I Got Canned

Well ok, I didn’t actually get canned myself, but a bunch of other stuff in my house did. So what if it’s been more than twenty years since I helped my mom do canning back home? Heck yeah, let’s fly by the seat of our pants like always and do some canning.

 It all started innocently enough. I was hanging out at the farmer’s market Saturday morning, minding my own business. It was a dreary, drizzly, generally unappealing morning. So bad, in fact, that many of the vendors didn’t even show up. Neither did the customers. I felt like I had the whole six stands to myself.

 I chatted up a few of the vendors, discussing scones and herbs before finally making the rounds to the rest of the tables. When customers are sparse and the morning is wearing on, the vendors are ready to wheel and deal. I ended up getting a killer deal on about nine pounds of tomatoes (not to mention some already cleaned and cut pole beans…nice).

 And that, your honor, is how the great tomato massacre began.

 I’d been contemplating canning for a while, but was pretty scared of the whole prospect. I mean, making something shelf stable is no laughing matter. But I’d invested in a nice waterbath canner and wanted to try my hand. After reading about waterbath canners, pressure canners and canned botulism, I decided to stick with tried and true waterbath recipes. I’ll pass on the canned botulism, thanks.

The Great Tomato Massacre

 I found a good looking recipe for canned tomato sauce here. I was excited and got to work hacking away at the tomatoes. It was a veritable saucy bloodbath. It also took forever. I suppose I’ll have to have a kid, since it would have been nice to have an extra pair of hands to peel, seed and chop. Maybe I could borrow a neighbor’s kid next time…

 I got my tomato sauce together and put it on to simmer for several hours. I then turned my attention to the glut of apples I had somehow accumulated on my kitchen counter due to my CSA box and too much time at the farmer’s market. It just so happened that I also had a canned apple recipe. I could do the apples while the sauce was simmering. That’s called multitasking! (Or time management, I’m not sure which…)

Canning Station: Jars and lids in hot water, simmering tomato sauce, boiling water and simmering apples

 My simple syrup was simmering, my waterbath was boiling. The apples went into the syrup to boil for a few minutes, then into my hot jars they went. It was a bit messy since I couldn’t find a stupid wide mouth funnel anywhere that morning, but I think I managed. Jarred, topped and banded, into the boiling bath the jars went.

 I was so proud when I pulled them out. They were beautiful! Then I heard the pop, pop, pop of the lids sealing and marveled at my own greatness. Well, pride comes before a fall.

Canned apples!

 The tomato sauce was ready. I jarred it up in pints in the same manner (I halved the recipe but didn’t get anywhere near half the yield the recipe stated…maybe I simmered too long and now have tomato sauce concentrate…anyway, I digress.) and dunked them in the water. About fifteen minutes into the processing time, I opened the refrigerator and saw the lemon juice (that I specifically sent test subject Bill to the store to buy because I was short) that was supposed to go into the sauce before it went into the jars. (For pH

They sure look nice...

reasons, the lemon juice is added to better stabilize the sauce.)

 My heart fell out and hit the floor with a thud. After all that work, to screw it up at the very end…I deserve three kung faux pas for that one. Derrr!

 Anyway, I let the jars finish processing and did what any normal person would do. I went crying to my mom and finished off the rest of the bottle of wine that didn’t go into the sauce.

You know when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself...

 Mom kindly assured me that my sauce would be ok without the lemon juice, that she had done it before and it turned out just fine. She then shared with me a very sad story about a time when she had to throw out 24 jars of green beans because she misread the processing time. Thanks, Mom.

 I also sent the following email to the webmaster of the site that I got the recipe from:

 “What would happen, hypothetically, if you forgot to put the lemon juice in before canning the tomato sauce? Not that I did that or anything.”

 The friendly response indicated I could recan with the lemon juice and reprocess. I figured I’d screwed it up enough for one time around so I decided to just refrigerate my jars. I’ve got the space in between my yogurt and my pickles. [Note: I tried the tomato sauce one week later and it is the bomb. I had it with some mozzarella sticks and it is super yummy!]

