June 17, 2021 Lunch - Buffet King. Dinner - Sautéed Sorrel Pesto covered Salmon with Cauliflower Couscous and Chard

June 17, 2021 Lunch - Buffet King.  Dinner - Sautéed Sorrel Pesto covered Salmon with Cauliflower Couscous and Chard

Every day seems to present new and different experiences.

This morning I woke up and watched the news until 8:00.  Long enough to watch the futures turn from negative to positive in the NASDAQ.  By the close the DOW ended down 210 points and the Nasdaq ended up 121 points.  This is what I call a high tech rally.  Because many of my stocks are in the high tech category my portfolio did even better than the NASDAQ that rose .87%, rising over 1.32%, nearly reaching an all time high and reaching a total gain of 10% for the year.

I felt great and decided to ride my bike, especially while I was still taking an anti-inflammatory drug and hopefully would feel less pain.  I ate a fig Newton and a cup of tea and then rode to the Nature Center at Montano and back without pain at a sustained moderate speed.

When I returned at 9:30 I watched soccer and worked until 11:00 and then showered and dressed and watched the EUFA match between Denmark and Belgium.  Peter arrived around 11:45 for our lunch, so we watched Belgium win and then drove to Buffet King.

Peter said he had been dreaming of returning to this favorite Chinese restaurant as soon as it reopened.

When we arrived we were given two plastic gloves to wear while serving ourselves the food. I immediately noticed several other changes.  Two or three of the lines were closed and the sushi line was deserted, so I decided against sushi.

We started lunch as we always do with a bowl of soup. Peter filled a bowl with Hot and Sour soup, but being a chili wimp I put one scoop of hot and sour soup into a bowl filled almost to the top with egg drop soup and added a few extra pieces of tofu plus a dish I had not seem before, floured and sautéed chicken stir-fried with mushrooms, zucchini wedges, and carrot slices n a light brown sauce.  We ate a lot of this new dish. 

I always feel lucky at Buffet King if I find four good dishes.  Today we did.  Besides the chicken dish, the BBQ pork ribs were great, the Thai cilantro roasted chicken expressed its usual high flavor and tenderness, and Peter discovered a new candidate for best dish, flash fried fresh fish. It was fresh fish that Peter must have found just as it was served because you could taste the steam caught under the crisp fried rice flour batter when you bit into it. We loved the fish and went back for seconds.

We also did desserts, but those are not so interesting.  I complained because the almond cookies’ dough was not flavored with almond flavoring.

Peter drove me home after lunch and I watched more soccer and then worked.  I had several deeds and got busy and even missed the meditation at 5:00.

Suzette came home and was hungry and wanted to cook the salmon.  If seems like we are into a pattern of each cooking every other day now.

Dinner - 

We had thawed out two salmon fillets.  Suzette spread PPI sorrel pesto on them and sautéed them in grape seed oil.

She de-stemmed flowerets of cauliflower from the heat of cauliflower and pulsed them with a couple of handfuls of chard we had picked from our garden and had cleaned, de-stemmed and chopped until the cauliflower was reduced to couscous sized pieces.  She then sautéed the mixture in butter to replicate the couscous flavor. Suzette divided the cauliflower couscous into two piles in pasta bowls and lay the seared pesto coated on top.

Viola, we had a quick super delicious dinner.

At Suzette’s request I had chilled three bottles of white wine in the afternoon.  I pulled a chilled bottle of 2019 Kemblefield Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough district of New Zealand. I found it to have an amazingly well balanced acidity, mineral it you, and fruit sweetness.

I do not recall where I bought it but I think I bought the bottle at Trader Joe’s, so I will soon go there to try to find more Kimblefield 2019 there.

I was stuffed before dinner and even more stuffed after dinner, so the only thing I could think to do was make a gin and tonic after dinner to begin to wash down some of the food.

I was moved to tears when we watched the Juneteenth Ceremony and amazed that Opal Lee, the lady who pushed for its enactment as a federal holiday was a black woman who lived on East Annie Street in Fort Worth, Texas.

I was even more amazed by Mother Opal’s  story. Her family moved from Marshall, Texas into the house on Annie in Fort Worth in 1939, which was a low income white neighborhood at the time, when she was 12 years old.  After four nights of demonstrations there was a riot by 500 persons who ran the family out of their house and burned the house after a Juneteenth celebration.  She worked for years to get the State of Texas to declare Juneteenth a State holiday and then sought federal recognition, including a March to Washington, which occurred today at the age of 94. She was at the desk standing with Vice President Harris holding her hand beside President Biden, who handed her the first pen he used to sign the law enacting the holiday. Friday, tomorrow, will be the first federal celebration of the holiday.

I was moved emotionally and am still moved by this story and how America can change to embrace diversity and equality.

Mother Lee appeared on the Cuomo’s show this evening and when asked by Chris Cuomo, “What do you want to see be the legacy of this Holiday? 

Paraphrasing, Mother Lee said “I would like for America to celebrate from Juneteenth through July 4, the true history of how slaves became free fully equal citizens in America, but we still have a lot of things to fix before we get to that.”

After Miss Lee spoke we watched Midsomer Mystery until 9:30.  I drank my gin and tonic and Suzette drank a glass of limoncello.

At 9:30 we were sleepy and went to bed.

I awakened at 2:45 to finish this blog.

Bon Appetit