October 13, 2016 Woodstock to NYC Lunch – Olea’s Dinner – La Vara

October 13, 2016 Woodstock to NYC Lunch – Olea’s  Dinner – La Vara

I awakened at 6:15 at the diurnal shift again and showered, packed and dressed by 7:30.  Luke ran the clothes washer and dryer until 8:00 when we left for Woodstock.  We arrived at 8:30 for the 8:57 bus to NYC.

  Luke's house

Suzette and Luke went to Bread Alone for breakfast sandwiches.  They bought egg sandwiches with ham or sausage and bought me an everything bagel with cream cheese and lax. 

  Luke and an egg sandwich 

They ate their sandwiches as we waited for the bus.  I ate 1/2 of mine on the way into NYC.  We went through the Linchpin on Tunnel, which is always exciting for me and arrived at Port Authority around 11:50. 

Suzette and I don’t oak a taxi to Luke’s apartment and washed up and walked to The Brooklyn Art a museum by way of Olea’s Restaurant where I had an end of summer salad with sautéed corn kernels with grilled Merguez sausage and a side of arugula dressed with a light vinaigrette.  Then I ate the other ½ of my bagel with lax.  I then had enough energy to walk the mile to the Brooklyn Museum.  We saw the American collection and European collections.  The American collection is wonderful.  It includes three great paintings; a full length portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart painted while he was alive in 1796,  an Eastman Johnson “A Ride to Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves” from 1862, and my favorite Edward Hicks “The Peaceful Kingdom”.

There were several great European paintings including one of the best a Claude Monet’s I have ever seen of the Doge’s Palace.

After we saw the two floors of art we walked to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which wraps around two sides of the Brooklyn Art Museum and is 55 acres.  We walked through the conservatories and saw the amazing Bonsai collection and the beautiful Japanese garden.  

We taxied back to Luke’s apartment for a short nap.  We got ready by 7:00 to go to dinner and said hello to Jennifer, Luke’s landlord.

I woke up with a thought at 2:00 am.  Joseph Campbell and Jung were interested in cultural anthropological commonalities in sacred icons and myths.

Is there also common myths and imagery in astrology common todifferentcultures?  For example,the Mayans and the Muslims, or Hawaiians.  Has anyone done anthropological studies of cosmology or astrology across different cultures and what did they find?

In other words looked at astrology from a cultural anthropological perspective?

We met Rebecca at La Vara and soon Mickie joined us.

We had a wonderful Spanish waiter from Barcelona who was either gay or one of the most effusive persons I have ever met or both.  Luke said that he had just spent the day with someone exactly like our waiter who was going to handle the bar for Luke’s party next week, so perhaps it is a more common person than I suspect is out there and I have simply not run into them.

I was having trouble reading the wine list and menu in the low light, so I finally told the waiter that I wanted a Verdejo white from Rueda and a Tempranillo red blend from Rioja.  I also suggested that we did not want to spend a lot of money and he suggested a $44.00 white named Menade’ that was very fresh tasting and fruity.  I loved it.

For the red the waiter suggested a 2013 La Antigua Classico Reserva at $52.00.  I ordered a bottle of it and everyone loved its smoothness and lightness.

I did the same thing with the food. I told the waiter we wanted to try mostly Judeo-Iberian dishes and let him suggest a tasting menu

We started with a white gazpacho with an almond milk base poured over a mound of shredded calamari and bay scallops for which the waiter poured glasses of white wine.  The combination was fabulous.  Then in quick succession we were served two duck sliced breasts with poached figs that was fabulous,  a flat bread drizzled with blue cheese and an onion compote, then a really yummie Migas made with bread, sausage, herbs and spices and halved white grapes and a quail egg yolk floating on the top, then a pressed rectangle of braised lamb, a very interesting cucumber and sprout salad, a very interesting piece of bread spread with a spreadable sausage and then covered with a honey foam, and finally 1/2 roasted chicken in a heavy combination of herbs and spices in an onion compote.

