January 30, 2024 Lunch - Leftover Chinese Food. Reserve Wine Tasting

 January 30, 2024 Lunch - Leftover Chinese Food. Reserve Wine Tasting 

Today we started working at 6:30.  I ate a bowl of granola and worked until 11:00. Suzette went to her exercise class at 9:00 and at 11:30 I heated two containers of leftovers from our Chinese meal at East Ocean Tuesday evening. One was filled with the Mall, a stir fry of thin vermicelli noodles mixed with different meats and vegetables. The other was the flounder steamed with green onion and ginger threads and sauced with a dark thin soy and peanut oil sauce. Both were delicious and far better to enjoy their taste than at the restaurant where my taste buds were assaulted with six or seven dishes at once.

We then packed and drove to Santa Fe at 12:00.

We stopped at Trader Joe’s in Santa Fe and bought a bag of flattened pretzels (anew product I had not seen before), a container of chicken salad with cranberries, and a 17 oz. bar of milk chocolate with caramel, pretzel, and sea salt. The flat pretzels were perfect for holding a bit of chicken salad and I made chicken salad canapés on pretzel chips for Suzette as she drove north 

 We arrived at Hacienda del Sol at 3:30. It is a large house located just behind Love Apple in El Prado. We have one of the main bedrooms facing the back patio, so very nice.

                      Looking up through the skylight

At 4:30 we drove to Monte Sagrado for the Reserve Tasting from 5:00 until 7:30. It seemed as if this year there not as many people, so we were able to talk to the wine vendors and restauranteurs longer about the wines and food. I enjoyed it more. We did not try to drink every wine or eat at every restaurant’s table.  Here are photos of some of my favorite wines.

We usually start with champagnes, then still whites, then reds, and finally dessert wines. But today preceding the tasting there had been a seminar featuring champagne and caviar, and there were at least a dozen impressive champagnes being poured. As the pourer who poured the Gaston Cliquet stated, “You can tell if the champagne is made by one of the large negotiants by looking at the Bottom left of the front label. If there is a “RN” it is made by a small unaffiliated producer. If it has a “MN” it is one of the large producers.”  The bottle of Gaston Cliquet had a tiny RN on the darker colored band at the bottom of the label. That is the type of obscure, interesting information one learns at wine tastings and seminars, where the producers , distributors, and wine makers pour the best of the best such as tonight.

My favorite pairing was a Savennieres with a battered fried pasta balls (arincini) made by the Taos High School’s Culinary Arts Department. Savenneries is among my favorite white wines and the gentleman pouring was kind enough to pour several glasses of it. So I enjoyed four aricini with their large, loose layers of pasta covered in batter and deep fried with my favorite white wine for my dinner. The same table poured an excellent Italian white from Sicily produced by Besanti (second photo from top).

Savennières wine (French pronunciation:[savənjɛʁ] ^ⓘ) is a white wine, usually dry, produced from  Chenin blanc around Savennières in the Loire Valley. The vineyards are situated on the north bank of the river Loire, in the Anjou-Saumur subregion.^[1]

There are three Appellation d'origine contrôlées(AOCs) for Savennières wine: Savennières, covering most of the vineyards, and the enclaves Savennières-Roche-aux-Moinesand Savennières-Coulée-de-Serrant.

The area allowed for Savennières AOC spreads over 3 hills of schist, located on the northwest (right) bank of the Loire river, totaling about 300 hectares (740 acres), situated in three communes: Savennières, Bouchemaineand La Possonnière. Of these, about 146 hectares (360 acres) are actually planted with vineyards.^[2] Savennières-Roche-aux-Moines covers 33 hectares (82 acres) and Savennières-Coulée-de-Serrant covers 7 hectares (17 acres).^[1]

At 7:00 we had had enough to eat and drink and we left and went back to the Hacienda.

Suzette went to the hot tub, while I drank a cup of green tea and blogged.

At 8:30 we went to bed.

I woke up several times and enjoyed looking up through the skylight at the night sky which felt like I was sleeping under a Christmas tree flocked with snow, except I was in a warm bed under covers instead of outdoors in 17 degree weather .

 

Bon Appetit

January 29, 2024 Lunch - El Modelo Adovado Stuffed Sopapillas. Dinner - Leftover Chinese Food

January 29, 2024 Lunch - El Modelo Adovado Stuffed Sopapillas. Dinner - Leftover Chinese Food 

I worked a lot today.  I started working at 6:30. Food was secondary. I ate a chocolate croissant with a cup of green tea at 9:00 while Rahim zoomed.

Henry came at noon with two Modelo sopapillas stuffed with carne adovado that were wonderful that we ate with glasses of orange juice from el Super.

At 1:00 when he left I drove to the County Clerk’s Office and spent over an hour correcting the deficient 1995 deed from Amy to me for the house so I could assess it in my name.

I then drove in the snow to DHL and sent my application for a PAN to India for processing.

Then I drove to the Main Post Office and mailed a letter and drove home a little after 3:00.

I was sunny when I returned home and had stopped snowing so I walked around the block that helped me accumulate 4000 steps today.

I rested and read until 6:20 when I toasted two slices of baguette and spread goat cheese on them and lay slices of salami for a snack with a cup of green tea.

