July 30, 2025 Breakfast - Granola, milk, yogurt, and blueberries Lunch - Vietnamese 2000 No. 30 with Peter and Etienne. Diner - Sautéed Salmon filets and Leftover Chirashi, Seaweed Salad, and Steamed Vegetables

July 30, 2025 Breakfast - Granola, milk, yogurt, and blueberries Lunch - Vietnamese 2000 No. 30 with Peter and Etienne. Diner - Sautéed Salmon filets and Leftover Chirashi, Seaweed Salad, and Steamed Vegetables

Today I worked from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. then I rested until 7:15 and then took a shower and watched the Market open from 7:30 to 8:00. It is hard to develop enthusiasm to work when the market is going up as it is these days.

I then ate a bowl of granola, milk, yogurt, and blueberries

I worked until 10:30 and then called in an order for 3 No. 30’s to Vietnamese 2000. Number 30 is a three tiered affair with lettuce cucumber sticks and mung bean sprouts on the bottom, steamed rice vermicelli noodles in the middle, and grilled marinated pork and fried egg rolls on top served with a special sweetened fish sauce.  I packed the remaining bag of ice and can of condensed milk and drove to the restaurant at 601 San Mateo SE to pick up the stack of No. 30’s and then drove to Peter’s house.

When I arrived Etienne made strong coffee and I filled two tumblers half full with coffee and stirred in a generous T. of condensed milk and then filled the glasses to the brim with ice to make Vietnamese coffees for Peter and me. Etienne does not drink coffee.

Peter was supine in a lounger on the porch, due to recent back injury, so he ate his No. 30 from his lap and Etienne and I shared a TV table.

We had a pleasant two hour conversation as we ate and sipped our coffee. 

Then I returned home and checked the market. The Dow was down 171 points, the S&P was down about $6.50, and the NASDAQ was up only 31 points, but many high tech stocks had moved up, except for Apple and Meta. I was pleased that in this mixed market result my portfolio went up .76% to regain more than half of its .93% loss yesterday. Then after the close Suzette came home around 4:00 and told me Meta had announced earnings and was up $74.00 in after market trading. I checked and that seemed to be correct along with Google and Microsoft. Apparently, some analyst projected the expected cash flows for the immense capital expenditures on AI from the Big Beautiful Bill’s new provision allowing the immediate write of of expenditure on capital goods such as Nvidia chips.

Nvidia’s quarterly revenue has more than quintupled in the last two years, reaching a record $44 billion in the first quarter of the current fiscal year. I don’t expect that to slow down in the next few quarters, so I will be excited to see if its stock pops also in the next day or two.

Suzette went to see her nutritionist yesterday and he told her that to lose weight one must sufficiently large percentage of protein to absorb the carbohydrates and that she needed to increase her protein intake dramatically, so this morning she thawed out two salmon filets.

At 6:00 she sautéed the salmon filets and I fetched all the leftovers from our lunch yesterday at Crazy Fish: a slice each of raw salmon, albacore, white tuna, Aji tuna, and hamachi sashimi, rice, seaweed salad, and steamed vegetables. Suzette ate the salmon and some seaweed salad and I ate the leftover sashimi, vegetables and rice for a wonderful high protein dinner. I drank Green tea with my dinner and Suzette drank water. I am feeling better being on a similar diet as Suzette.

Desserts and between meal snacks have almost completely been eliminated.

Except, tonight we made my famous chocolate baked pudding after dinner for the party Friday night to celebrate Mike and Joy’s marriage.  Tonight we made the chocolate pudding and tomorrow I will make the coffee flavored creme anglais.

We watched Walking with Dinosaurs and called Willy before we made the chocolate cake

Then Suzette went to bed at 9:30 and I watched a documentary on the collapse of  the Maya Metropolitan City state structure, many caused by extreme swings between extremely dry and wet years starting around 800 A.D. and an over dependence on growing corn instead of a more diverse diet.