We had had some much exciting food, we could not finish the chicken,but that did not stop us from trying a dessert.  We all agreed on the natilla, even though Mickie could not eat any because he is lactose intolerant.  It's dry interesting, a blended light custard filling about ½ of a shot glass with most of the rest of the glass filled with a clear liquid that tasted like a dry sherry mixed with a clear Spanish Brandy or eat d vie. It was very alcoholic and quite tasty.

We talked a bit longer but by 10:00 we said goodnight.

Bon Appetit

October 11, 2016 In Woodstock. Brunch - Bread Alone, Lunch – Egg on Corn Cake with sausage, Dinner – Boeuf Bourguignon, Catalan Spinach, and Walt’s and Peruvian Mashed Potatoes

October 11, 2016 In Woodstock. Brunch - Bread Alone,  Lunch – Egg on Corn Cake with sausage,  Dinner – Boeuf Bourguignon, Catalan Spinach, and Walt’s and Peruvian Mashed Potatoes

I woke at 6:00 at the diurnal shift and blogged for a while.  I made tea and ate the last bite of blueberry muffin from yesterday's lunch.

At around 9:00 we walked around the property and picked some oregano.  

We then went to town and Suzette and I walked around while Luke worked at Bread Alone, a bakery and café.  We returned and ordered a bowl of lentil soup and a piece of poppy seed cake and a coffee for Suzette.  After brunch I bought a sour dough baguette  we walked back to the wine store and bought a bottle of 

Then we met Luke and drove to the recycling center.  He had given up his $100/month Waste Management contract for recycling and paying $.10/lb. for solid waste.  After we recycled all the plastic, glass, cardboard, aluminum the cost of dumping Luke’s two month accumulation of 14 lb. of solid waste was $1.25.  He became an instant convert to recycling.

We then drive to a grocery store for fresh mushrooms, spinach, and a few other items.  Then we went to the Woodstock Butcher and bought 2.3 lb. of round stew meat, eggs, and Baking soda.  We headed home where Suzette sautéed  the two corn cakes we had gotten at Phoenicia Diner and crumbled the PPI sausage for me and the crab cake for her egg on corn cake.  

After lunch we napped and at 4:30 we began cooking the

Boeuf Bourguignon 

We viewed the original TV program by Julia Child which taught this recipe.  It is more basic than our version.  It simply braises the beef, adds red wine and cooks it for four hours and then adds braised onions and mushrooms plus a tsp. of thyme. 

I minced four cloves of garlic, ½ onion, two shallots, two carrots and the leaves of five or six celery stalks.  Suzette braised the beef and the deglazed the beef scrapings with 2 cups of red wine and poured that into a roasting pan.  She then braised the vegetables in olive oil and butter and added that to the beef with two cups of vegetable stock.  Suzette then covered the roasting pan with aluminum foil and baked it in the oven for three or four years.  While the beef was baking Suzette heated water and boiled ½ lb. of small onions for a few minutes to loosen the outer skins.  I peeled the skins and put them aside. 

Then Suzette washed and dried the ½ lb. of white mushrooms and the portobello mushroom.  I then cubed the mushrooms and Suzette braised them with a bit of oregano we picked outside the back door.  

After the beef had cooked there was very little sauce so Suzette added about 1 ½ cup of water to liquefy the sauce so we could add the beurre Marie thickening, which is a mixture of softened butter and flour. We added about 1T. of beurre Marie to the sauce and then the mushrooms and onions.

Separately we peeled and boiled Walt’s White potatoes and Peruvian blue potatoes and mashed them with butter and half and half.

We had bought lovely fresh spinach at Sunfrost Farms in Woodstock.  We decided to make Catalan Spinach, so I diced an apple and some onion and she sautéed the onion and apple and then added the spinach.