Dilled and rather pickled green beans

 Undaunted (or insane) I tried my hand again the next day with some Dilled Green Beans. This was a fairly simple recipe. Trim the beans, pack them and the other ingredients into hot jars and pour a boiling salt/water/vinegar solution over them. Top, band and boil. This went much better than the day before (experience is a great teacher). Only issue was that even though I halved the recipe, half the liquid wasn’t enough so I had to quick boil some more while my beans waited.

 It was a success, as all my lids were sucked down 24 hours later. And darned if they don’t look totally cool. I love opening up my pantry and seeing my canned apples and canned pickled green beans. I did it. I preserved!

 Here’s what I took away from this experience: 

• Read all your directions and make sure you have everything on hand.
• Make a checklist and go through it before you lid your jars.
• Check for bubbles and make sure you get them all pushed out before lidding.
• A wide mouth funnel is your friend. Get one.
• A jar lifter for pulling hot jars out of boiling water will save your fingers. Note to self: get jar lifter.
• Don’t use a wet potholder to pull something out of a 400 degree oven. Not that I did that or anything.
• A water bath canner will steam for a long time after you turn the heat off.
• Sticking your hand into the water where you’ve been heating your jars and lids may not be advisable. Also not something that I did.
• Resist the urge to play with your jars after you pull them out of the canner.
• Popping is a good thing.
• Canned botulism = bad. If it smells funny or you’re not sure about something, don’t eat it. This is actually serious this time. Public service announcement. Don’t kill yourself.
• There is something inherently satisfying about making something shelf stable. Independence!

With a few successes and a few kung faux pas under my belt, I can safely say that I will try canning again. It is a lot of work, but what else are you going to do over the weekend that you can enjoy for months to come?

Duck Again

Just a follow up to my duck post a while back. My first attempt at the duck (which I proudly helped process right on the farm) was roasting it in the oven. It tasted great if you were willing to chew it for a couple of hours. Since we were not willing to do that, I tried it this time in the crock pot.

First I sliced up some white potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions and garlic (all local, either CSA or farmer’s market scores) and covered the bottom of the crock with the slices, then poured on about half a cup of chicken stock (home made, of course!). I put the duck on top and it wouldn’t fit. I cut off as much of the neck as I could, rearranged the veggies and tried again. It barely fit. (Whew!) I cut up some organic carrots (sadly store bought) and stuck them around the open spaces. I topped off the bird with some Italian seasoning and let it go in the crock on low for about eight hours.

This did the trick! The duck was so tender that it literally fell off the bones. I couldn’t even get it into a dish without it falling to pieces! It was super yummy, flavorful and the veggies complemented it well. It did tend to start drying out when the skin was pulled off of it so we left the skin on as long as possible. Next time I’ll cover it with some aluminum foil right away to help retain moisture.

Test subject Bill loved it. He comments that cold duck leftovers are also delicious when dipped in Worcestershire sauce. Sweeeet!

Asian Pear A La Mode

I’ve never really been a huge fan of Asian pears. They’re not quite a pear, they’re not quite an apple…just never really knew what to do with them. So I wasn’t particularly excited to get one in my CSA box. It sat on the counter for a while and I began to worry that it would die there.

But suddenly…inspiration! I got an idea from a Nourishing Traditions recipe (I think, I was reading several cookbooks) and grabbed that pear, rescuing it from the certain doom of decay. I diced it up and sauteed it in some butter and cinnamon until it was starting to get soft and a little golden brown and delicious on the edges.

Rising out a fancy dessert dish (I rarely make desserts, so the dishes tend to sit around and get dusty), I filled it with the warm pear and put a small scoop of my homemade vanilla ice cream on it. For good measure, I topped the ice cream with two frozen raspberries (farmer’s market haul from last month, yeah) and dusted it with a little more cinnamon. It was a work of art!

When I tasted it, at first it didn’t seem sweet enough and I was tempted to put honey on it.  But as the ice cream started to melt and mix in with the pear it was plenty sweet and I’m glad I didn’t add anything. I am still not an Asian pear fan, but this was a satisfying and beautiful dessert. Next time one of those fruits graces my CSA box I won’t be too disappointed.

