March 6, 2021 Lunch - Charcuterie, bread, and brie at Rainbow Point, Bryce Canyon, Dinner - Bison Stew with a Cheddar Biscuit

 March 6, 2021 Lunch - Charcuterie, bread, and brie at Rainbow Point, Bryce Canyon, Dinner - Bison Stew with a Cheddar Biscuit 

We had a wonderful day of sightseeing at Bryce Canyon today.  We slept in and began planning our next trip back East until 10:00.  We will be in the camper, so we looked for wineries and dark sky locations to stay. We ate fruit salad in the room for breakfast and I ate a chocolate chip cookie with several cups of English Breakfast tea.

We drove to sunrise point and the General Store, where I bought a container of Yoplait yogurt.

Then we went to the Visitors Center where we bought a star map, toured the geology exhibit, and asked the ranger at the information desk how to identify bristle cone pine trees.  It was almost 11:00 when we left to drive to the end of the road in the park to Rainbow Point and the trailhead for the bristle cone pine trail.  We decided to eat lunch first.  We found a sunny table in the middle of snow drifts and took our food,beverages, and picnic basket to the table.  Unfortunately I had to sit in muddy melting snow, so my shoes took on a layer of red mud about 1/2 inch deep.  

But lunch was fabulous. I sliced wedges of perfectly aged brie cheese, Suzette opened the Italian Antipasto and the pasta salad with grapes and broccoli and I opened the hummus.

Suzette then opened and poured us glasses of Gruet Blanc de Noir champagne.

The sun was warmish when the wind did not blow.  Unfortunately the wind was gusting to about 20 mph at times.  

After lunch we started to walk the bristle cone pine trail but had to turn back because of the drifts of snow and ice covering the trail caused Suzette to slip and fall.

I thought the chief goal of the trip, to see a bristle cone pine, was frustrated until we saw one as we drove off the point.  We turned around and went back to snap a picture.  Bravo, another bucket list item satisfied.

We stopped at several view spots on the way back Bryce and Natural bridge were the best.  Here are photos of the view from them.

When we returned to the hotel we napped until almost 5:00.

At 5:30 we dressed and walked to Sunset point, which is about 1/2 mile from the Lodge.  The afternoon was cloudy so we only saw a partial illumination of the vast areas of hoodoos, but even that was spectacular.  The good news was that I felt better when we returned to the Lodge at 6:45 than when we left.

We stopped get some butter and I buttered a whole wheat roll and the cheddar biscuit Suzette heated the bison stew we bought last night for dinner and the cheddar biscuit  and roll while I poured glasses of Block Patch Pinot Noir.  The wine was a short lived experiment to produce a decent inexpensive French Pinot by DuBouef.  The wine was sold in magnums like French supermarket stores.  It is perfect for this trip because, we have drunk it for two nights and still have 1/2 left.  After we finished the stew we ate several Kirkland chocolate covered almonds that tasted really good with the last sips of Pinot Noir.

The light walking in clean air is making me feel better.  I am ready to return to Bryce for the clean air, wonderful scenery, and amazing dark night skies.

I discovered at the visitors center today that when the NPS wanted to initiate an astronomical program in 1969 they chose Bryce Canyon.

At 8:15 we went out again to watch the dark skies.  This time we turned right toward the park entrance and found a pull out very near the entrance to the Lodge.  Unfortunately several cars passed us and they prevented our eyes from fully adjusting to the dark and it may have been more overcast than last night, so we did not see as much, but we did identify the constellation, Leo.

After about fifteen minutes we returned to the Lodge.  The desk clerk added two logs to the fire going in the hearth in the Lodge Lobby so we warmed ourselves by the fire for several minutes and then retired to our room for the night.  I showered and blogged a bit, while Suzette slept.

Bon Appetit

 March 5, 2021 Lunch- Chicken Salad Sandwich at Lake Powell. Dinner - Grilled Ruby Trout with Rice and Kale at the Lodge at Bryce Canyon 

We awakened at 5:30 this morning to get ready to leave for Bryce Canyon because it was an 8 1/2 hour drive.  We drove west on I - 40 to Gallup and turned north and wound our way through the Navajo Nation through Ganado, Chinle, and Kayenta to Page, Arizona. At Page we turned north and drove past Zion to Bryce Canyon.

We packed up our charcuterie, chicken salad, marinated asparagus, fruit salad, hummus, pasta salad, beers, wine, brie,      Dubliner and pita chips.  We try to be self-reliant when it comes to food, especially when so many restaurants have closed during the pandemic.

