May 30, 2021 Brunch - naked eggs Benedict with roasted vegetables. Dinner - Grilled Hamburgers with Fried Cassarecce pasta with broccoli and pesto and sautéed Mushrooms, shallot, and red bell pepper.
We walked in the Bosque this morning to the two lakes at 7:15 this morning while it was still cool. On the second lake we saw something we had never seen before; two baby wood ducks and two baby Canadian Geese swimming with their parents. We were too late to see the beaver, apparently.
When we returned to the car our right rear tire was flat. This led to a series of events that consumed the rest of my day.
We locked the car and walked home. Suzette checked her watch and mentioned that we had walked 1.6 miles by the time we returned home, which is new record and shows physical progress.
We decided to eat brunch before dealing with the tire.
Suzette wanted to try poaching eggs in vinegar water. Since we had good Neighbors Mill multigrain bread and smoked pork cutlets, Suzette decided to prepare something akin to eggs Benedict without the Hollandaise sauce. The dish was hugely successful. In a separate skillet she sautéed some of the PPI roasted vegetables including, onion, potato, and Brussels Sprouts from last night’s meal with a pork cutlet and toasted half pieces of bread. She then cut the cutlet in half and placed each half cutlet on a half slice of toasted bread, added vegetables and finally two poached eggs. I also ate another slice of bread with peach jam.
Here is the result.
After brunch I turned my attention to the tire. I called AAA and Suzette drove me to the car to meet Casey from Santa Fe Towing, who expertly replaced the blown tire with the spare from the trunk after inflating it.
I then drove to Firestone Tire on Coors at 11;30.. They recommended leaving the tire to be repaired, because I mentioned that I might be going to a Santa Fe.
When I returned home Suzette informed me that Santa Fe Art Auction was closed, so she worked and packed for our trip to Mexico while I read and napped until 2:30 when I decided to eat the PPI Pho soup. from Peter’s Thursday lunch with the rice and noodles left in it and the addition of 1/2 of the PPI sautéed duck breast we had cooked Friday night. I heated the soup and cubed duck in a soup bowl for about 4 minutes and then added the fresh cilantro, oriental Basil and mung bean sprouts that came with the soup and then heated the soup for an additional 50 seconds to cook the mung beans and herbs a bit. The result was delicious and surprisingly my tummy accepted the warm highly flavored soup without objection.
While I ate my soup we discussed our dinner menu and Monday night’s dinner with Willy and decided on hamburgers with a Caprese salad and frying the PPI Broccoli Pesto Pasta for tonight and roasted chicken for Monday night with artichoke Barigoule, so we went through our freezers and thawed a bag with about 2 lb. of ground beef and with some effort pulled a whole chicken out of the garage freezer to thaw.
At 3:30 I called Firestone to find out about the tire and they told me the tire was not fixable because the sidewall had cracked open and I would need a new tire, so I drove to Firestone and waited for them to replace the spare with a new tire. Finally, at 4:30 I paid for the new tire and drove home.
When I arrived home the wind was blowing and I decided to prune the roses in the back yard and fill vases with the roses still in full bloom or blooming rather than allowing the wind to ravage them.
Among the blooming roses I cut were three Mr. Lincolns, four Don Juans and two Tropicanas. Here is one of the vases.
At 6:00 we began to consider dinner. I went to the garden and picked four sprigs of tarragon and five or six chives and two invasive sprigs of mint in the tarragon. When I returned to the house I made my first mojito of the summer, since Suzette previously had made mint syrup and opened a bottle of soda water and we watched the news.
Finally around 6:30 we got serious about fixing dinner. Suzette formed two large hamburger steaks and grilled them on the outdoor grill and melted a slice of provolone on each and started sautéing the PPI pasta dish in a skillet on the stove.
I sliced five large mushrooms, 1/2 shallot, about 2 oz. of red bell pepper, the five chives, the largest sprig of tarragon, and two cloves of garlic and sautéed those ingredients in our new non-stick skillet that Suzette fetched and helped in heating the butter and olive oil.
I then manned the stove to flip the pasta and mushrooms and add sherry to the mushrooms while Suzette watched and flipped the hamburgers and added the slices of cheese to melt in the outside grill.
While the pasta and mushrooms were cooking I fetched the fresh basil leaves I picked yesterday that Suzette had not used to make pesto, a Roma tomato, a sweet onion, and Suzette fetched a package of fresh mozzarella cheese slices for me. I sliced the Tomato into six slices and when Suzette brought the hamburgers in, she helped me assemble small individual Caprese salads on each plate as she plated the hamburgers, fried pasta, and garnished the hamburgers with the sautéed mushrooms. Finally she deglazed the oil left in the fried pasta skillet with balsamic vinegar for a quick warm balsamic dressing that she drizzled onto the Caprese salads. Here is the result.
Mine
This is what I call a quick and easy meal, but I believe it is among my favorite meals. I never thought to fry PPI pasta until I met Suzette, but now I love it fried in the manner she did this evening in olive oil.
Since I grew up eating hamburger steaks for dinner, I have always loved them for dinner and have followed the French Cuisine tradition of saucing a meat dish, but have adjusted my thinking to the healthier choice of garnishing hamburgers and steaks with sautéed mushrooms lightly sauced with sherry instead of a preference for the heavier and less healthy French Béarnaise sauce of my youth and middle age.
The interesting dichotomy in our individual cultural backgrounds re-appeared again when it came to picking a beverage to drink with dinner. Suzette chose a bottle of beer honing to her German heritage and I opened a bottle of 2011 Faustino Rioja Reserva (Costco $7.99?.) and drank a glass of Spanish red wine in accordance with my family’s preference for French and Spanish cuisine accompanied by wine with meals in my youth.
After dinner we watched the Denver Avalanche crush Las Vegas 7 to 1 in their Stanley Cup playoff match and I ate a bowl of chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce and rum and sipped a cognac to digest dinner.
We were tired and went to bed at 9:30, but I awakened at 3:00 to blog this blog while drinking a glass of mint flavored water to help settle the heavy beef dinner.
Bon Appetit
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