July 1, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate Lunch - East Ocean Dinner - Deconstructed Eggplant Parmesan and Spahetti

July 1, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate  Lunch - East Ocean  Dinner - Deconstructed Eggplant Parmesan and Spahetti

Today was interesting from both food and entrtainment.

I started the day at 8:00 helping Suzette in the back yard to get ready for the party on Thursday.

Then around 8:45 I ate a pain au Chocolate with a latte macchiato with collagen. I have been dissolving collagen in my breakfast beverage for about ten days and am beginning to notice that my skin seems to be thickening and is more resilient to cuts and bruises.

I worked at my desk until 10:00 when I watched England win its match.

Then Henry called and he and Rosie picked me up and drove us to East Ocean for lunch.  Rosie suggested we order the Family Dinner that includes soup, an appetizer plate with a fried shrimp, an egg roll, a fried won ton, and a plum paste filled sesame coated fried ball of dough.  Then we chose three entrees. I picked chicken with mixed vegetables, Henry chose Shrimp and vegetables, and Rosie chose Chicken with Lo Mein noodles. They were served with bowls of brown fried rice and white steamed rice. We ate the vegetable dishes first and had very little room for the Lo Mein Noodles. We were each also served a fried chicken wing. It was a massive amount of food and I tried to control myself and eat mostly vegetables, which were delicious in a light thickened chicken stock sauce.

They gave me all the leftover food and I thanked them and said, “Suzette will love it.”

Then they drove me by their family’s property on Rio Grande just north of I-40. They own an impressive .6 acre piece of dirt.

I returned home at 2:30 and checked the portfolio. The market was down and the tech sector with it.  After a 2.4% increase yesterday there was a predictable pull back today. Thankfully it was only .9%.

I lay down at 3:00 and napped until 4:30, when Suzette arrived. She ate some of the Lo Mein Noodles as a snack and the rest later for her dinner. So the leftover lunch was appreciated.

Suzette wanted to prepare the Lemon Tiramisu tonight, so after a cocktail and a bit of HGTV I cut slices of peel off a lemon and squeezed a cup of lemon juice from four or five lemons.  I then combined 2 1/4 cup of sugar in a pot with the peel and the lemon juice and Suzette heated it to make lemon syrup.

Willy came at 5:45 and helped set up the three umbrellas to shade the tables where guests will sit tomorrow evening. 

Then at 6:00 willy and I watched the U.S. v. Bosnia-Herzogovenia World Cup match while Suzette continued making the tiramisu. She whisked two lb. of marsacapone and then we folded in whipped cream.

Then she three layers of lady fingers,beach soaked with lemon syrup and brushed with lemon curd and coated with the marsacapone cream.

Suzette also brought home roses from the Center for the party.

She poured the rest of the syrup over the top of the top layer and covered the tiramisu with Saran and put it in the fridge.

After the U.S. won the match 2 to 0 with only 10 players for the last forty minutes.

Suzette prepared us bowls of the baked baby eggplants, with tomato and leek and burrata on spaghetti and I grated about 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese with which we garnished the heated bowl. I drank the rest of the Palazzo Della Torre with my meal.

The Deconstructed Eggplant Parmesan is a new dish that Suzette created to utilize the baby Italian eggplants we bought at Talin. It is a better rendition of the dish than the grilled or breaded and fried eggplant slices normally found in Eggplant Parmesan and has no bread crumbs., so it accentuates rather than hides the eggplant. 

Suzette ate the rest of the Lo Mein and drank Scott-Riley Oregon Pinot that Keith had brought to the party last Thursday.

We loved the eggplant dish, which was tastier tonight with the extra burrata.

Willy left at 9:00 and we watched Kimbrrley on PBS about the Wildlife in remote Northwest Australia and went to bed at 10:00.

Suzette to sleep and I to blog.

Bon Appetit

June 30, 2026 Breakfast - two Men on a raft, bacon, and sautéed onions Lunch - Salad. Dinner - Baked Deconstructed eggplant Parmesan and Spaghetti

June 30, 2026 Breakfast - two Men on a raft, bacon, and sautéed onions Lunch - Salad.   Dinner - Baked Deconstructed eggplant Parmesan and Spaghetti

I awakened at 7:20, in time to see the market open at 7:30. Soon it became apparent that this was a “risk on” day with a significant recovery in the tech sector.  Today my portfolio gained over 2.4%m which is a monster day for me.