I made three bagel sandwiches with cream cheese, Gravad lax, and a slice of sweet onion.

We ate the bagel vsandwiches as we drove to Page.

When we arrived at Page we drove across the high bridge that crosses the Colorado River above the deep gorge at  Glen Canyon that has been filled with the Glen Canyon Dam to create Lake Powell. We stopped at the visitors Center that was closed to look at Glen Canyon Dam, which was larger than I though it would be at least 150 dizzying feet down to the floor of Glen Canyon.   It was nearly 2:00 so after we looked at the dam we returned to our route and drove north along the west side of the lake looking for a place to eat lunch.  Soon we saw a high vista point overlooking Lake Powell and the dam slightly up stream from the dam.  We drove to the top

 of the hill to the end of the parking lot where there was an awning and two concrete benches with a fabulous view of the lake and the dam.

We carried and placed our picnic basket, ice chest, and bag of dry food on one of the benches and sat and ate chicken salad, hummus, marinated asparagus with Gruner Vitliner.  The panoramic vista was spectacular.

After lunch we drove straight to the Lodge at Bryce Canyon National Park.  We drove in just before sunset when the red rocks were ablaze with golden light.  

Apparently we arrived on the re-opening day of the Lodge and everything was somewhat chaotic, but the good news was that there were very few tourists, so we were able to change our reservation from one of the newer motel style outlying lodges to a newly remodeled suite in the Lodge dating from 1925.

The suite was furnished with the vintage furniture from 1925.

After we checked in we looked at the menu of the restaurant that had just opened today also and decided to order the bison stew with a cheddar cheese muffin and the grilled rainbow trout with rice mixed with kale and carrots to be picked up at 7:30 we went up to the room and rested for a while and then went down to pick up our food.  Since the restaurant was not serving wine, we decided to eat dinner in the room with a glass of wine.

The trout was lovely, breaded lightly with cornmeal and sautéed in butter.  I liked the risotto rice with chopped kale.  Suzette did not eat much but did cut up the cottage fried potato slices and added them to the stew.

Here are photos.

Both portions were large, so we decided to eat the trout and save the stew for tomorrow evening’s dinner.

I poured a glass of Gruner Vitliner for me and a Pinot Noir for Suzette.

We were full.  At 9:00 we decided to go star gaze so we drove up the road to a pull out where we could see a large swatch of the night sky.  I have to admit that this was the best night sky I have ever seen.  It was a clear sky with no moon light.  We could see the Milky Way very clearly and identified two or three constellations.

After about fifteen minutes we had seen enough, so went back to the Lodge and bed.

Today we drove 8 1/2 hours and covered a lot of ground, but had an abundance of sights and food to keep us excited.

Bon Appetit

March 4, 2021 Lunch - Liverwurst Sandwich and PPI Salad. Dinner - Fried Rice with Broccoli, green bell pepper, chicken, onion, and mushrooms

March 4, 2021 Lunch - Liverwurst Sandwich and PPI Salad. Dinner - Fried Rice with Broccoli, green bell pepper, chicken, onion, and mushrooms

I was busy so did not have time to the horror besetting me and my heirs in the market .  This has ceased to be a K shaped recovery for me.  By the end of the day my portfolio was down an aggregate of 10% in the last week.

Trying to be zen like about it, I went about my business. I corresponded with Doctor Henry Gates Jr. today regarding crypto Jews among the Hispanics of New Mexico, which was a thrill.  Here is the correspondence:

I ate my usual breakfast of granola with fruit salad, milk, and yogurt.

Then I drafted a very complex purchase agreement that took me until almost 3:00. 

I was hungry but am trying to lose weight so I ate the bowl of PPI salad from two nights ago’s dinner with a Liverwurst sandwich I made on a piece of German fullkorns bread.

I then drove to the bank to deposit a check and then to Pastian’s Bakery and bought a bag of whole rolls and a loaf of whole wheat bread.

I returned home at 4:30 and meditated at 5:00.

I actually worked again until after 6:00 when Suzette arrived.  Since we had both eaten late lunches, we decided to make the chicken salad first.  I chopped thawed basil, 1/3 onion, a Granny Smith apple, two green onions, a peeled and seeded cucumber, and finally peeled and sectioned the pomelo.  Because we are throwing in lots of unusual ingredients, this will be like no other chicken salad we have ever made. And Suzette took the fact that we had added citrus to salad when she made the dressing for the chicken salad.  She combined Mayonnaise, honey, and yogurt to create a dressing more suitable for citrus, than the her typical with white wine vinegar.

