December 31, 2022 Brunch - Tamale with egg and Posole. Dinner - Boeuf Bourguignon with Mashed Potatoes and fresh spinach

December 31, 2022 Brunch - Tamale with egg and Posole. Dinner - Boeuf Bourguignon with Mashed Potatoes and fresh spinach

Today I watched soccer in the morning and College football in the afternoon and evening.

Suzette chopped tamales and cooked four sunny side up eggs on top.  I heated a bowl of Posole and lay half of the sautéed tamale and an egg on top.  Suzette ate tamale and egg without Posole.  Suzette made a Bloody Mary and I drank Clamato juice with ice.

I then butchered three rib steak and we made beef stock with the three bones and I diced the meat for Boeuf Bourguignon. Suzette fried lardettes of bacon and then braised the meat in the bacon fat. 

We then drove to Smiths to buy carrots celery, pearl onions, and tomato paste for the Boeuf and eggs, and another whole slab of rib steaks, plus a bag of Yukon gold potatoes, and pecan sandies and bagels on sale.

We returned home at 2:30 and discovered that TCU was up two touchdowns on Michigan.  I ate a bag of popcorn and a glass of root beer as we watched the game and Suzette made a Drink with limoncello, gin, vermouth and a slice of orange.

Amazingly TCU held off Michigan and won 51 to 45.  That win get TCU a ticket to the NCAA Championship game on January 9.

Then at 6:00 the other semifinal game between Georgia and Ohio State began.  

Suzette baked the Boeuf for 2 1/2 hours in 3 cups of stock and three cups of red wine and then added quartered mushrooms and pearl onions and added them for the last hour of cooking in the oven.

Then she made mashed potatoes with the fresh Yukon Gold potatoes.

Suzette asked for the 2013 Sangiacamo Calstar Pinot Noir, so I went to the basement and fetched a bottle.

Suzette plated the dish with spinach leaves on the bottom, then a mound of mashed potatoes and finally spoonfuls of Boeuf Bourguignon.

I poured glasses of Pinot for a fabulous dinner.

After dinner I ate some brie on slices of Baguette with some of the pinot.

Then we watched the Georgia v. Ohio State game and sipped wine.

Georgia won by 1 point 42 to 41 a minute after we watched the clock strike 12:00 midnight in New York and we went to bed, after what we deemed a wonderful New Year’s Eve.

Bon Appetit

Recollection - I read in the latest TCU alumni magazine that TCU was the repository of the Oscar Monnig meteorite collection.  That made me remember that Oscar Monnig was our neighbor and our back fence shared a fence with his back yard.

We did not befriend him and I knew very little about him except that he had a one acre lot and he collected trees, so his back yard was a mini-arboretum.  Only later did his nephew, who was a few years older than me told me about his collection of meteorites and later still I discovered that he actively collected them, with crews who went out to locations where meteors were sighted to find these bits of space junk.

Mr. Monnig owned a small local chain of department stores.

Our lot was 1/2 acre and my best friend, Shelby Hallmark’s family shared the fence with the other side of Mr. Monnig’s property.  I ran past his house almost every day, but I never was invited inside.