Around 8:30 I fried two slices of bacon in a large skillet with some slices of onion and then added butter and toasted one side of two slices of whole wheat bread with a hole cut out of the middle. Then I turned the bread slices over and added butter to toast the other side and broke open two eggs w,ith the yolks falling into the holes.  After the bread was toasted I flipped the bread slices so the egg would fry and turned off the heat.  After a minute or two I lifted the men on a raft, the fried bacon, and onions onto a plate and ate them with a cup of chai. I love this combination of egg soaked buttered and toasted bread. The crisp bacon and sautéed onion were a nice addition.

Then I worked at my desk until 11:00 when the match Norway v. Ivory Coast World Cup match started. I was thrilled by the unity of the Norwegian fans and that Norway won 2 to 1 with a simple tap in by Haaland near the end of the match.

At 1:40 I prepared an elaborate salad with romaine lettuce, diced tomato, red onion, Gravad lax, egg, cucumber, and croutons. As I was preparing the salad Suzette arrived around 2:00 and handed me a hard boiled egg that I peeled and diced and added to the salad. I dressed the salad with the already prepared smoked oyster Cesar dressing.

I shared this massive salad with Suzette and it still took a while to eat.

At 3:00 I started watching the second World Cup match of rhe day between France and Sweden, and then at 3:30 meditated until 4:00 when I returned to watch France win easily 3 to 0.

At 4:45 my clients arrived and I closed their transaction by 5:30.

While I was in my office with my clients Suzette made lemon curd which we will use tomorrow to make lemon tiramisu.

At around 6:00 we discussed dinner. Suzette wanted to bake the small eggplants we had bought at Talin. Suzette decided to slice them whole and fan them and bake them with sliced lerk and tomato, but we  we bought at  only one tomato so I fetched a can of Kirkland diced tomatoes. We looked for mozzarella and only found the container of burrata.  Suzette went to the garden and gathered several sprigs of oregano that she placed on top of the fanned eggplants covered with tomato and leeks in a ceramic baking dish. She then baked the sliced eggplants for an hour and then added the burrata for the last few minutes to melt into the other ingredients and boiled a package of spaghetti. 

 

So the dish ended up being a deconstructed eggplant Parmesanthat was lovely combined with the spaghetti.

I opened a bottle of Italian 2020 Palazzo Della Torre red wine that we enjoyed with dinner.

Here are some notes on the wine.

Allegrini Palazzo della Torre is a renowned, full-bodied red wine from the Veneto region of Italy. Crafted by the esteemed Allegrini estate, it is a blend of Corvina, Rondinella, Corvinone, and a splash of Sangiovese. It is produced using an innovative ripasso (double-fermentation) method, offering a velvety texture, soft tannins, and rich notes of dark cherry, raisin, vanilla, and spice.

While the eggplants were baking we watched a re-run episode of Finding Your Roots the included Carol Burnett .

Then after dinner at 8:00 we watched the Mexico v. Ecuador World Cup match that was not very exciting because Ecuador could not compete at Mexico’s level of play, just like the earlier match when Sweden could not match France’s level of skill.

We went to bed at 9:30 after I drank another glass of wine and ate three squares of milk chocolate.

Bon Appetit

  

June 29, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate Lunch - Almond Croissant. Snack - Cheese Cake Dinner - Snails and Casarecce Pasta with herb pesto

June 29, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate  Lunch - Almond Croissant. Snack - Cheese Cake  Dinner - Snails and Casarecce Pasta with herb pesto 

What an odd day of food. I woke with vigor to ride and ate a pain au chocolate with a latte macchiato with collagen.  The I rode my new recumbent bike around the neighborhood. I was even able to pull myself out of the seat using Suzette’s car door handle and the increased strength in my legs.

Then I worked at my desk for a few minutes and then showered and dressed.

I paid a few bills and signed up for a water law seminar and then at 11:00 started watched the Brazil v. Japan. Japan scored first and Brazil equalized in the 56th minute and won with a last minute goal in the 95th minute to advance. During the match I heated and ate a Le Quiche almond croissant.