Stir Fried Rice with Chicken, bell pepper, broccoli, and onion

After we finished the chicken salad around 7:30, we turned our attention to dinner. 

There were lots of loose cloves of garlic and we had just bought a fresh ginger root, so I minced about eight garlic cloves and about a half dollar sized piece of ginger because there was at least two cups each of sushi rice and cubed chicken white meat.  There were also two heads of broccoli and 1/2 of a green bell pepper. I deflowered a bit more than 1 head of broccoli and 1/2 of the bell pepper half plus 1/3 of a yellow onion.

I mentioned mushrooms and Suzette brought me the four remaining white mushrooms, which I diced into 1/2 inch cubes.  

The way I cook Chinese stir fry is to segregate ingredients by hardness and cooking time and I always make a thickening seasoning sauce to add at the end.  Since we were expecting Willy to arrive at 8:00 and we were working together to get ready for our trip Suzette helped with the cooking by fetching bowls and ingredients as I sat and chopped.

The first bowl I filled included the onion and minced ginger and garlic.

The second bowl I filled with broccoli flowerets and diced green bell pepper. In a third bowl I placed the diced mushrooms and Suzette filled a fourth bowl with the two cups of diced chicken.  I fetched the sesame oil, soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, rice vinegar, oyster sauce, and peanut oil.

Since Willy was coming I tried to replicate the fried rice dish prepared at Samurai Restaurant for his birthday parties. I heated about 2 T. of peanut oil in the wok and added the bowl of onion strips, garlic and ginger to flavor the oil. Then after a minute I added the bowl of broccoli and bell pepper chunks.  

After another couple of minutes I added the two cups of sushi rice plus about 1 T. of soy and 2 T. of Chinese cooking wine and a dash or four of sesame oil  which is the method utilized at Samurai, probably because it keeps the rice from sticking and creates some moisture in which the rice can break down into individual grains more easily. I chopped the large bunches of rice and mixed them with the liquid and we covered the wok with the wok lid to allow the broccoli and bell pepper to steam for a couple of minutes. Then we added the bowl of chicken and Suzette prompted me to slice the larger broccoli flowerets in half, which I did.  This allowed them to cook more quickly and created a more attractive dish. 

I covered the wok and we made the seasoning sauce with 1 heaping T. of cornstarch, five or six dashes of sesame oil, 1/2 tsp. of salt, 1 tsp. of sugar, three T. of Cooking wine, 1 T. of oyster sauce, 1 1/2 tsp. of rice vinegar, 1 T. of soy sauce plus 1/4 cup of water.

Suzette said, “What about the mushrooms?” 

So I then uncovered the wok and we added the mushrooms and another 2 T. of cooking wine and stirred them in to cook.  The texture of the ingredients was very dense because of the gluten in the sushi rice, so I added a bit more water to the seasoning sauce and added the sauce to the wok and covered the wok to let the sauce heat and thicken. 

Willy arrived during the cooking process and set up his dining table near the TV and fetched three pasta bowl.  Suzette fetched chop sticks and I filled and started the tea kettle.

I the uncovered the wok.  The sauce had not coagulated but had been absorbed into the rice.  We had to make a decision whether to try to add more liquid and try to make it a saucier dish or to leave it the thick glutenous mass that it was.  I decided to serve it as it stood without much if any sauce. I scooped large spoonfuls of the finished fried rice into each bowl.  The ugly pile of coagulated fried rice was delicious, saturated with the flavors of the sauce that the kernels of rice had absorbed and had emulsified the other ingredients into a mass in which each of their flavors expressed themselves but also hung together as a unified dish. I judged the dish to be a success. It tasted delicious even if it’s muddy brown color was a little off putting.

After dinner around 9:00 I chopped the last 1/2 bunch of Italian parsley and put about 1/4 cup of it into the plastic container Suzette had filled with the creamy hummus we had made for Willy and then Suzette put together a bag filled with pasta salad, chocolate cookies, and fruit salad for him to take home.

I put the remaining 1/2 cup of chopped parsley into another container Suzette had filled with the rest of the hummus for our trip.

We now had completed our food prep for the trip, having made tropical fruit salad, chocolate chip cookies, hummus, pasta salad and chicken salad.

Suzette backed a large bag with the whole wheat rolls and loaf of sandwich bread I bought at Pastians Bakery today.  We will fill the cooler with the salads and ice in the morning before we leave.