Bon Appetit

 

July 29, 2025 Lunch - Crazy Fish Dinner - Duck Salad

July 29, 2025 Lunch - Crazy Fish  Dinner - Duck Salad 

I worked this morning on my pleading. I ate Granola with milk, mango yogurt, and blueberries.

Then at 12:30 when Suzette returned we drove to Crazy Fish to start our cuisine training for Japan. Suzette ordered BBQ’d Unagi (freshwater eel) with seaweed salad. The dish also comes with a bowl is steamed mixed vegetables, so a lot of food.  We decided that I should order chirashi and share our two dishes but it turned out to be too much food, but three boxes of leftovers for future lunches. The grilled unagi was rich, fatty, and delicious. There was an interesting piece of fish on my chirashi that was full if sinews but very delicious. There were two slices each of five fish, salmon, white tuna, Aji tuna, hamachi and the mystery fish plus squid salad with pickled burdock root and seaweed salad on a bed of sushi rice in a ceramic bowl. 

After lunch we gave the sushi chef a tip and Suzette thanked him in Japanese and then drove home and Suzette went to an appointment.

I watched the market close and found out the my portfolio decreased 93%. I do not know what made the market reverse from positive in the morning to a negative close, but when I went to bed the futures were up.

 I meditated from 3:15 to 3:45 and then worked on a project until 5:00.

I started watching the news at 5:00 and Suzette joined me.  At 6:00 we started making dinner. 

I went to the garden and picked a basket of lettuce and rinsed it and spun it and put the lettuce into the fridge to crisp.

Then I made a duck salad for our dinner. I sliced two radishes, hard boiled 4 eggs, cubed a large Roma tomato, sliced two slices of red onion amend minced it, peeled, seeded, and sliced 1/3 cucumber, and cut the duck wing and breast into cubes and seared  them in a skillet.

I added red wine vinegar and olive plus a dash of salt and white pepper to the leftover Dijonnaise dressing I made yesterday.

Then we assembled our salads. We put lettuce into a pasta bowl and I added to each bowl tomato cubes, croutons, and sliced cucumbers, a hard boiled egg, several slices of goat brie, red onion, and radishes. I added the warmed duck pieces and we each dressed our salads.

The salads were ready at 7:00, so we watched Finding Your Roots while we ate and after we ate then we watched two episodes of House Hunters International, one in Lincoln, England and the other in Queenstown, New Zealand. And went to bed at 9:00. We practiced Japanese for about 15 minutes and then Suzette went to sleep and I blogged.

The Japanese lunch was a splurge calorie wise but totally worth it. Suzette went to the nutritionist in the afternoon and he told she needed to eat more protein, which she did today with the massive seafood lunch.

Bon Appetit

July 28, 2025 Lunch - Chicken Salad Salad with a toast spread with goat brie. Dinner - Roasted Duck with Roasted Vegetables

July 28, 2025 Lunch - Chicken Salad Salad  with a toast spread with goat brie. Dinner - Roasted Duck with Roasted Vegetables

I awakened at 7:31 just after the market opened.

At 8:15 I helped Suzette load three folding tables and three pots of dirt into her Highlander. That effort on an empty stomach began to weaken me.

I took a sugar pill and Suzette poured me a glass of orange juice and after she left at 8:40 I began to recover.

I ate a bowl of granola with orange juice, mango yogurt, and blueberries for breakfast at 9:30.

I then prepared directions for Zia Trust authorizing it to distribute the proceeds of the loan repayment from Earn.

I weakened again at 12:00 so I made Lunch; a salad of garden lettuce, 7 cherry tomatoes halved, 1/3 cucumber peeled seeded, two radishes sliced, a handful of croutons, four pimiento stuffed green olives, and two slices of red onion plus a couple of spoonfuls of chicken salad. I made a Dijonnaise dressing for the salad and added some olive oil to loosen the Mayo binding the chicken salad. I enjoyed the hearty salad with lots of interesting ingredients. I toasted two small slices of baguette and spread them with an interesting goat brie cheese. And poured a glass of Albariño.