When all of the three dishes were ready, I poured glasses of Cantina Zaccagnini 2013 Montepulciano d’ Abruzzo red wine $17.99 at the wine store in Woodstock, rated 91 by Wine Spectator. 

Dinner was wonderful, one of the best Boeuf Bourguignons I have ever tasted.  The mixture of local white and Peruvian blue potatoes was terrific, perhaps the best part of the meal and the sautéed fresh spinach with apples was very refreshing.  

  The vegetables 

  The vegetables and meat and red wine

  The pearl onions

  The mushrooms

  The mashed potatoes

  The final product

After dinner we drank tea and ate Swedish marzipan and punch and chocolate pastries.  

Bon Appetit

October 7, 2016 Lunch – Pho Noodle Soup, Dinner at Billy and Elaine”s

October 7, 2016 Lunch – Pho Noodle Soup,  Dinner at Billy and Elaine”s

I worked hard this morning to finish and file a motion in the LRG case.

I made what I will call a French Pho soup stock yesterday with the PPI in steak from Tuesday evening’s meal, plus a diced carrot, celery stalk and a small red onion,and  a pho bullion cube.  Today at 11:00 on my way to the shower, I put the pot of soup Ontario stove and added rice Erick noodles and a bunch of bean thread noodles.  Unfortunately I got involved in editing the motion and did not finish until 12:30, when I filed it.

The noodles had splintered into 1 to 2 inch pieces but the flavor was good.  I ate a bowl with a ha day squeeze of Hoisin Sauce and the juice of ¼ lime.  

We we e picked the up by the taxi at 1:30 and flew to Dallas.

Billy picked us up at DFW at 6:00 and drove us to his house where Elaine greeted us with hugs.

We arrive fed just as the Mark Shields and David Gershin dialogue was beginning, which is my favorite ten minutes of TV every week.  After that finished Billy served some Manouri cheese imported by Krinos with the bottle of Gruet Reserve Pinot Noir we shipped to him a week ago plus a Nemas red by Kouri from Greece.  We preferred the Gruet and drank it.  The Manouri cheese had both the texture and flavor of a lightly salted Mexican Panela, that course granular texture.

Billy cooked for a while longer to make sure everything was properly cooked.  He had slow cooked lamb shanks in a tomato, onion, bay laurel, and carrot sauce until the meat had fallen of the bone, a wonderful lentil Dahl cooked till the water evaporated seasoned with cumin, coriander, turmeric and fresh curry leaves, to name a few spices and herbs.  Elaine’s friends from work had brought her the fresh curry leaves from a plant they kept in their kitchen. Talk about a kitchen garden.

Billy also made rice and had decanted one of the bottles of Guzman 2001 Consecha we bought from the Guzman’s when we stayed in their remodeled farmhouse in the Rioja 6 or 7 years ago.  It was still lovely but with just a hint of oxidation on the back end.  Most wines get a little oxidized after 15 years. It was a very special and fabulous wine with the meal and reminded us of our wonderful trip to Spain.

The stand out dish was the lentils.  It was alive with flavor.  Rebecca had sent the recipe to Billy and Elaine, so it felt like she was part of the meal also.

Billy served the three dishes buffet style from the kitchens do we ate at their round Danish modern table between the kitchen and the TV viewing area.  We talked and nibbled for over an hour, it seemed.  The Billy brought the freshly baked pear tart garnished with sliced almonds and brushed with melted butter before it was baked.

Billy also brought an assortment of five after dinner drinks, a DuPont 20 year old Calvados, the DuPont 30year old Calvados we bought him at the DuPont Distillery in Normandy, an Austrian 70% Apple/30% Pear Brandy, a clear Pear brandy, and a Fine Burgundy Marc.  We sliced slices of tart and poured snaps glasses of drinks.  I ate two slices of the wonderfully fresh pear tart and sampled all of the drinks except the 30 year old DuPont Calvados.  My favorite was the Austrian 70/30 Apple/pear Brandy with the tart.