We got ready for bed and packed our suitcases and were in bed by 10:15.

I awakened at 3:00 a.m. to finish the blog and pick the bottles of wine for the trip.

Bon Appetit 

March 3, 2021 Lunch - Texas Chili and Pasta Casserole Dinner - Stir Fried Couscous and Chicken on a bed of baby arugula

March 3, 2021 Lunch - Texas Chili and Pasta Casserole  Dinner - Stir Fried Couscous and Chicken on a bed of baby arugula 

We will leave town soon, so we are trying to get rid of PPIs, which is beginning to create some unusual combinations of ingredients.

Breakfast was straightforward, tropical fruit salad, granola, milk, and yogurt.  This is the best tropical fruit salad I have had in ages. All the fruit is ripe and at its maximum flavor and sweetness.

I worked and was in meetings until 2:30, so I needed a quick meal.  I filled a pasta bowl with two or three handfuls of PPI casarecce pasta and covered it with the last 2 to 3 cups of PPI Texas chili and slices of Pecorino-Romano cheese and heated it in the microwave.  I was heavy duty carbs and I got stuffed by the time I had eaten 2/3 of it, so we have another PPI.

The market was so terrible today that I could not even calculate my loss, but I think it was at least 2.5%.

At 4:45 it was still warm and sunny, so I rode to Campbell Rd. and back. Since it was two successive days on the bike, my joints really tightened up after the ride.

I was working late after Suzette came home, so she started cooking dinner without me.  She combined the PPI couscous with the dark meat of the roasted chicken that I  deboned last night. She had picked a basket of baby arugula from our garden and filled our plates with a pile of couscous and chicken on a bed of fresh arugula.  Suzette added cumin seeds  and cooked everything in the wok until it was all very crisp. I loved it and ate too much because it was so delicious with its decidedly Middle Eastern flavor provided by the toasted

After dinner I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies with lots of chips and toasted pecan pieces.

Finally at around 9:30 we soaked a while in the hot tub to ease the pain in our muscles.

After a long busy day at 10:00 it was a joy to crawl into bed.

We will make chicken salad tomorrow night as the last food item we will take on our trip.

Bon Appetit

March 2, 2021 Lunch - Sashimi with Sushi Rice Dinner - PPI casarecce pasta with vegetables in cream sauce with Salad and fruit salad

March 2, 2021 Lunch - Sashimi with Sushi Rice Dinner - PPI casarecce pasta with vegetables in cream sauce with Salad and fruit salad

Today I was busy.  The most exciting thing that happened was that I called apple support and a friendly person named Perry helped me load Apple’s free word processing app named Pages on my new I Pad and showed me how to use it. So I am typing today’s blog on my new I Pad.

Another thing that was interesting was two of my clients brought me new transactions to work on.

He will be a land purchase agreement and the other will be a corporate transaction.  Viola 

I did not eat any breakfast, thinking that I would make fruit salad and eat that for breakfast with granola la, but I was busy until noon.

I had the leftover pieces of raw salmon and tuna, daikon radish, and bag of scallops left from yesterday’s lunch that I wanted to eat, so i quickly sliced four scallops and the remaining fish and daikon. To complete the meal I brewed a cup of green tea and fetched pickled ginger and heated a bowl of PPI sushi rice. Lunch was fabulous. 

I read a New Yorker article about why the inquiry in the scientific community into why rich Western nations are suffering exponentially worse from the Covid pandemic than poorer nations, like those in Sub-Sahara Africa.  The market was going dow into a downward spiral but I did not have time to watch it.  I had a time sensitive corporate transaction to complete. I did that and made a stock certificate for another client. 

Then to top things off at 4:15 I rode five miles south feeling stronger than I have in the last two years.

When I returned home at 5:00 Suzette had arrived. 

I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich and drank a cup of hot Earl Grey tea with it to regain some strength and watched the news with Suzette.

We decided to simply re-heat the PPI pasta dish we made earlier in the week and eat the PPI salad made by the staff at the Center for our luncheon with TR and Linda last Friday.  

Suzette had already placed the freezer bag of PPI Casarecce pasta with chicken, Asparagus, red bell pepper and onion in a white wine cream sauce in the microwave, so all we had to do was punch the Sensor Reheat button.  We fetched the PPI salad and Suzette added wedges of 1/2 of the large slicing tomato she sun ripened in our kitchen window sill and added it to the salad. While Suzette was placing the salad in a salad bowl and slicing tomato, we heated the jar of Cesar salad dressing and I added fresh lemon juice and olive oil to it and fetched and sliced the avocado 1/2 in the fridge and added avocado slices to the salad. When the salad was ready, I drizzled it with dressing. When the pasta was finished heating, suzette plated it and sprinkled grated Pecorino Romano cheese on the pile of pasta to finish the dish and poured the remaining Kirtland Pinot Grigio white wine into our glasses.  

