March 15, 2024 Breakfast - Bagels and Gravlax. Lunch - Costco Hotdog. Dinner - Crab with Tabouli, steamed Asparagus, and hard boiled egg

I worked on my taxes until 8:30 and then watched soccer and made a tropical fruit salad by peeling and dicing a papaya, a pineapple, two mangos, and four oranges plus juice of one lime.

Then I watched a spirited match between Bournemouth and Brentford that Brentford won.

When the soccer match ended at 12:30 we drove to Costco for dirt for the raised beds, multi vitamins, and glucose pills. We saw that there were still great prices on wine so we bought 22 bottles of wine just in case Trump slaps tariffs on EU wine.

We also bought mushrooms and granola and pain au chocolate plus water sprayers for gardening, work gloves, and I bought a 3 pack of underwear.

After we shopped we ate hot-dogs and a drink and ate our lunch.

When we arrived at home I put up the wine and rested and Suzette worked on billing until 6:00 when Bill Maher came on CNN.

I made my favorite crab sauce, curing minced shallots with lemon juice for 1/2 hour to cook them a bit and then mixing in Mayo, catsup, and horseradish.  It needed a little mor acidity so I added a few dashes of the Spanish Patron Artisanal vinegar.

Suzette put the six crab clusters on a tray and hard boiled two eggs and steamed a bunch of asparagus and I fetched the tabouli I made a few days ago.

I opened and poured glasses of Juve y Campo Cava and we picked all the crab and separated the shell. We ate lots of crab with tabouli, egg slices, and crab sauce and picked a lot for future meals. 

Suzette wants to make a chowder so she added onion, celery, and carrot and water to the pot of shells and cooked the pot at low heat to made crab broth.

We will make chowder, crab souffle, and perhaps crab cakes.

As we ate we watched Bill Maher and then Have I got news for You.

The we watched Your Place or Mine with Adam Kushner and Reese Witherspoon.

Then Suzette went to bed and I watched Have we got news for you again and a little bit of the Christmas episode of SNL.

Bon Appetit

March 14, 2025 Lunch - Pita pocket sandwiches with grilled lamb Dinner - Julia Child’s Red cabbage with chestnuts and Roast Duck

 March 14, 2025 Lunch - Pita pocket sandwiches with grilled lamb Dinner - Julia Child’s Red cabbage with chestnuts and Roast Duck

Today was topped off with a dish from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, my bible, that I had never cooked before Red Cabbage and Chestnuts. Here is the recipe.

I started the day at 8:30 with a chocolate Croissant and a cup of tea.

An interesting thing occurred in the morning. I received a call from the Bernalillo county Treasurer’s Office telling me that two checks I sent had gotten torn in the mail. At first I thought it was a scam, so I said I would come to the Treasurer’s office to replace the checks in trade for the torn checks.

So at 11:00 I drove to the Treasurer’s Office and sure enough they had my checks with the torn envelope, so I replaced the checks and drove home.

Then at 11:30 I decided to make an early lunch. I decided to go totally Mediterranean. I cut a pita in half and heated each half so they could be opened as a pocket. I stuffed each with creamy feta, tomato slices, onion slices, heated lamb slices, lettuce, and tzatziki and added dill pickles, two radishes, four or five pimiento stuffed green olives, and the two remaining tomato slices to the plate.

After lunch I thawed 1/2 roasted duck and four quail.

Mar it came at 2:30 and showed me how to replace batteries in the battery powered motion detectors.

Then at 3:45 Jessica, a location person for a movie came to take pictures of the house for a possible movie.

Then I worked on two letters and got one out by 4:30 and took the other one to the post office at 5:00.

When I returned home we discussed dinner and settled on Red Cabbage with chestnuts, since Susan gave me a box with four dozen husked and cleaned Chestnuts.

I sliced thinly a sweet onion, two carrots and then quartered 12 chestnuts, and opened a bottle of 2023 Jadot Beaujolais Villages. Then I chopped   1/2 of a head of red cabbage and a Fuji apple and Suzette sautéed those ingredients and added 1 cup each of the red wine and beef broth.

We the cooked the ingredients covered in a casserole for one hour. 