Finally at 10:30 we went to bed, which is when I discovered I had forgotten the pack my pajama bottoms. I guess I will soon have a shopping moment on the trip.

Bon Appetit

October 10, 2016 NYC to Woodstock

October 10, 2016 NYC to Woodstock 

We had breakfast at around 8:15.  The breakfast was lovely.  I had fresh scrambled eggs and sausage and a waffle iron which I used to make my own fresh waffle with a syrup dispenser.  The news on the it screen TV was all about the second debate.  After breakfast at around 9:15 we walked to the elevated Metro station and took the No 7 train into Manhattan to the Time Square Station and changed to the No. 1 to Penn Station. 

 We were assisted by a pan handler who showed us to the correct location to catch the train to Rhinegold.  She told us to be in line no later than 11:00 and best tear still 10:45.  We waited in the waiting room until 10:45 and when we got to the line it was already long.  Sober information was impeccable.

We train track hugged the edge of the Hudson most of the way to Rhinegold.  When we arrived Like showed up at the lovely stone station before we even returned from the bathrooms.  We drove over the bridge to the west side of the Hudson along 212 to Phoenicia to the Phoenicia Diner where western lunch.  Suzette and I had eaten our last sandwich on the train, so we're not terribly hungry.  We split a grilled trout platter with fresh grilled asparagus and fingerling potatoes and a crab cake  The trees are changing color now.  The oak trees’ leaves in particular change from green to a scarlet red.  The hillside was ablaze with color.  Since some trees had dropped some of their leaves I judged this to be close to the peak of the fall color.  Here are photos of the hillside across the highway from the Diner.

Luke ate a full breakfast of eggs, grits, toasted whole wheat bread, and our waitress gave him the last blueberry muffin on what had been a tray of them.  We also ordered an order of corn cakes,which turned out to be cooked in a more Mexican style, thick like spas, with kernels of corn in them and served with a jalapeño/cilantro dipping sauce.

We ordered two glasses of Kris Pinot Grigio that was very tasty and the entire bill was $58.00.  The Phoenicia Diner reminded me of the Central Diner in Albuquerque that gets high marks for ordinary dishes made with best ingredients cooked and served exceedingly well.

After lunch we stopped at two roadside markets.  The first one was run by what appeared to be Koreans and had lovely produce.  The two stand out items were baby Rosa eggplants and the other were husked ground cherries, both of which we bought.

We also bought red and yellow sweet Italian peppers and a French pumpkin that Suzette roasted at Luke’s house in anticipation of making pumpkin soup.

The second roadside market offered fresh pasta, so we bought a pound of fresh gnocchi.

Luke’s house is rather rustic and set on four acres of forested land, but very comfortable with all the modern conveniences.  

After we settled in and took an hour nap, Luke drove us to Woodstock, where we found a good wine shop where we bought two bottles of red Cotes du Rhone and a bottle of Rose from Provence.

It was dark when were returned to Luke’s at a bit after 7:30 and we started cooking dinner.  We decided to cook a vegetable medley with some of the peppers and the eggplants and serve that on top of the gnocchi.  I sliced four yellow and four red peppers, four cloves of garlic and ½ onion, which Suzette sautéed in an iron skillet.  I then de-stemmed the eggplants and sectioned the larger ones into bite sized pieces.  Luke had selected a bunch of kale and I de-stemmed the leaves and sectioned the leaves also.

Suzette boiled water and cooked the gnocchi while she added the eggplants and finally the kale to the vegetable sauté.  We opened a bottle of 2013 Le Deveze fromDomaine de Dionysos in Cote du Rhone, a pleasant blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Carignan grapes.  

We recalled the recipe for jiffy cobbler, 1 cup of flour, 2/3 cup milk, ½ cup of sugar, 3 tsp. of baking powder and ½ tsp. of salt, so I chopped up an apple and we husked the ground cherries, which are actually in the tomatillo family of plants, and made cobbler.