We watched Chris Hayes and the Rachel Maddow. I was pleased when she noted that her show has been the most watched show on cable TV during January and February and thanked her audience. Good for her.  Good for all of us, who watch her.show.

After dinner I made fruit salad with the papaya and ataulfo mangos we bought at Sprouts on Sunday and a pineapple we had and the remaining tangerines sectioned plus juice of two limes.  While I was making the salad Suzette cut the peels from the tangerines I would add to the fruit salad, scraped the excess pulp from the insides of the peels and dried the peels in a 350 degree oven for two hours.  She then ground them into a fine dust in a coffee grinder and carefully placed the dust into a small lidded jar.  The tangerine dust is a recipe we found in the lovely cookbook Luke gave us for Christmas titled Le Buvette, named for the Wine Bar/restaurant of the same name in Paris where the owner uses tangerine dust as an flavor enhancer and color accent to small dishes such as a single loaf of fresh ricotta or mozzarella cheese.

After I finished making the fruit salad, I ate bowl of it and found it really sweet and delicious. The pineapple had softened during its two weeks in the fridge but also became intensely sweet.  Similarly the mango and papaya were ripe, firm, and delicious.

 At 5:00 I brought in the pot of garbanzo beans I had soaked and cooked yesterday and started it simmering on the stove.  At 7:00 Suzette drained the cooked beans and placed them in the Cuisinart with some tahini, juice of 1 1/2 lemons, some ground cumin, five cloves of garlic, and salt and whipped up some hummus.  She let me taste it and it was silky smooth and very tasty.  So we finished two more items we will take on our trip.

Tomorrow night we will complete the prep when I make chocolate chip cookies and we make chicken salad.

As the last prep of the evening I de-boned and diced the roasted chicken meat. Suzette placed it into two freezer bags, one of white meat and the other of dark.

I then took the trash to the receptacle and rolled it to the curb for trash pick up in the morning.

Bon Appetit  March 2, 2021 Lunch - Sashimi with Sushi Rice Dinner - PPI casarecce pasta with vegetables in cream sauce with Salad and fruit salad

Today I was busy.  The most exciting thing that happened was that I called apple support and a friendly person named Perry helped me load Apple’s free word processing app named Pages on my new I Pad and showed me how to use it. So I am typing today’s blog on my new I Pad.

Another thing that was interesting was two of my clients brought me new transactions to work on.

He will be a land purchase agreement and the other will be a corporate transaction.  Viola 

I did not eat any breakfast, thinking that I would make fruit salad and eat that for breakfast with granola la, but I was busy until noon.

I had the leftover pieces of raw salmon and tuna, daikon radish, and bag of scallops left from yesterday’s lunch that I wanted to eat, so i quickly sliced four scallops and the remaining fish and daikon. To complete the meal I brewed a cup of green tea and fetched pickled ginger and heated a bowl of PPI sushi rice. Lunch was fabulous. I read a New Yorker article about why the inquiry in the scientific community into why rich Western nations are suffering exponentially worse from the Covid pandemic than poorer nations, like those in Sub-Sahara Africa.  The market was going dow into a downward spiral but I did not have time to watch it.  I had a time sensitive corporate transaction to complete. I did that and made a stock certificate for another client. 

Then to top things off at 4:15 I rode five miles south feeling stronger than I have in the last two years.

When I returned home at 5:00 Suzette had arrived. 

I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich and drank a cup of hot Earl Grey tea with it to regain some strength and watched the news with Suzette.

We decided to simply re-heat the PPI pasta dish we made earlier in the week and eat the PPI salad made by the staff at the Center for our luncheon with TR and Linda last Friday.  

Suzette had already placed the freezer bag of PPI Casarecce pasta with chicken, Asparagus, red bell pepper and onion in a white wine cream sauce in the microwave, so all we had to do was punch the Sensor Reheat button.  We fetched the PPI salad and Suzette added wedges of 1/2 of the large slicing tomato she sun ripened in our kitchen window sill and added it to the salad. While Suzette was placing the salad in a salad bowl and slicing tomato, we heated the jar of Cesar salad dressing and I added fresh lemon juice and olive oil to it and fetched and sliced the avocado 1/2 in the fridge and added avocado slices to the salad. When the salad was ready, I drizzled it with dressing. When the pasta was finished heating, suzette plated it and sprinkled grated Pecorino Romano cheese on the pile of pasta to finish the dish and poured the remaining Kirtland Pinot Grigio white wine into our glasses.  