I meditated for 30 minutes with our small group of four at 6:30 to 7:00.

Then at 7:00 we ate some of the leftover Chinese food from our dinner at East Ocean last night.

It was delicious and we then watched a movie titled “The Mission”filmed at the Iguazu Falls in Argentina where we will visit in April.

Then at 11:00 we went to bed.

Bon Appetit

January 28, 2024 Lunch - Steak Salad. Dinner - Chinese New Year Celebration at East Ocean

 January 28, 2024 Lunch - Steak Salad. Dinner - Chinese New Year Celebration at East Ocean

I got up to a new day in which the Market did a 180 degree turn from yesterday, which was the worst day in the market of my entire adult life that saw a drop of 6% in my market net worth. Today was the opposite with a gain of 70% of that loss back, a phenomenal reversal.

I ate two slices of toasted bagel spread with bream cheese and garnished with slices of sweet onion and Gravad lax and a sprinkling of pickled capers with a cup of tea.

At 10:30 I had a conference call and then I revised a pleading and filed it and met with a client to approve closing documents for a real estate sale.

At 1:30 I made a salad for lunch with red and romaine lettuces, slices of cucumber and sweet onion and cubes of grilled steak and a pile of micro greens dressed with Dion’s Ceaser salad dressing and the home made dressing. I toasted a slice of baguette and melted slices of cheddar cheese on it and drank a glass of water as I watched the recovery of the tech sector after yesterday’s huge sell off.

After lunch a miracle occurred. Sarvjit, Managing Director of the bank in India paid the application fee and sent me my application for a PAN.

I worked an hour on the completion and documentation to accompany the application until 5:00 when Suzette came home.

Suzette changed and we drove to East Ocean to meet Elaine and Wayne and Nancy and Cliff for a Chinese New Year Meal.

We discussed our favorite dishes and then Wayne ordered for all six of us.

I think he ordered six or seven dishes, including broad noodles tossed with a brown (thickened soy) sauce with seafood, a large whole flounder in ginger, soy, peanut oil, and green onion sauce, sweet and sour BBQ pork, deep fried tofu with Chinese vegetables, Hong Kong (thin vermicelli) noodles with beef, baby bok Choy with beef, a wonton soup with vegetables, a mall?? that was a huge pile of meats, vegetables and noodles. 

                                                    Sweet and Sour Pork Ribs

                                               Rice and Baby Bok Choy with beef

                                            Wonton soup with meat and vegetables

                                Mall (top) and deep fried tofu with vegetables (bottom)

                                     Stir fried Shanghai Noodles, meat, and vegetables

                                    Steamed flounder with green onions and ginger 

                                   My plate first round before several dishes arrived

It was a feast, which according to Elaine is the point of a Chinese New Year’s celebration. We would have had roasted duck if they had not been out of duck.

After dinner we returned home and listened to Caroline Kennedy’s denunciation of her cousin Bobby Kennedy’s nomination to serve as Secretary off health and Human Services and then Suzette lay on her new Crystal heating bed and I talked to Rahim.

Then she went to bed and I blogged and read.

It was a busy, exciting day in the market, wonderful to finally receive my PAN application, and celebrate Chinese New Year with friends.

Bon Appetit

January 27, 2024 Lunch - Tuna Salad Dinner - Sautéed Salmon fillet with an ear of corn and green beans.

 January 27, 2024 Lunch - Tuna Salad  Dinner - Sautéed Salmon fillet with an ear of corn and green beans.

I tried to get back on the wagon food-wise as the Market crashed today.

I ate granola with blueberries and milk and yogurt.

The event that caused the high tech sector to crash was the announcement that a Chinese firm had created an open source AI chip that was cheaper and faster than Nvidia’s GPU. Nvidia dropped $25.00 and other high tech tech firm such as Marvell and ARM followed. Luckily several other stocks went up including Apple, Salesforce, Meta, and AT&T.  So by the end of the day my portfolio was down about 6% and in after hours trading Nvidia started moving back up.

I worked until 1:00, when I made a tuna salad like the ones we ate in Northern Spain, except the tomato was not as flavorful and the Chicken of the Sea canned tuna was desiccated and in water rather than in a whole chunk in lovely Spanish olive oil.  Besides lettuce I added sweet onion, black olives, sliced radishes and celery. But I loved the salad anyway.

Suzette came home tired and sore from her Senior Day at the Legislature in Santa Fe and rested until 5:00 while walked to the country club and back.

Then at 5:00 we discussed dinner and I agreed to cook dinner. I took two salmon fillets out of the freezer and two ears of white corn and green beans out of the fridge. I snapped the green beans and put a pot of water on to boil to blanch the corn and green beans.

 Then Suzette came to the kitchen and defrosted the salmon fillets in the microwave and then sautéed them in a skillet in heated coconut oil, while I made tartare sauce with horseradish sauce, lemon juice, Mayo, and sweet pickle relish and opened a good bottle of Pinot Grigio that we bought at Costco.

We ate a simple and delicious meal and finished the bottle of wine In front of the TV watching Antiques Roadshow In Las Vegas and Santa Fe.

I felt good today with simple fresh food and a good walk that put my daily total at 3500 steps.

Bon Appetit