April 15, 2023 Breakfast - Chinese Crepes. Lunch - Turkey Chowder. Dinner - Eggplant in Garlic Sauce with halibut

April 15, 2023 Breakfast - Chinese Crepes. Lunch - Turkey Chowder. Dinner - Eggplant in Garlic Sauce with halibut

Today was a fun day with shopping and some unusual food.

We started around 8:30 driving to the Farmers’ Market at 8th and Central after Man City crushed Leicester 3 to 1 and I ate a fig bar.

At the Farmers’ Market, we started by buying almond croissants and a baguette at the Le Quiche stall.

Then a few stalls further west we bought a bottle of wildflower honey for Susan.

We made a loop around the outside of the stalls and said hello to Cynthia.

We were looking for something to eat and walked to the inner path where we soon found an unusual food stall with a Chinese family preparing two types of crepes. One was the traditional French type of crepe made from a plain flour batter and stuffed with chives and herbs and an egg ($7.00).  The other was one we had never seen before, a lacework of colored streams of batter and then two eggs paddled into a thin layer that bound the colored batter into a crepe and then a fried wonton, shoestring potatoes, green onions ringlets, chopped cilantro, and red bean paste were placed on the crepe and then the crepe was rolled up like a burrito ($9.00).  The weather was cool so we carried the two crepes to the Highlander and ate them in the warmth of the vehicle.  They were delicious, not fantastic, but we enjoyed the unique food item and would order another one if they are offered in the future.

We then drove to Costco and shopped.  We bought raisins, a boneless leg of lamb, coffee, toilet paper, granola, beautiful asparagus, a bag of Yukon Gold potatoes, collagen, Tylenol, and four bottles of wine, the Italian Chianti Classico, a new Malbec, and two other new bottles.

While Suzette was loading ten bags of top soil, I checked out and ate a hot dog. Then we loaded the groceries and the guys loaded the top soil into the Highlander.

We drove home and Suzette drove and Suzette unloaded the top soil and then drove to work and I received a call from Rahim with a new deal that I worked on for two hours until 3:30, when Suzette returned home.

We were hungry, so Suzette fetched the pot of PPI Turkey chowder and we heated it and ate a bowl of it with crumbled saltine crackers and glasses of Kirkland Pinot Grigio.p at 4:00.

I then lay down for an hour to nap until I was awaken by a call from Billy regarding their trip in May.  I was refreshed and went into the TV room where Suzette was watching home improvement shows and peddled 2 miles on the stationary bike.

It was 6:00. We needed to use the PPI Halibut.  I suggested making garlic eggplant, which is Suzette’s favorite Chinese dish and adding the halibut. Suzette suggested we also steam some sugar snap peas.

That is what we did.  I chopped 1/2 onion, about seven cloves of garlic, a quarter sized piece of ginger, and the dozen or so baby eggplants, while Suzette made the seasoning sauce comprising rice vinegar, garlic, chili paste, soy, oyster sauce, Chinese cooking wine, and cornstarch and destemmed the sugar snap peas.

Suzette fetched the wok and peanut oil and stir fried and drained the eggplant chunks.  Then she stir fried the onion,garlic, and ginger. Then she added the eggplant back into the wok and the seasoning sauce and cooked it until it thickened.  Finally she added the cooked halibut, steamed the sugar snap peas, and heated some PPI rice in the microwave.

I heated a small pitcher of sake in a pot of simmering hot water and made a cup of green tea for myself.

Soon dinner was ready.

The eggplant dish had a soggy consistency but it was incredibly delicious. For some reason the rice was firm and had a pleasant chewiness that created an interesting contrast to the slimy eggplant dish that made dinner enjoyable for me.

I loved dinner.

After dinner we watched another episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and then Father Brown and a rerun of Death in Paradise that I dozed through.

Suzette went to bed at 10:30 but I stayed up to see my new favorite TV show, Astrid. It is a French TV series about a French detective who teams up with a young woman who works in the crime records division of the police. Astrid, the record keeper, is so set in her ways that she is almost totally anti-social and one of the charms of the series is how the detective begins to slowly draw Astrid out of her shell.

I then blogged this blog and went to bed at 1:15.

Bon Appetit