Eating with Bob and Suzette: June 26, 2021 Big Day of Food and Art. Breakfast - Chicken Liver And Mushroom Omelet. Lunch - Fried Stuffed Squash Blossoms and other stuff. Dinner

June 26, 2021 Big Day of Food and Art. Breakfast - Chicken Liver And Mushroom Omelet. Lunch - Fried Stuffed Squash Blossoms and other stuff. Dinner - Chicken Salad Salad

What a great day of food and art.

We all rose pretty early. While I was getting dressed, Suzette and Etienne pulled the rest of the garlic from the raised bed we planted it this year.

They returned to the kitchen while I was fixing a chicken liver omelet for breakfast.

Chicken Liver Omelet

I cut the three chicken livers that had fallen out of the chicken I bought on Wednesday into large bite-sized pieces with the outer lobes intact and soaked the pieces in Amontillado sherry. I minced 1/2 small shallot and two cloves of garlic. I fetched and cleaned about 2 oz. of white beech mushrooms. I whisked 4 eggs to almost a froth with about 1/4 tsp. of salt and a pinch of white pepper.

I melted 2 T. of butter in a medium skillet and added the shallot and garlic. After a couple of minutes I added the mushrooms and chicken livers and sherry. When the chicken had ceased to show any red after a few more minutes I added the egg and covered the skillet to cook and steam the top. I went to change my shirt and Suzette took over.

Etienne sliced four slices of Bosque Bakery baguette and toasted them and Suzette poured herself a glass of Clamato juice. Etienne took another cup of coffee and when I returned I brewed a cup of green tea.

By then the omelet had puffed up around the edges and fully cooked.

Etienne and I each buttered two slices of baguette and spread the slices with pineapple marmalade.

I cut the omelet into three pieces and put one on each plate.

We carried our drink and plate to the garden after viewing and flushing the Coopers Hawk sitting on our bird bath.

It was a lovely breakfast that reminded me of the chicken liver omelets my mother would make for us when I was young. This seems to be a family recipe for that reason, although perhaps more people than I imagine ate chicken liver, sherry, and mushroom omelets when young.

After breakfast we drove to the Farmers’ Market at Eight and Central walked the entire perimeter. We bought 1/4 lb. of oyster mushrooms, 6 beautiful squash blossoms, and a baguette. Etienne bought a pepper plant and a jar of salsa. We took our purchases home snd then drove to the Albuquerque Art Museum to see the big Transcendental Painting Group Show.

Suzette had shown us the article in the Sunday paper and last night we ordered tickets for 9:00 when the museum opened the exhibit to the public today.

It was an amazing exhibit. One I have been waiting to see for years. I got two beg nibbles of TPG works in the big Mabel Dodge Lujan and Company show several years ago and the fabulous Agnes Pelton mystical painting exhibit at the Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe last year, put this exhibit was organized around the works of each of the original members, everyone was included, even Lawrence Harris from Canada.

I feel like the connective link of the group was through Agni Yoga, created by Nicholas and Helena Roerich, which was mentioned with regard to Agnes Pelton, but Raymond Jonson had direct contact with Roerich in Chicago and Emil Bisttram taught at Roerich’s art college in New York before moving to New Mexico in 1930.

Alas, when gathered in on exhibit the paintings speak for themselves and one understands the uniqueness of the TPG movement, when you realize almost everyone else around them was painting Indians and Western landscapes.

Here are some of my favorites:

Ed Garman

After viewing the TPG band talking to a couple who teach Art history at West Texas State College at Canyon, near Amarillo (Where Georgia O’Keefe taught) we walked through the Common Grounds exhibit admiring the new pieces, like big Juane Quick-to-see Smith and a New Sheldon Harvey. The addition of contemporary Indian artists seems to be happening everywhere.

As we walked out of the Common Grounds I looked down the hall and saw a Eye to Eye. I asked Suzette and Etienne to walk down the hall to see what it was. As we approached the subtext revealed that it was a traveling exhibit of self-portraits from the National Portrait Gallery became excited.

When we walked through the door I was blown away by a large painting of the same scale as the original in the Met of Washington Crossing the Delaware, by a Japanese crew. We walked around and saw lots of smaller gems, such as Patty Smith and Chuck Close self-portraits. The National portrait Gallery is he of my favorite museums, because it liberally explores the entire range of two and three dimensional art through portraiture.

After walking through the Farmers’ Market and the museum I felt like I had exercised enough for the day as we drove home.

Etienne left after we returned home and Suzette and he picked a bag of fresh garden mint.

Lunch - Fried Stuffed Squash Blossoms and other stuff

It was after 11:00 and we were getting hungry. Suzette found a recipe for a batter for coating squash blossoms that included club soda as one of its ingredients and made that. She then stuffed each blossom with a ball of fig flavored goat cheese and a salted anchovy and then coated each Blossom with batter and fried them in hot canola oil. The resulting blossoms looked impressive.

We ate the blossoms with glasses of the Cotes du Provence Rose that Etienne had brought. We discussed battering and frying other vegetables and settled on zucchini, onion rings, garlic scapes, and parsley. They all held the batter and fried really well.

It was a fun and tasty lunch.

After lunch Suzette hard boiled 8 eggs and then went to her office to work and I began to prep chicken salad.

In a large mixing bowl I combined 1 cup each of minced onion and celery (including their leafy tops), one chicken breast,1 apple, and diced six hard boiled eggs with an egg slicer. I then went to the garden and picked a handful of tarragon and about ten chives and de-stemmed the tarragon leaves and minced them. I added the 1/4 cup of chive slices and 1/2 cup of chopped tarragon and then about 2 cups of mayonnaise and 1/4 cup of Dijon mustard. I then added the 1/4 cup of PPI balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing Suzette had made for dipping the fried squash blossoms at lunch.

At this point I thought to add a bit more white balsamic vinegar to intensify the tarragon flavor, when Suzette came to the kitchen. I asked her if she thought we needed to add any more vinegar and she gave me a big compliment, when she said, “No.”

Dinner - Chicken Salad Salad

At this point Suzette took over our dinner prep. She looked for some greens for a salad. Our salad mix had wilted and the bunch of spinach I bought at El Super last Monday was in pretty bad shape also.

Suzette cleaned and salvaged as much of the spinach as possible and then went to our garden and harvested enough of two types of kale to make a green salad. Suzette destemmed the kale leaves and chopped them abd added them to the spinach and added slices of avocado and then adde spoonfuls of chicken salad.