We watched Chris Hayes and the Rachel Maddow. I was pleased when she noted that her show has been the most watched show on cable TV during January and February and thanked her audience. Good for her.  Good for all of us, who watch her show.

After dinner I made fruit salad with the papaya and ataulfo mangos we bought at Sprouts on Sunday and a pineapple we had and the remaining tangerines sectioned plus juice of two limes.  While I was making the salad Suzette cut the peels from the tangerines I would add to the fruit salad, scraped the excess pulp from the insides of the peels and dried the peels in a 350 degree oven for two hours.  She then ground them into a fine dust in a coffee grinder and carefully placed the dust into a small lidded jar.  The tangerine dust is a recipe we found in the lovely cookbook Luke gave us for Christmas titled Le Buvette, named for the Wine Bar/restaurant of the same name in Paris where the owner uses tangerine dust as an flavor enhancer and color accent to small dishes such as a single loaf of fresh ricotta or mozzarella cheese.

After I finished making the fruit salad, I ate bowl of it and found it really sweet and delicious. The pineapple had softened during its two weeks in the fridge but also became intensely sweet.  Similarly the mango and papaya were ripe, firm, and delicious.

 At 5:00 I brought in the pot of garbanzo beans I had soaked and cooked yesterday and started it simmering on the stove.  At 7:00 Suzette drained the cooked beans and placed them in the Cuisinart with some tahini, juice of 1 1/2 lemons, some ground cumin, five cloves of garlic, and salt and whipped up some hummus.  She let me taste it and it was silky smooth and very tasty.  So we finished two more items we will take on our trip.

Tomorrow night we will complete the prep when I make chocolate chip cookies and we make chicken salad.

As the last prep of the evening I de-boned and diced the roasted chicken meat. Suzette placed it into two freezer bags, one of white meat and the other of dark.

I then took the trash to the receptacle and rolled it to the curb for trash pick up in the morning.

Bon Appetit  March 2, 2021 Lunch - Sashimi with Sushi Rice Dinner - PPI casarecce pasta with vegetables in cream sauce with Salad and fruit salad

Today I was busy.  The most exciting thing that happened was that I called apple support and a friendly person named Perry helped me load Apple’s free word processing app named Pages on my new I Pad and showed me how to use it. So I am typing today’s blog on my new I Pad.

Another thing that was interesting was two of my clients brought me new transactions to work on.

He will be a land purchase agreement and the other will be a corporate transaction.  Viola 

I did not eat any breakfast, thinking that I would make fruit salad and eat that for breakfast with granola la, but I was busy until noon.

I had the leftover pieces of raw salmon and tuna, daikon radish, and bag of scallops left from yesterday’s lunch that I wanted to eat, so i quickly sliced four scallops and the remaining fish and daikon. To complete the meal I brewed a cup of green tea and fetched pickled ginger and heated a bowl of PPI sushi rice. Lunch was fabulous. I read a New Yorker article about why the inquiry in the scientific community into why rich Western nations are suffering exponentially worse from the Covid pandemic than poorer nations, like those in Sub-Sahara Africa.  The market was going dow into a downward spiral but I did not have time to watch it.  I had a time sensitive corporate transaction to complete. I did that and made a stock certificate for another client. 

Then to top things off at 4:15 I rode five miles south feeling stronger than I have in the last two years.

When I returned home at 5:00 Suzette had arrived. 

I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich and drank a cup of hot Earl Grey tea with it to regain some strength and watched the news with Suzette.

We decided to simply re-heat the PPI pasta dish we made earlier in the week and eat the PPI salad made by the staff at the Center for our luncheon with TR and Linda last Friday.  

Suzette had already placed the freezer bag of PPI Casarecce pasta with chicken, Asparagus, red bell pepper and onion in a white wine cream sauce in the microwave, so all we had to do was punch the Sensor Reheat button.  We fetched the PPI salad and Suzette added wedges of 1/2 of the large slicing tomato she sun ripened in our kitchen window sill and added it to the salad. While Suzette was placing the salad in a salad bowl and slicing tomato, we heated the jar of Cesar salad dressing and I added fresh lemon juice and olive oil to it and fetched and sliced the avocado 1/2 in the fridge and added avocado slices to the salad. When the salad was ready, I drizzled it with dressing. When the pasta was finished heating, suzette plated it and sprinkled grated Pecorino Romano cheese on the pile of pasta to finish the dish and poured the remaining Kirtland Pinot Grigio white wine into our glasses.  