At lunch I watched the market close. Something very strange happened today.

 I had been tracking the market most of the day and noticed that the Dow and the S&P were slightly negative and the NASDAQ was slightly positive by about 35 points.p with Nvidia up around $1.50 most of the day. But at the close the NASDAQ jumped to 70 points and Nvidia jumped to close up $3.25 along with increases in many other Tech names., resulting in my portfolio increasing by .8%.

Then I worked a bit and at 4:00 when Suzette returned I lay down and napped for a few minutes.

Dinner - At 5:00 we started dinner. I sliced a carrot, cubed about ten Yukon Gold potatoes from our garden, two small heads of fresh garlic from our garden, a yellow onion, and Suzette cleaned and halved the Brussels sprouts that we put in a Pyrex baking dish. Suzette tossed the vegetables with salt and olive oil and roasted them covered with aluminum foil for 40 minutes and 20 minutes uncovered with the 1/2 roasted duck.

I opened a bottle Côtes du Rhône red from Costco and when the duck was reheated and the skin crisped, I sliced the thigh and leg into a pile of meat and left the breast for another meal. 

Suzette weighed the meat and it weighed only 1.5 ounces. We split the duck meat and each spooned a pile of roasted vegetables onto our plates and Suzette measured out 4 oz. of wine and poured it into her glass and I poured about 5 oz. Into my glass and Suzette then requested that I fill her glass to 5 oz. So she would have enough to enjoy it with her meal. Suzette fetched the bottle of homemade apricot chutney that we ate with the duck and vegetables to give it a zesty fruity flavor.

It was a delicious meal, after which we watched the episode of Somebody Feed Phil on Kyoto, Japan and, duly inspired, spent an hour planning the ten days of our trip in Japan after the tour ends.

We went to bed at 9:30 with a rough schedule.

Bon Appetit

July 27, 2025 Brunch - Caprese Omelette. Dinner - Sautéed Sea Scallops, snow peas, and cherry tomatoes with Cauliflower and Red Cabbage Couscous

July 27, 2025 Brunch - Caprese Omelette. Dinner - Sautéed Sea Scallops, snow peas, and cherry tomatoes with Cauliflower and Red Cabbage Couscous

We are trying to cook creative low calories dishes these days to lose some weight and feel better.

It is more difficult for me because I need a certain amount of carbohydrates and protein to feed my muscles, but I have been successful so far without snacks between meals.

Today I rested and we ate only two meals but also worked from 2:00 until 4:00 a.m. to begin to whip my pleading into shape

I woke up again at 6:30 and discovered that the final stage of the Tour started at 7:30.

I watched for a few minutes and when I saw that it was mainly celebratory until the peleton reached the center of Paris and the three loops around the Sacre Coeur Basilica and the length of the Champs Elysees.

So I switched back forth from the bike race and Fareed Zacharia from 8:00 to 9:00 and then ABC and CBS news from 9:00 to 10:00.

Around 9:00 I went to the garden and picked about three dozen basil leaves and we prepared a Caprese Omelette with Roma tomato slices, chopped basil, thin slices of red onion, and Mozzarella cheese l it was delicious and slightly stringy as we cut and pulled it up into pieces.  I toasted two small slices of baguette and spread them with butter and French four berry preserves.

After-brunch I sliced a baguette into cubes that Suzette then tossed with olive oil, lavender, and salt and roasted in the oven to made croutons.

At 10:00 I watched the EUFA women’s championship between England and Spain that England won on penalty kicks after 120 minutes of regular time.

After the bike race and brunch Suzette took 3/4 lb. of sea scallops out of the freezer for dinner and then went to Home Depot to buy lots of stuff for her new maintenance man’s projects.

After the EUFA championship I read and rested until 4:00 when we booked our flights to Japan and back in November and then at 5:00 we prepared dinner.

