March 12, 2017 Brunch with Cynthia and Ricardo, Crab Soufflé with garden salad. Dinner – PPI Lamb Stew

March 12, 2017 Brunch with Cynthia and Ricardo, Crab Soufflé with garden salad. Dinner – PPI Lamb Stew

We invited Cynthia and Ricardo for Sunday Brunch and bocce. They arrived at 11:00 with special garlic and basil crackers from NY, bread slices and a cheese spread.  I opened a bag of marinated olives from Trader Joe’s and Ricardo made mimosas.

Crab Soufflé
 After a good game of bocce we retired to the kitchen and Suzette made a double recipe of crab soufflé.  I had thawed out the 1 lb. plastic container of lump crab meat I had bought at Sprouts several months ago for $10.99 yesterday.  She started by separating the whites from the yolks of  six eggs.  I then whipped the whites into stiff peaks while Suzette made a béchamel sauce with 4T. of butter and flour and I am not sure how much milk. I am not sure what recipe she used but there are a number of simple soufflé recipes on the internet. She took the béchamel sauce off the heat and after it cooled a bit Suzette added the 6 egg yolks and stirred them in.  She then folded in 12 oz. of crab meat.  Then she folded that mixture into the whipped egg whites with a large spatula. She then poured the mic tire into a buttered soufflé dish sufficiently large to hold the entire mixture, which nearly filled the dish.  I mentioned collaring the soufflé dish but Suzette rejected that idea.  She then placed the pan on the second level and cooked the soufflé in the new steam oven for 29 minutes. We sipped mimosas as we watched the soufflé rise a bit but not overflow the dish and then settle a bit as it stiffened as it cooked.  I was amazed that it did not overflow.

I made my favorite Cesar salad with fresh greens from the garden.  Suzette made fresh  croutons from some old Fano baguette by curbing them and the shaking them in a one gallon plastic freezer bag with salt, pepper, olive oil, and herbs and then baking them on a baking sheet in the oven with top and bottom heat.  I diced ½ cucumber, two Roma tomatoes, three or four oz. of red onion and shaved several oz. of Pecorino Romano cheese onto the salad.  We steamed about fifteen stalks of asparagus that I diced and put into the salad also. I revived the Cesar salad dressing with the juice of 1/3 lemon and about twice that amount of Sprouts Spanish olive oil.  Finally I rinsed off six or seven Roland salted Spanish anchovies from the 24 oz. can we bought at the Southwest wholesale food market located near Costco in the Renaissance Center across from the Smart car dealership.

Cynthia and Ricardo brought a quart jar full of fresh squeezed orange juice and a bottle of Cupcake Prosecco.  I opened a bottle of Jaume Serra Cristalino Extra dry (Total Wine $7.99 less 20%).  We drank a bottle of Lagranja Cava Brut with a 70% xarel-lo and 30% paradellada blend of grapes.  Both were Cavas from Catalan and both were made in the Traditional Method.  We plated our plates with crab Souffle and Cesar salad and grabbed our flutes of Cava and went to the gazebo in the garden for a warm sunny afternoon brunch.

Ricardo had a rehearsal at 2:00 so we said  goodbyes at 1:45.

We napped until 4:30.

We were not hungry, so we decided to eat the PPI lamb stew with PPI mashed potatoes.  This made an instant meal that we ate with a Tuella Portuguese red from the Duero/Douro.  A nice hot meal.

Bon Appetit

March 11, 2017 Lunch – Ming Dynasty. Dinner – House Party at Beth and Glen’s

March 11, 2017 Lunch – Ming Dynasty. Dinner – House Party at Beth and Glen’s

We worked in the yard until Ioana came and we worked on our Romanian wine project until 12:30.

I suggested that we go to Ming Dynasty for Dim sun.  We ate roasted pork with jalapeño slices, steamed BBQ pork filled buns, deep fried qual, tofu stuffed with shrimp paste and eggplant deep  fried stuffed with eggplant plus tea.  It was her first time at Ming Dynasty and she loved it.

After lunch I drove to Trader Joe’s and bought eight artichokes and four bottles of wine.

We did not  cook. Instead I made a cheese board with an artisanal blue cheese that Jeff and Athens gave us for Christmas, plus goat cheese. Irish Cheddar, Iberico, and camembert, with Carr’s water biscuits.  I took a bottle of Cherry Blossom Pinot Noir I had bought at Trader Joe’s for $4.99 that afternoon.
A husband and wife duo named Gleewood played music all evening.  We left at 9:30 to 10:00 and stayed up until SNL for a change.

Bon Appetit

March 9, 2017. Lunch – PPI Pho Miso Noodle Soup, Dinner – Garlic Eggplant with Pork, water chestnuts and Savoy cabbage and rice

March 9, 2017. Lunch – PPI Pho Miso Noodle Soup,  Dinner – Garlic Eggplant with Pork, water chestnuts and Savoy cabbage and rice

I made a lovely Pho noodle Miso soup on Wednesday with about ½ lb. of PPI grilled rib steak, ½ cup of diced green beans, 4 oz. of tofu, a diced shallot, and a handful of spinach, plus ¼ of a tomato.  I flavored the broth with a cube of Pho seasoning, a large T. of red Miso, and the two steak bones.  The soup was very flavorful and full of protein.

