooked it for another five minutes while I toasted and buttered two slices of Bosque Bakery rye bread and made a cup of chai

At 11:00 after we ate, we drove to Michael’s to pick up the Miss Siam portrait by Erin Currier.  Then we drove to Trader Joe’s.   I bought 13 bottles of wine, including a 2015 Popino Vicino Brunello di Montipollcello, two Picton Bay New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs, a Cherry Blossum Pinot Noir, a Charles Shaw pinot noir, a German lieffraumilch, a Emma Reichart Rose, a La Granja white, two Cotes du Provence roses, a Saint Sagnol French rose, and an Dona Luisa Spanish Amontillado sherry.  All bottles were under $10.00 except for the Brunello that was $16.99, which is inexpensive for a bottle of Brunello.

Suzette bought chocolate bars, basil plants, Delice cheese, and Tom’s deodorant and toothpaste.

This was my monthly everyday drinking wine run.

We then drove to Home Depot where Suzette bought plants for our garden and the Center’s garden and went home and rested.

I awakened at 5:00 and we started dinner.  We decided to sear two salmon fillets and make garlic eggplant with the eggplant I bought last week at Sprouts.

Here is the recipe.

I cut the eggplant into 2 to three inch strips and Suzette stir fried them in peanut oil.  I also minced about 5 cloves of garlic and a T. of ginger root.

We decided to add sorrel as a green vegetable, so I cut about 1 cup of sorrel from the prolific stand growing in one of our raised beds and we spun the leaves and tore the stems out of the leaves and added them.

Suzette seared the salmon in a separate skillet in peanut oil.

I fetched two XX Equis beers from the garage and Suzette heated the PPI rice in the microwave and we were ready to eat.

It was a lovely evening warm and no wind, so we ate outside and sat until the sun descended to the point that it shown into our eyes.hh(

We then made gravad lax (marinated Salmon in Swedish) so Suzette could take pictures of the process in order to show her cooks.  She took photos of the recipe in my Swedish cookbook and the steps we followed, mixing 1/2 cup of sugar and 2/3 cup of salt and adding 1 tsp. Of ground black pepper.  Then laying layers of fresh dill weed  on the bottom, in the middle and on the top of the two fillets of salmon marches to each other in length and dusted with the dry sugar and salt mix. The final step is covering the Pyrex dish filled with the salmon with Saran and placing it in the refrigerator to marinate.  I think in the US we would call this process, sugar curing.

We were tired after our day of activity so we poured ourselves each a glass of Suzette’s excellent homemade lemincello and watched Death in Paradise on PBS and went to bed at 10:00.

Bon Appetit