We watched Chris Hayes and the Rachel Maddow. I was pleased when she noted that her show has been the most watched show on cable TV during January and February and thanked her audience. Good for her.  Good for all of us, who watch her show.

After dinner I made fruit salad with the papaya and ataulfo mangos we bought at Sprouts on Sunday and a pineapple we had and the remaining tangerines sectioned plus juice of two limes.  While I was making the salad Suzette cut the peels from the tangerines I would add to the fruit salad, scraped the excess pulp from the insides of the peels and dried the peels in a 350 degree oven for two hours.  She then ground them into a fine dust in a coffee grinder and carefully placed the dust into a small lidded jar.  The tangerine dust is a recipe we found in the lovely cookbook Luke gave us for Christmas titled Le Buvette, named for the Wine Bar/restaurant of the same name in Paris where the owner uses tangerine dust as an flavor enhancer and color accent to small dishes such as a single loaf of fresh ricotta or mozzarella cheese.

After I finished making the fruit salad, I ate bowl of it and found it really sweet and delicious. The pineapple had softened during its two weeks in the fridge but also became intensely sweet.  Similarly the mango and papaya were ripe, firm, and delicious.

 At 5:00 I brought in the pot of garbanzo beans I had soaked and cooked yesterday and started it simmering on the stove.  At 7:00 Suzette drained the cooked beans and placed them in the Cuisinart with some tahini, juice of 1 1/2 lemons, some ground cumin, five cloves of garlic, and salt and whipped up some hummus.  She let me taste it and it was silky smooth and very tasty.  So we finished two more items we will take on our trip.

Tomorrow night we will complete the prep when I make chocolate chip cookies and we make chicken salad.

As the last prep of the evening I de-boned and diced the roasted chicken meat. Suzette placed it into two freezer bags, one of white meat and the other of dark.

I then took the trash to the receptacle and rolled it to the curb for trash pick up in the morning.

Bon Appetit 

March 1, 2021 Lunch – Sashimi and Sushi Rice Dinner – Roasted Chicken with Steamed Broccoli and PPI Couscous and tomatoes, yellow squash and red bell pepper

 March 1, 2021 Lunch – Sashimi and Sushi Rice   Dinner – Roasted Chicken with Steamed Broccoli and PPI Couscous and tomatoes, yellow squash and red bell pepper

Today all came right in the market.  It was a complete turnaround from two days ago when everything went wrong and my portfolio made up all the value it lost two days ago. So, within two days I have had the greatest single day loss and single day gain in my investing career.

I skipped breakfast and at noon sliced about .2 lb. each of raw tuna, salmon, and Peruvian scallops plus fresh daikon and ate them with a dipping bowl filled with a soy and wasabi mixture, a bowl of sticky sushi rice, pickled ginger, and a cup of green tea.  

I enjoyed a leisurely lunch as I watched the market pound upward.  After lunch I tried to watch a soccer match but went to sleep until 4:00.  I did a little work and then took a check that arrived in the mail to the bank to deposit.

When I returned home at 5:15, Suzette and I walked ½ mile.  The protein and oil in the fish must have oiled my joints because I walked with strength and without pain.

I have some raw fish left so I will eat sashimi again tomorrow. 

When we returned home I cleaned and skewered a whole chicken on a spandex cooking rack that Suzette had bought last week.  With Suzette’s help we dusted the skin of the chicken with tandoori seasoning, which is one of my favorite and easiest way to flavor a roasted chicken.  We put the racked chicken in a 9 X 9 inch pyrex baking dish with about 1/3 inch of water and roasted it in a 425 degree oven for 25 minutes and then for 85 more minutes at 350 degrees.

I also combined the small amount of PPI sautéed yellow squash and red bell pepper with Italian seasoning and some of the couscous with cooked with tomato slices that the cooks at the Center made for our lunch on Friday and placed that in a pyrex loaf pan and covered it with saran and placed it in the microwave.

I then deflowered broccoli flowerets from a stalk of broccoli and put them in the steamer with enough water to steam them.

I then fetched a bottle of Kirkland Pinot Grigio (Costco $6.99??) and poured Suzette a glass.