The Spice is Right

Apparently I’ve been on a spicy roll lately. I was quietly perusing the farmer’s market and came across these fantastic looking poblanos. I had to have some. Suddenly all my weekend cooking plans were completely rearranged, all due to some chiles.

Poblanos just beg to be stuffed, and these ones were no different. Earlier this year I did some shrimp stuffed poblanos and they turned out well, so I decided to take that idea and run with it.

But before I could do anything else, there was another urgent matter. Salsa. I chopped and diced and threw together my CSA tomatoes, farmer’s market sweet onions, garlic and jalapeno, and some cilantro, lime and salt n pepper. I took several bites to make sure it was good.

For the poblanos, I roasted them in the oven, turning often until they were mostly blackened, then steamed them in a covered dish. I know that the skin is just supposed to peel off effortlessly, but peeling these poblanos made me remember why it’s been eight months since I did this. It really is a pain in butt. Then you have to carefully open it and pull out the seeds. This would be easier if you have slave labor (aka children) to help. The kitties told me I was on my own.

For the stuffing, I cooked up some Nature’s Harmony Farm ground pork and seasoned it with this chipotle seasoning from Whole Foods. I stirred some sour cream and cilatro into it and was suprised at how really fantastic it tasted. I lined my baking dish with a bunch of chopped tomatoes that didn’t make it into the salsa and arranged my poblanos onto them, stuffing them with as much pork mix as they could take. A sprinkle of mexican cheese went on and into the oven they went until the cheese was all nicely browned and bubbly.

They were delicious, if I do say so myself. Spicy and savory, with the extra kick of the salsa on the side…mmmm…. Test subject Bill went back for seconds.

Happy Labor Day, everyone! I have some pickles calling from the fridge, reminding me to enjoy the fruits of my labor…hope you do, too.

I’ll sell you my pickle for a nickle

How about two cents?

 

Who doesn’t like pickles? Well…test subject Bill is a self-proclaimed pickle hater. With this in mind…well…I made pickles anyway

With Alton Brown’s refrigerator pickle recipe recipe in hand, I was determined to produce the best pickles ever. Or, at least something edible. His recipe calls for “pickling spices.” I visited three different stores, including two different Whole Foods, but there were no pickling spices to be found. So I sought out my own pickling spice recipe. A fellow blogger was kind enough to provide her pickling spice recipe so I thought I was good to go:

PICKLING SPICE I

2 cinnamon sticks, broken
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon whole allspice
1 teaspoon juniper berries
1 teaspoon crumbled whole mace
1 teaspoon dill seeds
4 dried bay leaves
1 small piece dried ginger

Mix together all the ingredients.

Store in a small, airtight jar up to 2 months.

Makes about 1/4 cup.

Well…a few of those ingredients were hard to come by. I tore Whole Foods and Publix apart but had to substitute ground ginger for the dried ginger and ground mace for the whole mace. I made my pickling spice and hoped for the best.

Cucumbers waiting to become pickles.

Using a combination of cucumbers from my CSA box and the Saturday farmer’s market, I got to work slicing and mixing. The recipe is suprisingly easy – I can’t believe I didn’t do this before. I filled up nine small canning jars and one large one with cucumbers and onions, simmered the spices and vinegars and water together and poured them over the top of the veggies.

Alton’s recipe calls for half a cup of sugar. I don’t like using so much (plus I think sweet pickles are gross) so I did one batch with the full amount of sugar, one with half the sugar and one with a quarter of the sugar called for. I guess I just can’t leave things alone – must experiment!

After the jars cooled to room temperature, I lidded and refrigerated them. The great thing about these pickles is that they are ready almost right away. I tried some the very next day and was pleasantly suprised. The sugar wasn’t overpowering and offered a nice balance to the tartness of the vinegars. I didn’t taste too much difference between the full sweet and half sweet ones, so I think I’ll just use half the sugar from now on. The quarter sweet ones I also enjoyed, although they were a bit more sour than the others. The substitutions I made in the pickling spice didn’t seem to have had an adverse impact on the final product. Yay!