I went to the garden and picked about ten sprigs each of thyme and lavender that I then stripped of their leaves/flowers.

Suzette sliced about ten snow peas into long thin slices and halved about 8 cherry tomatoes and sautéed those ingredients plus the thyme with the scallops and reheated some of the PPI Red cabbage and cauliflower couscous for dinner.

I fetched a bottle of Faustino Ulicia Albariño from the garage and poured a dash of it into the scallops and vegetables and then poured glasses of it for dinner.

Scallops are exceedingly low in calories, as are cauliflower and red cabbage so dinner was well below the calorie limit for losing weight.

After dinner at 6:00 we watched Miss Fisher, then the historical evidence of Jack the Ripper, then Grantchester during which we shared a bowl of clafoutis and whipped cream.  At 9:00 Suzette went to bed and I watched Atlantic Crossing and at 10:00 I joined her and we researched the trip to Japan until 10:30 when she went to bed and I blogged.

Bon Appetit

July 26, 2025 Lunch - Salad Nicoise. Dinner - Stir fried Beef and Broccoli, cauliflower, onion, and bok Choy

July 26, 2025 Lunch - Salad Nicoise. Dinner - Stir fried Beef and Broccoli, cauliflower, onion, and bok Choy

I started watching Stage 20 of the Tour this morning at 6:30 when the race was almost 1/2 over.

This stage turned out to be a repeat of the stage several days ago when the Dutchman broke away from the lead group at about 25 km.s and road to the win without the peleton chasing him except today it was an Australian named Karden Groves.

I rode the stationary bike about a mile today during the race.

After the race we went to the garden and Suzette planted lettuce, chard, parsley and chives, while I picked lettuce.  We have four patches of lettuce this year and three of the four are still producing excellent lettuce. We put shade covers over several patches today to protect them from the sun and heat.

When we came in I ate a bowl of granola with milk, mango yogurt, blueberries, and cantaloupe at my desk as I caught up on mainly family business.

Then I spun the lettuce and bagged it and put it in the fridge to crisp up.

At 1:00 I fetched a can of tuna and Suzette made a salad Nicoise with blanched snow peas, boiled and cubed Yukon gold potatoes from our garden, cucumber from our garden, tomato, red onion, a can of tuna in water, and croutons. I added about ten Kalamata olives to my salad to complete the Nicoise formula.

We made and dressed the salad with a mayonnaise Dijonnaise dressing flavored with Oriental basil and thyme from our garden and an extra drizzle of Argentinian olive oil. We both agreed that it was a wonderful salad.

We drank glasses of Kirkland Pinot Grigio with the salad.

I then helped Suzette attach one of the colored windows to one of the frames she bought  and then worked on my RMD distribution until 2:30 when I lay down to read and nap.

Dinner - 

By 5:00 we were hungry again and we started dinner. I suggested using the leftover steak to make stir fried beef and broccoli with cauliflower, onion, bok Choy, garlic and ginger.

I chopped all the ingredients and made a seasoning sauce with soy, sesame oil, cooking wine, beef bouillon, cornstarch, and water.

I first stir fried the garlic and ginger in two T. of peanut oil. Then Suzette added the broccoli and cauliflower flowerets with about 1/2 cup of beef bouillon and then the white stalks of bok Choy. We covered the wok for 15 minutes to let the vegetables cook.

Then I added the cubed beef and the chopped green part of the bok Choy and after a few mote minutes of steaming I added the seasoning sauce.

The sauce thickened rather quickly into a rich creamy brown sauce.

I heated some PPI rice and we served our selves. Suzette took much less than I did and no rice.

I drank green tea and Suzette drank water and has already lost two pounds.

After dinner we watch several episodes of a show called By Food about Japanese Cuisine and foods until 8:00 when we watched Sister Boniface and Death in Paradise at 9:00 and went to bed at 10:00.

Bon Appetit