I then fetched the frozen cooked garbanzo beans and started them cooking on the stove to further soften them, so we can make hummus.

When we judged that it was 10 minutes from the chicken being fully roasted, I started the steamer and microwave.  In ten more minutes, Suzette removed the chicken from the oven. The skin was crisp and the meat inside was tender, just the way it should be.

I poured glasses of wine and carved off a thigh and leg for me and a thigh for Suzette and we each served ourselves couscous and broccoli.

We enjoyed our simple dinner, especially when we knew it was the first step in making chicken salad to take on our trip this weekend.

We did not eat any dessert but I made a fresh cup of sweetened chai.

We watched the news until 9:00 and then I blogged and Suzette went to bed.

Bon Appetit

February 28, 2020 Brunch – A Gravad Lax, Red Onion, Goat Cheese and Snow Pea Omelet. Dinner – New Recipe, Foil Wrapped Mahi Mahi with green onion, carrot, asparagus strips and parsley, white wine, butter and garlic and Sushi Rice

February 28, 2020 Brunch – A Gravad Lax, Red Onion, Goat Cheese and Snow Pea Omelet.  Dinner – New Recipe, Foil Wrapped Mahi Mahi with green onion, carrot, asparagus strips and parsley, white wine, butter and garlic and Sushi Rice

Today was another good example of one dish meals.

At 10:00 we made our usual weekly omelet.  Today it included Gravad Lax, Red Onion, Goat Cheese and Snow Peas.  I cannot begin to express how flavorful this combination is.  It is far more flavorful than a toasted bagel with cream cheese, Gravad Lax, and red onion.  God Bless the French for creating this way of cooking eggs.

After Brunch we drove to Sprouts and bought, Mahi Mahi, and 1/3 lb. of salmon, ¼ lb. of tuna, a lb. of Peruvian sea scallops, a small piece of daikon for my sushi lunch tomorrow.  We also bought milk, a papaya, two Ataulfo mangos, fresh ginger, 8 each of acorn and butternut squashes for Suzette’s Center, some broccoli heads, bananas, and a cucumber.

We did not eat an organized lunch when we returned home.  Instead, I ate the several days old PPI Pork and Mixed Vegetables with PPI Sushi rice and Suzette ate one of the bananas sliced in half and spread with peanut butter.

At 2:00 we zoomed with Billy and Elaine, Rebecca, and Willy.

After the family zooms I made and drank a cup of hot chocolate with rum as Suzette and I worked on assembling the 50 states’ cocktails puzzle Cynthia lent us.

We spoke to Willy and he said he would like to join us for dinner and we decided to cook the Mahi Mahi. At 5:30 we stopped puzzling and started cooking.

I first made sushi rice with 1 ½ T. of sugar, 1 ½ T. of Aji Mirin, 1 ½ T. of Japanese rice vinegar, 1 tsp. of dried Pulse seaweed, 3 cups of water and 1 ½ cups of Jasmine rice brought to a boil and then reduced to the lowest heat for 35 minutes.

Fish in Foil - Suzette cut strips of fresh asparagus and carrot with a vegetable peeler and I sliced 1½ inch strips of green onion and chopped parsley.  Suzette then combined those ingredients with chopped garlic, pads of butter, and white Spanish Rueda wine inside two pieces of crimped aluminum foil.  She then folded each piece of foil into a separate envelope to secure the ingredients and baked them in the oven for 20 to thirty minutes.

Since Willy prefers red wine, we decided to open a light red.  I chilled a bottle of Cherry Blossom California Pinot Noir.  Cherry Blossom is my favorite under $5.00 pinot noir. It has a strong fruity cherry flavor that subsides after a few minutes as the traditional pinot noir flavors begin to express themselves.  It also has as long a lasting flavor profile as any inexpensive red wine I have tried lately. Suzette added ice to her glass and liked it more chilled, but I found it immensely drinkable slightly chilled without ice. I highly recommend this wine for light dinners, such as hamburgers or a heavily flavored fish such as Mahi Mahi or mackerel.

This was the most successful foil wrapped Mahi Mahi Suzette has made.  We often add tomatoes, chili, and mushrooms, but tonight Suzette perfected a more French version that I like even better.

After dinner, we split the last of the magnificent clementine cake with chocolate glaze Suzette made last week for a fabulous ending to a fabulous dinner.

Great food shared with family members is a great antidote to isolation.

And we are planning our first trip to Mexico in June.

Bon Appetit