After one hour Suzette re-heated the roasted duck for 30 minutes in a heated 375 degree oven until the skin crisped.

I sliced the duck leg, wing, and breast which yielded five or six slices of duck that I placed on the pile of red cabbage and I poured glasses of Beaujolais Villages. I also toasted and buttered three slices of baguette.

The dinner was fabulous and afterwards I ate slices of slightly over ripe brie on slices of baguette with sips of Beaujolais. I have rarely tasted a better pairing than the brie and Beaujolais.o

Later I poured a sip of cognac that I  sipped as I ate two squares of Belgian milk chocolate as we watched a lovely Movie on Netflix “the  Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.

Later we watched the Buenos Aires episode of Someone is Feeding Phil and recorded the names of the restaurants he visited.

We went to bed at 10:30, Suzette to sleep and I to blog.

Bon Appetit

March 13, 2025 Lunch - Bologna and cheese sandwiches Dinner - PPI Trout cakes with Tartare Sauce and Couscous with sautéed green beans, mushrooms, shallot, and Spinach

March 13, 2025 Lunch - Bologna and cheese sandwiches Dinner - PPI Trout cakes with Tartare Sauce and Couscous with sautéed green beans, mushrooms, shallot, and Spinach 

At 9:00 I ate the last of the granola with milk, yogurt, and green grapes.

I was in a brutal LRGA hearing from 9:30 until 12:30 with a 15 minute break at noon during which I made two Lebanon Bologna and cheese sandwiches with Mayo and mustard on Baguette with two dill pickles.

After the hearing I rested and talked to Henry until 4:15 when I walked around the block after being very depressed about the judge’s decisions.

As I left Suzette was arriving and I carried in an enamel casserole she had borrowed for the restaurant.

When I returned around 5:45 we started dinner.

Dinner - I destemmed some spinach as Suzette snapped the green beans I bought at El Super a few days ago.  I then slices three mushrooms and minced a shallot and two cloves of garlic and fetched the trout cakes.

While Suzette sautéed the vegetables, I made tartare sauce. The Suzette microwaved some PPI Couscous and the trout cakes and then plated those ingredients very attractively.

Suzette fetched the open bottle of good Pinot Grigio and filled two glasses and we sauced the trout cakes with tartare sauce and enjoyed a lovely dinner.

I lost more money in the stock market today, but did not check it.

Apparently the market dropped toward the end of the day when Trump said he was undeterred in his use of tarries and threatened a 200% tariff on EU alcoholic beverages.

The prime minister of Ontario met with the Administration to negotiate stopping Ontario’s threatened tariffs on hydro-electric power generated in Ontario and sold to the States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

It will be interesting to see how Canada plays this card.

Bon Appetit

March 12, 2025 Lunch - Noodle Soup Dinner - Grilled Lamb Chops with Tabouli, Tzatziki, and Cheesy Polenta

March 12, 2025 Lunch - Noodle Soup  Dinner - Grilled Lamb Chops with Tabouli, Tzatziki, and Cheesy Polenta

I woke up at 7:55 and dressed and took the trash can to the curb.

I made a cup of tea and heated a chocolate croissant in the microwave for 25 seconds, which I think is optimal.

I spent a busy morning at my desk filing Articles of Dissolution on the Secretary of State’s new enterprise website that generates the document as you input the answers to questions.

Then I read a purchase Agreement and called my client to discussed several issues. Suzette exercised this morning, met with the landscaper, did her podcast at 11:30 and then left for Los Lunas.

At 12:30 I combines the leftover Vietnamese noodle soup with the leftover Ramen noodle soup from yesterday’s lunch at Crazy Fish.  The combination of the two, one miso based and the other pork broth was really delicious.

Then I had a busy afternoon at my desk meeting with a client and drafting another Reply and filing it in the LRGA.

I finished at 4:27, just in time to meditate at 4:30.

When we finished meditating I tried to walk but was getting cooler and breezy, so I went back and made Tabouli and Tzatziki and Suzette thawed and grilled three lamb chops. Suzette heated the last of the polenta Melissa brought to dinner Saturday and we poured out the last two glasses of Kirkland Cotes Du Rhone red wine.

Suzette grilled the lamb chops perfectly to medium rare. It was a lovely Mediterranean style dinner.

