March 27, 2023 Breakfast - two men on rafts. Lunch - PPI Duck leg Soup Dinner - Green Chili Hamburgers with Fried Potato spears and Cesar Salad

 March 27, 2023 Breakfast - two men on rafts.  Lunch - PPI Duck leg Soup Dinner - Green Chili cheese Hamburgers with Fried Potato spears and Cesar Salad

I worked at my desk and on taxes at the dining room table and talked from 8:30 to 1:30, although I took a break at 10:00. I was hungry and we had no milk, so I decided to make two men on a raft.  These are slices of rye bread  with a hole in the middle in which an egg is placed as the bread is being toasted in butter in a skillet. I tore a hole in two slices of rye bread and toasted them in butter in a skillet on one side. Then I turned them over, added butter to toast the other side and dropped an egg onto each slice so that the yolk fit in the hole.  I then toasted the o5er side and flipped the slices again to fully cook the white part of the egg.  The result was a well cooked egg white that covered most of the slice of bread and a runny yolk in the hole in the center.  A perfectly cooked egg by my reckoning.  This is a breakfast dish my mother would serve me, so I guess it is a family recipe.

Fernando came by this morning and we had a long conversation about several issues he is facing that went until 1:30.

So at 2:00 I decided to heat the leftover duck leg soup from 2000 Vietnamese Restaurant.  It was just as good as at the restaurant, a murky pho driven liquid with a mass of egg noodles, duck meat, slices of green onion, mung bean sprouts, and basil leaves.

At 3:30 I drove to Lowe’s to buy milk and also bought 2..5 lb. of hamburger meat, a large avocado, a beautiful head of romaine lettuce, and a red bell pepper.

When I returned home at 5:00 I walked a block in the windy sunny cool weather without a cane.  In fact I do not need a cane at this time, which is a hopeful sign, even though I still waddle a bit.

Suzette arrived as I returned home and I lay down to read and rest until she had had her cocktail and called me to the kitchen to help prep dinner.  

We had invited Willy to dinner at 7:00.  The menu Suzette had devised was Green Chili hamburgers with fried potato wedges and Cesar Salad.

I chopped three green chilis that Suzette had thawed, two cloves of garlic, and 1/2 of a small onion and added it to about 1 1/4 lb. of ground beef and Suzette mixed those ingredients and formed them into three hamburgers.

She then sliced three or four Yukon Gold potatoes lengthwise into spears and cooked them with a bit of water covered in a Pyrex baking dish in the microwave and then sautéed them in olive oil.

Willy arrived at 7:00 during the prep and sautéed the potatoes.

Suzette made croutons twice because they kept burning for the Cesar salad.

I reconstituted the existing Cesar dressing into a more official Cesar dressing by adding lemon juice, olive oil, an egg, and 3 chopped up smoked anchovies.  I opened a can of Trader Joe’s anchovies and used three for the dressing and lay the others out on a plate to garnish the salad.

I then tore leaves from six of seven leaves of romaine lettuce into bite sized chunks and rinsed the pieces and spun them and put them in a large metal bowl and added some warm croutons, some dressing, and about 1/4 cup of shaved micro slices or Parmesan cheese onto the salad with the micro grater.  I then tossed the salad to mix all the ingredients and put it on the table.

When Suzette brought the charcoal grilled hamburgers with melted Manchego in from the grill, she plated plates with a hamburger and a pile of sautéed potato spears that had been drained in a colander lined with paper towels.

I opened a bottle of Kirkland Rioja Reserva and filled the three glasses Suzette had fetched with wine.

We each served ourselves salad and took three anchovies each to garnish our salad.  The salty anchovies combined with the creamy dressing on the salad and fresh romaine was a wonderful combination, as was the spicy green chili laden hamburgers with their mild green chili after taste.  Integrating green chili into the hamburger was a very creative thought and a much nicer way to create a green chili cheese burger in my opinion.

We dipped the potato spears and hamburger in catsup for a lovely meal.

The wine was solid also.  A monopole was perfect for this meal of mixed flavors. 

We enjoyed dinner and watched the US soccer team beat El Salvador and then Willy left around 8:00.

Billy and Elaine called a bit later and we had a long conversation regarding their planned trip to visit us during the first week of May. It seems the only definite is a trip to the Folk Art Flea Market. We said we were at their and Mickey and Rebecca’s disposal otherwise with two guest bedrooms and two cars.

After the call Suzette sliced us each a slice of the lemon cheese cake she made and we shared a glass of cognac and watched the second hour of Antique Roadshow featuring objects with lots of color, like a blue glass French paperweight, a Warhol flower print with bright colored flowers that resembled late Matisse cut flowers like those I saw at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1968 or 1970.

We went to bed at 9:00.

And I slept until 12:45 when I wrote this blog.

Suzette and I discussed our respective sleep patterns this evening and I was unable to explain mine even to my satisfaction.

Bon Appetit