The next match between Germany and Paraguay was even more dramatic. Paraguay won on penalty kicks after a hard fought 120 minutes to claim one of the greatest and most unpredictable victories of this year’s World Cup.

At 3:00 I was hungry and ate the last piece of Susan’s cheese cake.

Then at 4:15 Suzette said she was hungry and we started preparing dinner. We went to the garden and picked parsley, sorrel, and basil for Suzette’s herb pesto. We drained the 30 snails and I made the snail butter while Suzette boiled Casarecce pasta and made the pesto with three herbs plus pinon nuts and Parmesan cheese in the blender.

We opened a bottle of Kirkland New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that was lovely with the snails and Suzette toasted four round slices of baguette for dipping in the snail butter.

I followed Julia Child’s Snail butter recipe on page 103 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, combining 2 T. of shallot with three cloves of garlic mashed, two T. of minced parsley, 1/2 cup of butter abd salt and pepper.

I sautéed the ingredients without the salt and pepper in a skillet and added 10 T. of butter to make a warm sauce instead of the recipe for a compound butter.  We also tossed the snails in the sauce and served them in snail pans and served the pasta in a separate plate. But in practice we ate the snails with the pasta with bread dipped in the garlicky butter and parsley sauce

It was a fabulous dinner even tough I had eaten my dessert an hour earlier.

After dinner Willy, Max, and Suzette moved furniture from his old apartment at 524 Romero to his new apartment and back to our house.

I was stuffed and tired, so I lay in bed to blog this entry and watch Morocco against The Netherlands in World Cup competition.

Bon Appetit

June 28, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate. Snack - Almond Croissant. Lunch - Duck Salad Dinner - BLT Sandwiches

June 28, 2026 Breakfast - Pain au Chocolate. Snack - Almond Croissant. Lunch - Duck Salad  Dinner - BLT Sandwiches

We mostly rested today and prepared two pleasant meals.

I ate herring sandwiches with a cup of chai with collagen around 8:

Then we went to the garden and picked lettuce that Suzette freshened in a bowl of ice water. 

Then at 10:30 I lay down for a nap until Melissa came to see us at 11:00.  I ate a Le Quiche almond croissant with chai. Suzette and Melissa ate regular croissants with Bloody Marys.

Then after Melissa left, Suzette and I drove to Talin where we bought Bomba rice and a can of green pigeon peas for the paella.

We also bought Yu Choy, Rice Vermicelli noodles, shallots, brown beech mushrooms, and a package of small Spanish eggplants.

We then drove to Total Wine where we bought scotch, white vermouth, a bd a bottle of Guy Mousset Red Côtes du Rhône for a nickel for my birthday plus 12 packs of Negra, Modelo and Bohemia beer, a bottle of gin and a bottle of vodka.

When we returned home at 2:30 we made a duck salad thar was the best meal of the day. I deboned the remaining meat and skin from the pieces of duck left from our Friday lunch at East Ocean and Suzette baked the meat and skin in the oven. I diced a tomato and peeled, seeded, and diced 1/3 cucumber and put the diced pieces in a bowl. Suzette spun and added the lettuce and hard boiled five eggs and added egg slices and croutons to the salad and made a honey mustard dressing. We drank the last of the new bottle of Bandol rose we bought at Costco.

After a lovely lunch I rested and watched Canada beat South Africa in the first match of the knock out round of 32.

Then at 5:30 we decided to make BLT Sandwiches for dinner after we watched Miss Fisher. At 7:00 we fried four slices of the new thick bacon. I sliced four slices from the new loaf of whole-wheat bread and toasted them and Suzette spread them with mayonnaise.

I then sliced tomato slices and Suzette went to the garden and picked some fresh lettuce.

When the bacon was fried to brown and crisp we assembled our sandwiches and Suzette poured a Negra Modelo into two mugs that we shared.

We loved dinner.

After dinner we watched Patience, which is a British Copy of Astrid.

Then we watched Grantchester and then at 10:00 an episode of the real Astrid with two chocolates and a cognac.

At 11:00 I went to bed happy after two delicious meals.

Bon Appetit