The Market snapped back today but my portfolio ended the day down 13.8% from its high less than a month ago.

Trump’s tariffs are ruining the economy the way his firings and destroying agencies and lives are destroying our country and government.  It is really sad to see.

It will be interesting to see what Trump will do when Russia rejects the ceasefire negotiated by the U.S. and Ukraine last weekend in Saudi Arabia. Trump could do something really dramatic to Russia like confiscate Russia’s gold reserves and give them to Ukraine to buy more weapons from the U.S. and rebuild its country, but I doubt Trump will because he seems to be beholden to Russia for something.

After dinner we watched a Polish film on Netflix titled Under Pressure and went to bed at 9::30.

Bon Appetit

March 11, 2025 Lunch - Crazy Fish Dinner Swedish Meatballs with Egg Noodles and steamed Broccoli with Mornay Sauce

 March 11, 2025 Lunch - Crazy Fish Dinner Swedish Meatballs with Egg Noodles and steamed Broccoli with Mornay Sauce

Today’s Lunch was memorable.

Yesterday, I received a call from Sharmin wanting to pick my brain on a couple of legal matters. 

I suggested meeting for lunch at my new favorite restaurant east of the University on Central, Crazy Fish.

Her response was immediate, “That’s my favorite also.”

So we agreed to meet at 11:30 today at Crazy Fish.  

I was a few minutes early. I reviewed the menu and decided on a bowl of ramen noodles with pork belly, Japanese fish cakes, bamboo shoots, and a hard boiled egg in a Tonkatsu (pork) broth because I had eaten a slice of toasted bagel spread with cream Cheese and garnished with red onion and Gravad lax slices for breakfast at 9:30.

When Sharmin arrived she ordered an order of salmon sashimi on shredded daikon and a salmon roll with Ponzu sauce and I ordered my ramen bowl.

We discussed lots of issues as she brought me up to date on the latest developments in her management of Zazz Motel and even Voco.

After we ate as much as we could eat of our dishes and packed them into carry out boxes, Sharmin casually ordered tempura bananas for dessert.

What appeared a few minutes later was a platter with three scoops of chocolate ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup and honey surrounded by tempura fried banana sections. This was the best and most unusual dessert I have eaten in a long time and provided one more reason to love dining at Crazy Fish.

After lunch I drove home and worked until 3:15 when I went to the Post Office to buy stamps and mail a letter until I realized I did not have the correct address. 

I then drove to El Super to shop for groceries through the traffic jam on the Central Ave bridge over the Rio Grande. I bought sweet potatoes, romaine lettuce, radishes, Persian cucumbers, orange juice, mushrooms, green beans, red onions, and a can of black beans.

Dinner - It was around 4:30 when I arrived at home and unloaded and went to my computer and had to review and file my Scheduling Order until 5:30 when Suzette arrived and asked me if I wanted to eat Swedish meatballs with egg noodles. The Swedish meatballs come with brown gravy and a funky red berry sweetened compote sold in a box at Costco.  We decided to steam some broccoli with it and sauce the broccoli with some PPI mornay sauce. 

I deflowered a head of broccoli and put the flowerets into the steamer and filled it to the level of broccoli with water and put it on the stove.

Suzette sautéed the meatballs in a large skillet and then added the brown gravy and boiled the egg noodles and then steamed the broccoli.

I added milk to the Mornay Sauce and heated it in the microwave for 45 seconds to emulsify it. I also fetched the last of the cranberry jelly that we agreed would be a lot tastier than the weird compote.

Suzette plated the meatballs and brown sauce on a pile of German egg noodles in pasta bowls and put the broccoli in a separate bowl covered with the Mornay sauce. 

Suzette opened a bottle of Kirkland Côtes du Rhône and poured glasses of red wine. Suzette was hungry, not having eaten lunch and ate a fair amount, while I ate about half of my dinner, which left lots of meatballs, egg noodles, and broccoli for another dinner. I liked the wine with a few ice cubes and there is about 1/2 bottle of it left also.

I sipped my wine as we watched Chris Hayes and part of Rachel and I took a couple of cookies and lay down at 7:30 to blog and read.

Bon Appetit