I added 1 chopped tomato to the vegetable dish and it turned out to be rather like a ratatouille without the zucchini.  We enjoyed dinner with the smooth tasting Cotes Du Rhone.

Then we tasted the cobbler but left most of it for dinner on Tuesday evening.  It was equally delicious and very cake like because of the use of whole wheat flour, so we will probably get some ice creamy or go with it.

After dinner Luke made a pot of hot tea that we enjoyed while we sat on his couch talking until 10:30, when we went to bed. 

October 6, 2016 Lunch – The Range Café, Dinner- Pesto Pasta, with tomatoes, mushrooms, green beans, red bell pepper, and onions and Grilled Artichokes with Tzatziki Sauce

October 6, 2016 Lunch – The Range Café,  Dinner- Pesto Pasta, with tomatoes, mushrooms, green beans, red bell pepper, and onions and Grilled Artichokes with Tzatziki Sauce

This morning after my granola, yogurt, and melon, I made a pot of pho with the Diced PPI steak from Monday night, a Pho bullion cube, and a chopped stalk of celery, a carrot and a small red onion.  I then did not get to eat it because I got busy preparing a will for Terry Jassmann and finishing an edit of our Motions for the Lower Rio Grande adjudication.

  The pot of cold pho

I turned off the soup and put it in the fridge and drove to the Range to meet Mike, Aaron, and Marty for a lunch meeting at 1:00.  I was hungry and could not resist ordering Country Fried Steak with mashed potatoes and vegetables.  This is a dish from my Texas youth where the axiom was that wherever you found yourself, no matter how small a small town café, you could always rely upon the Chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes to be a reliably consistent dish.  I ordered it my favorite way with white gravy on the fried steak and brown gravy on the mashed potatoes.  It was served with a 10 inch round fried pounded flat battered and fried steak covered with white gravy, a mound of mashed potatoes covered with a lovely mushroom Demi-glacé sauce and a goodly portion of steamed broccoli; about as good a country fried steak dinner as I have ever had.  The Range did this dish proud and the only thing missing was the usual heartburn I used to feel after eating this dish in the old days in Texas.  I guess it is the frying in fresh unsaturated grease these days.

Aaron and Marty ordered the Death by Lemon dessert and Mike ordered Range’s most famous dish,  Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and vegetables which was a large platter with steamed broccoli and mashed potatoes with brown gravy, but instead of the chicken fried steak Mike’s dish had about a 1 ½ wedge of meatloaf covered with the lovely mushroom Demi-glacé brown sauce.  Mike lived the dish but could not finish the meatloaf.  

At 2:00 I returned home and did another edit of the one motion and drafted the other motion and sent them back to Scott for his review.

I prepared a couple of deeds and finished and sent the motions out to the counsel in the LRG adjudication for concurrence by 6:20.  Suzette had started cooking at 6:00 ahead it mostly prepped and in large casserole by the time I got to the kitchen.  She combined PPI pasta, diced onion, tomato, some green beans, the remaining ¾ of the red bell pepper, a pork chop I had thawed, and mushrooms with some pesto; pretty much all the vegetables we has left in the fridge.  By the time I arrived it was simmering on the stove and ready to eat.

Suzette had also opened the chilled bottle of Carayon Rose.

Here is what Trader Joe’s says about this jewel of a rose at $4.99 that one can and wants to drink all day.

The Wine Idiot

When Trader Joe's is your wine cellar

The Wine Idiot Reviews: Carayon La Rose, 2014 ($4.99)

ROSÉ

Full disclosure: I love rosé. Seriously, one of the great joys of my life is a glass of crisp, not-too-sweet rosé sipped as the sun sets on a summer day. Bonus points if I'm at the Hollywood Bowl.

I'm aware, however, that rosé is not everyone's cup of slightly-alcoholic tea, which is why it's taken me so long to get around to reviewing one. That and I actually haven't found one at Trader Joe's that I absolutely LOVE. But I decided it was finally time.