For dinner I wanted to cook one of the eggplants, so I suggested Suzette make her favorite dish, Garlic Eggplant, won which I added a diced pork cutlet, a 5 oz. of sliced water chestnuts, and 2 cups of diced Savoy cabbage.  We heated some PPI rice and served the dark spicy filling dish over rice.  Here is the recipe.

Bon Appetit

March 4, 2017. Breakfast - Banana Bread, Lunch - Lamb Pot Pie, Dinner - Crawfish Etoufee with eggplant

March 4, 2017. Breakfast – Banana Bread,  Lunch – PPI Lamb Pot Pie,  Dinner – Crawfish Etoufee

We discussed whether to make banana pancakes or banana bread this morning.  We decided to make banana bread for breakfast with the bunch of blackened bananas.  Sometimes I think I buy bananas to let them darken so they will be the perfect ingredient for banana bread.

We watered the garden while the banana bread was baking. When it finished baking we cut thick slices of it and smeared Irish butter on them.  I also dabbed the buttered warm bread with lemon curd.

Suzette drank coffee and I drank hot French tea with mine.

Suzette went shopping at Lowe’s and I drafted an agreement until 1:30, when we decided to eat the rest of the Lamb Pot Pie made for Suzette by Chef Kelly at the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery at Suzette’s Center for Ageless Living.

We heated the lamb pot pie, fetched Belgium beers and jellied cranberry sauce from the fridge and ate our first meal of the year at the table in the gazebo in the garden.

 After lunch Suzette painted the cabinet doors in the garage and I worked with Roland to install the new HP printer I bought.

When we finished the installation a little before 5:00 I addressed dinner issues.


I wanted something other than lamb stew for dinner and decided on Crawfish etouffee because we had all the ingredients except a bell pepper, so I took the pound of crawfish I had bought at Nantucket Shoals ($17.95?) out of the freezer and then drove to El Super where I bought a lovely big, ripe red bell pepper for $.89, plus more Lala mango yogurt on sale for $2.50 for 32 oz. and a pound of 31-40 count shrimp for $5.79/lb.

When I returned home Suzette had awaken from a short nap and we began cooking.

We use Paul Prudhomme’ Louisiana Kitchen Cookbook recipe foe Crawfish Ettoufe.  Here it is.

The recipe is easy the way we have adjusted it. Instead of ¼ cup of each vegetable, I just dice 1 cup each of bell pepper, onion, and celery, which are then cooked in a golden brown roux made with canola oil and flour and added to a pot in which the crawfish and 1 cup of thinly sliced green onions are cooked in stock.  Today we had lobster broth from the lobster tail and shells from our meal last Saturday at Chez Mamou.  Today we decided to cook about 1 ½ cups of peeled and diced eggplant with the crawfish, green onions, and stock, which made the cooking time about 40 minutes longer to allow the eggplant to soften, but made the dish infinitely more delicious. I have bought 4 eggplants in the last week at Sprouts because they are on special for $.50 each.

Even slightly undercooked, the eggplant added a wonderful additional dimension to the dish and solidified its vegetable components into a symphony of flavor.  We loved it.  We let the dish continue to cook and in about thirty minutes after we had eaten our first helping piled over reheated PPI basmati rice with a Belgium beer, it tasted even better because the eggplant had released some of its juices into the dish, which made the etoufee smoother and creamier.  This is a dish that only gets better as it sits, although you may need to revive it with a little chicken or fish stock when you reheat it.

After dinner we watched a movie called Joy about a woman who is gifted with creative genius for inventing and selling inventions of others on QVC who perseveres in the face of opposition by a dysfunctional family to make success in her life.  It may be a real story of Joy Magano, the person who created HSN.  The all star cast was superb.  Jennifer Lawrence played the lead, for which she won the Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy/musical for 2016, and the cast included Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro, Isabella Rossellini, and Virginia Madsen.

Suzette opened the 1 lb. box of Enstrom almond toffee that Mary Lou Dobbs sent me for helping her with a business matter. I wonder how Mary Lou knew that almond toffee was one of my favorite candies.

We stayed up for SNL and finally went to bed at midnight after a wonderful day of food and activity around the house.  If the new normal is to stay at home I am ready for it.

Bon Appetit

March 7, 2017 Lunch - Da Lat. Dinner - Sautéed Brats with whipped potatoes, Sauerkraut, and sautéed Onios and Chard

March 7, 2017 Lunch –Da Lat.  Dinner – Sautéed Brats and Sauerkraut with sautéed onion and Chard

Today I met Terry at Da Lat for mussels.  About a dozen mussels are sautéed in either a tamarind sauce, which Terry ordered, or a ginger sauce, which I ordered.  The dish is served with a side of rice garnished with a few pieces of julienned fresh carrot and daikon and three slices of cucumber with decoratively scored skin.   Enjoyed the plump green lip mussels, although today they seemed not as succulent as last time.

