August 24, 2026 Breakfast - Bagel with Jarlsberg and cream cheese Lunch - Salad with cheese toasts. Dinner - Salmon in garlic cream sauce with chard over rice

August 24, 2026 Breakfast - Bagel with Jarlsberg and cream cheese Lunch - Salad with cheese toasts. Dinner - Salmon in garlic cream sauce with chard over rice

We had one of my favorite dinners today, poached salmon in a garlic cream sauce with chard over rice.

I woke up at 7:30 as the market opened with the NASDAQ down. I was busy all day and did not look at it except to see that Nvidia ended down $6.24 and AMD ended down $16.50.

At 8:00 I toasted a bagel, spread it with cream cheese and cherry preserves and garnished it with slices of Jarlsberg cheese and heated the slices for 22 seconds in the microwave to melt the cheeses a little.

I drank a cup of chai with collagen with it.

Then I rode around the neighborhood a little farther than before.

When I returned I thawed two pieces of salmon for dinner and spent the rest of the morning moving mine to pay my capital call and taxes and bills. 

I finished my desk work around 12:30 and made a lovely salad with 1/2 head of artisanal lettuce, 1/2 of a tomato diced, 1/3 of a cucumber  peeled, seeded, and diced, some red onion, and about ten Kalamata olives. I made a simple balsamic, olive oil, garlic, and lemon thyme dressing. I also toasted three slices of baguette and spread  them with the last of the brie and some goat cheese.

I drank water.

Then I returned to my desk and prepared a Notice of completion of briefing for my eater case and called the court clerk to clarify my Friday filing and then the notice filing and wrote a letter to my clients.

They started a Status Report in my appeal but got tired when Suzette came home at 4:00 and lay down and rested until 5:00 when I cooked a cup of rice.

Suzette wanted to poach the salmon, so I asked her to make a garlic cream sauce with a Bechamel instead of using only cream and she agreed. Poached fish in a garlic cream sauce is one of my favorite dishes, especially the way Suzette makes the sauce with fish fume, cream and white wine.

I minced a shallot and two cloves of garlic and Suzette sautéed them with dried lemon thyme and butter and then added the fish, water and white wine to make poaching medium. 

When the fish was poached she mixed flour with some of the poaching medium and then added some of the flour and poaching medium mixture until the poaching medium thickened into a cream sauce. As the cream sauce continued to thicken she added 2 T. of cream and a dash of white wine.

While Suzette cooked the fish dish I destemmed and chopped the last three cups of mixed chards Suzette brought from the Center’s garden and we added it to the sauce and cooked it in the sauce for several more minutes with chunks of poached salmon to make a lovel medley of fish and greens in a garlic cream sauce.

We opened the bottle of bottle of 2023 Chemin de Mazou Pouilly Fume white wine that I had chilled in the fridge. I think it was a birthday gift because I do not remember buying it, especially since it is a $21 to $22 bottle. It was fabulous and made the dinner even more special in a very French way. It was fruity and had an exuberance of flavor that I rarely taste in Sauvignon Blancs.

Here are some tasting notes for 

Appellation: Pouilly Fumé

Region: Loire Valley

Grape Variety: 100% Sauvignon Blanc

Soil Type: Clayey-siliceous

Winemaking: Mechanical harvesting, pneumatic pressing, vinification in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats at 15-16°C.

Tasting Notes: Pale gold color with ripe yellow fruit notes, citrus, white flowers, and exotic fruits. Rich and complex palate with a fresh mineral note.

Food Pairing: Seafood, stuffed tomatoes, fish in sauce, crotin de Chavignol cheese.

It was perfect with our fish in sauce meal.

After dinner Willy left and we watched the Antique Roadshow.

Suzette mentioned that there was one strawberry eclair left and we decided to eat it with the last of the amazing Reif Estate 2021 Vidal Icewine. I guess I had a citrus overtone feeling leftover from the Pouilly Fume.

We loved our dessert course with the elegant dessert wine.

I also ate some chocolate ice cream with rum for an extra dessert.

We both went to sleep during the second hour of Roadshow, and went to bed at 9:00.

I love fish in garlic cream sauce and find it especially interesting because it is the easiest sauce to make if you cook it long enough to cook the flour because you use the cooking medium as the base and simply add flour to make paste and then dissolve that into the medium.

This is similar to Julia’s Scallops Provencal dish in which you sauté scallops dusted with flow and then add wine and fish stock to emulsify the cooked flour into a sauce. Both are recipes that utilize shortcuts to a cream sauce.

Willy came by around 7:15 and heated up the rest of the dish and drank about 1/2 glass of wine, so he was able to enjoy this special dinner also.

We are into our last week before we leave for France and are not buying any more food, but that just means we are mining our frozen food for ingredients as we need them, not that we are cooking less elegant meals.

Bon Appetit