Saturday’s Story

Saturday, Jake made ham and eggs with fried potatoes for breakfast. He, of course, prepped the potatoes the night before as well as baking the ham slice (to eliminate some of the excess moisture). That way, in the morning, all he had to do was fry. Breakfast was delicious.

Sidebar: I am sorta glad my scale at home quit working a while back. God only knows how much weight I’ve gained this trip!

Jake and Carla had an errand to run, so I stayed home with the dog. I used my time to fill in the Blog post and to shave, shower and get dressed.

When they got back, Carla and I switched places. She stayed home while Jake and I made the trip to Whole Foods. We got the few items we needed for both tonight and Sunday night’s supper.

Back at home, I switched back into shorts and a tee shirt (another sunny, warm day). In the afternoon, we started prepping. Jake and I each had our own station and were directed by Chef Carla.

I paid no attention to what Jake was doing, but it had something to do with chorizo and various cheeses. I know I medium-diced an onion, minced three cloves of garlic, seeded and diced two Roma (Italian) tomatoes, chopped a quarter cup of fresh, flat-leaf parsley and, after removing the crusts, cut three slices of hearty white bread into one-inch cubes.

All the ingredients went into baggies or plastic containers and into the fridge.

We relaxed and watched some TV until Jake decided to clean the mussels. After that was done, Carla started dinner.

She decided, last minute, that she wanted to have shoe string French fried potatoes with dinner, so Jake peeled three russet potatoes, cut them into shoestring slices on the mandolin and then he and I separated each slice into the shoestrings.

She was making a Portuguese stew with mussels and sausage (in this case, chorizo). She browned the sausage and added in the onions and garlic. Next came the diced tomatoes.

She varied from the original Portuguese recipe by adding a healthy slug of white wine.

Next, all the mussels went in to get steamed for about 10 minutes.

Jake, meanwhile, had heated up some oil in a pan and was making the French fries in batches.

Carla ripped big hunks of bread off a baguette and we finally plated everything.

Dinner was served with the remaining white wine (a sauvignon blanc).

The stew was excellent, especially when you sopped up the broth with the crusty bread. As we ate, the mussel shells got bigger in their discard bowls and our stew bowls got emptier. The fries were long gone by the time we decided we were full.

All in all, it was a great and memorable dinner!

Jake cleaned up the kitchen and we settled in to watch another John Wayne movie, “The Sons of Katie Elder.” When it was done, Carla said she was going to bed. So, Jake and I watched a documentary about Muhammad Ali (one of my personal all-time sports heroes).

When that finished, I went to bed. I read for about 15 minutes and decided I was too tired for reading. So, I went to sleep.