I called a Suzette and she recommended brats, so at 5:30 I began peeling potatoes.  Weren't they were it on to boil, I went to the garden and plucked a basket full of chard, a few sage leaves and a stalk of garlic.

I sliced 1 ½ large onions and sautéed them over low heat until they softened.  Then I added the garlic, sage and chard and covered the large skillet with a wok cover and let the mixture sweat to cook the chard.  While I was doing this Suzette made whipped potatoes I the Kitchen Aid by adding butter and heavy cream to the boiled potatoes.

She then sautéed 6 brats in a large skillet and added 1 lb. of Sauerkraut bought at Sprouts.

Willy arrived a little before 8:00 just as we were finishing cooking and joined us for dinner.  I drank La Ferme Julien rose’ from Provence, Suzette drank a beer, and Willy drank water.  We all agreed, it was a great dinner.

I really liked the new dish I created;  the combination of slowly sautéed onion to which was added a pile of bite sized pieces of chard, a chopped stalk of young garlic greens, and about ten sliced sage leaves.  I sweated the greens after adding them, which allowed the ingredients to combine without forcing them to collapse in oil, thus retaining some of their freshness.

Bon Appetit

March 2, 2017 Lunch - Taj Mahal. Dinner - Lamb Pot Pie and blanched string beans

March 2, 2017  Lunch – Taj Mahal,  Dinner – Lamb Pot Pie from Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery

Yesterday I ate PPI shrimp Scampi and spaghetti with pesto that we made February 27, 2017 for lunch and dinner and meditated in the evening.

The last few days I have eaten mango yogurt, granola, diced cantaloupe, milk, and mango for breakfast.  Today Mike Verhagen contacted me and we went to lunch at Taj Mahal.  Shamiz greeted us and we compared notes.  He told us his son liked New York and was accepted at Hofstra on Long Island.  We are all getting older.  I congratulated him.

I enjoyed lunch, especially the saag paneer and tandoori chicken.

Mike told me about his trip to Marrakech with Kathryn and that he was issued a global tourist pass by the U.S.  After lunch he was kind enough to send me the link to the website to apply.

I worked until 5:30, while drinking cups of chai.  We had decided this morning to eat the lamb pot pie given to Suzette by the kitchen staff at the Greenhouse Bistro.  We cut it in half and heated it in the microwave and I de-stemmed a handful of string beans I bought at Sprouts on Wednesday along with two more bunches of fresh asparagus that are $.98/lb. this week and four North Atlantic 4 to 5 oz. lobster tails that are on sale for $4.99 each this week, which we also froze along with the six brats we had thawed.

I cooked the string beans in a Pyrex pie dish with a little water and a squeeze of sweet lime for about three minutes to cook them and fetched the two open bottles of red wine, ½ bottle of Famille Perrin Reserve Cotes Du Rhone and ¼ bottle of Recas red wine.

We ate an early dinner and then watched an hour documentary on U.S. Congressman John Lewis, who was a civil rights activist in the 50’s and 60’s with Martin Luther King, Jr. and president of Student Negro Nonviolence Committee.  He is a real American hero.

Bon Appetit

February 28, 2017 Lunch – Que Huong. Dinner –Lamb Stew and Corn bread

February 28, 2017 Lunch – Que Huong. Dinner –Lamb Stew and Corn bread

Aaron came by and we went to his favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Que Houng at the corner of Louisiana and Central.because he wanted a grilled chicken dish.  He ordered grilled chicken in a bowl of bun, but only ate the chicken.  I ordered my usual winter dish, a bowl of pho with slices of meatball and raw beef.  I now like my Vietnamese/Miso soup that I make at home better.  One less reason to go out to lunch for Vietnamese food.

Last night I had diced two onions, four carrots, and five medium russet potatoes and Suzette had put them in the crock pot and covered them with water.  This morning I butchered the 2.5 lb. of lamb meat I bought at El Super and put the bones into the crock pot.  I then sautéed the diced meat in 2 T. of canola oil with six or seven cloves of garlic and then added that to the crockpot.  At 4:00 I diced three or four stalks of celery, five or six mushrooms and an eggplant and added those ingredients to the crockpot plus a bottle of Guinness beer Willy had brought last night.

After Suzette came home we decided to make cornbread to eat with the stew.  We found the Betty Crocker recipe and baked it in a Pyrex 9x9 inch baking dish.

I removed the lamb bones to make room for the celery, mushrooms and eggplant and went to the garden and picked a handful of fresh oregano and chopped it and added the approximately1/3 cup to the stew.

By 7:00 everything was ready and we ate stew with warm cornbread slathered with Irish butter and dabbed with honey.  Willy came by at 8:00 and ate some stew and cornbread and we watched the President and the Democratic response and a bunch of commentary on their speeches.

Bon Appetit