Lacking any sort of direction (I was shopping at 6pm on a Friday so there weren't a lot of extra employees just waiting around the wine area to help me), I had to pick at random. I opted for a $5 bottle that proudly advertised itself to be from the "SOUTH OF FRANCE." Can't be bad, right?

Well, it's not a diamond in the rough, but it's a tasty cheap rosé and I'd probably buy it again. It smells light and crisp, and it's not overly sweet. Not that I have anything against sweet wine!! But a saccharine rosé doesn't pair as well with twilight, in my mind.

This is tangy--it's got a little sourness that kicks me in the back of my throat a little, but it's not overwhelming. After I got used to it (maybe 3 sips?), it went down smooth. Flavor-wise? I wrote down one word: strawberry. Granted, I have a limited vocabulary when it comes to wine, but I don't think this did a whole lot of flavor-morphing. It just tasted like strawberries--tangy, pleasant, not too sweet. And it is INCREDIBLY tasty with cheese and crackers.

Bottom line, this is a fabulous cheap summer wine. I'd definitely pick up a bottle on my way to the Hollywood Bowl.

I sliced in half all of the eight small artichokes I had bought at Trader Joe’s and removed the fuzzy hairs that cover the heart with a spoon and Suzette doused them in olive oil and grilled them over the open flame which not only imparts a wonderful flavor but also leashes them of the residual moisture that results in the flesh being more tactile and fleshy, rather than soggy.

We ladled pasta into bowls and enjoy it with the rose wine and the grilled artichokes and the Tzatziki style dipping sauce I made last night with ½ yogurt and ½ mayonnaise plus fresh lemon juice, ½ tsp. of salt, and ½ T. of fresh dill.  Today the sauce had thickened in the fridge overnight, so I added ½ T. of olive oil to the dipping sauce.

  The PPI grilled artichokes and dipping sauce

I really enjoyed the warm grilled artichokes and ate three halves.  Suzette ate one half, so we still have12 halves left.  We talked about leaving them at  Cynthia and Ricardo’s door and a few other options, but finally told Willy they were in the fridge with the pasta.

Willy will have a cache of food to eat while we are gone.

Bon Appetit 

October 5, 2016 Lunch – Steamed bun with BBQ Pork and salad. Dinner – PPI Beef Enchiladas and Chayote and Tomatillo Stew.

October 5, 2016 Lunch – Steamed bun with BBQ Pork and salad. Dinner – PPI Beef Enchiladas and Chayote and Tomatillo Stew.

Today was another day of PPIs.

Yogurt, melon, and granola for breakfast.

At 11:00 I heated and ate the PPI steamed bun from my Ming Dynasty Dim Sum meal on Saturday and then rode ten miles to Rio Bravo and back.  Then I made a simple Salad with the rest of the prosciutto, two diced tomatoes, two old green onions, and a small handful of grated Parmesan-Romano cheese.  I heated the last scrap of Fano baguette in the house to eat with the salad.

At 5:30 I toasted a slice of banana nut bread and smeared peanut butter and honey on it and ate it with a cup of chai and then went to meditate.

When I returned from meditation at 8:00  Willy arrived and carried in the Pyaaaa dishes which held the PPI enchiladas and the other that held the tomatillo and chayote stew while I fetcahed two bottles of apple cider and a bottle of ginger beer.

We each filled plates with pieces of enchilada and spoonfuls of vegetable stew and reheated them in the microwave that has a sensor reheat setting.

There is not much you can say about reheated enchiladas and Chayote Tomatillo stew except it was more delicious after having sat for two days in the garage fridge.  The enchiladas had the texture of warm moist cake and the flavors of the stew were even more integrated.. Willy liked the clean citrusy lime flavor of the stew. 

  What is left of the leftovers after our meal

Bon Appetit