Oh pickle my pickle!

Test subject Bill finally taste tested them tonight. “These taste better than pickles,” he announced. (All according to my plan…slowly but surely I will turn him…) I have to agree – they are superior to store bought pickles and not difficult to make. The only problem is that they only last two months.

Yo Quiero Enchiladas

Many moons ago my mom showed me an easy enchilada recipe. After a series of adjustments, this is pretty much how I’ve been making them for the past eight or nine years: brown ground beef. Fill flour tortilla with beef, some canned enchilada sauce, chipotle sauce, roll up. Put them in a glass baking dish, cover with more canned enchi sauce and pop in the oven for 20 minutes. Add cheese and bake another five minutes or so. That’s it.

Well, that’s all fine and good but since I’m…well, me…I decided to seek out a homemade enchi sauce. Based on this recipe and the ensuing comments, this is pretty much what I did: melt 3 T butter in a sauce pan. Stir in 3 T flour to make a roux. Stir in 1/4 cup chili powder. Stir in 2 cups of chicken stock. Stir in a little over half a can of tomato sauce.  Add 1 t garlic powder, 1 t oregano and 1 t cumin. Simmer for 10-15 minutes. Repeat as above but using the homemade sauce (and I added some black beans to the beef mix since I was making a few more than usual).

Store bought (top) vs. home made (bottom). Topped with white cheddar from a local Georgia dairy farm!

I was nervous about how the homemade sauce would turn out so I did two pans of enchiladas – one with the homemade sauce and one with the canned sauce (just in case it was a disaster we would still have dinner).  The darker one is the stuff I made. It looked a lot like the canned version, just darker. Smelled good and tasted ok on its own. But the real test was Test Subject Bill. Would he approve the new sauce? Would his highly refined taste buds (er, whatever) reject the non-Old El Paso version?

Bill commented that the canned stuff is sweeter, but he complained that both versions were missing “something.” The elusive “something” remains unknown. His half Mexican heritage did not help us one bit in the spice detection department. However, upon adding more cumin and more chili powder, he announced the homemade version acceptable. “Ok,” he said. “You can make enchiladas using your sauce.”

Wooooohooooo! It’s every kung fu girl’s dream to have her sauce deemed acceptable. I felt so validated.

Beef (local Georgia grass-fed, of course) and bean enchiladas and guacamole!

Now, for the nitty gritty. I think what will make this sauce better is to saute fresh garlic with the butter and forget the powder. I hate to add sugar, but I think honey would make it taste funny. So he might have to live without it. Also, I plan to seek out some higher quality chili powder and use a little more tomato sauce next time. Other than that, I think it was a pretty tasty experiment.

As for the accompaniment, I love guacamole. And it’s so easy – once I learned how to make it I couldn’t figure out what they sell those stupid spice packets for in the store. Mash two avocados. Mince three or so cloves of garlic (or to taste). Finely chop a jalapeno (I used the fresh one that come out of my garden! I couldn’t believe it!). Squeeze the juice out of half a lime. Mix all together with a little salt and pepper and you’ve got yourself some fresh, tasty guac. I used to make it with only one avocado but Bill would eat it all and I would get none so I had to add the second one.

So the only serious problem I have with my enchiladas right now is the tortillas. I am highly suspicious of the ones I get at the store. There’s questionable ingredients on the package. (At least I avoided the one that listed partially hydrogenated vegetable oil….gag me.) I guess that just leaves one alternative…I am going to have to learn how to make tortillas.

Produce Panic Attack

Last week I had a produce panic attack.

There are loads of goodness coming in from the local farms, and I think half of it ended up in my kitchen. Between my CSA box and my inability to stay away from the Suwanee farmer’s market on Saturday mornings, my fridge and counter tops were bursting with produce. It was time to freak out.

What do I do with all this bounty??

So I got to work. I froze a ton of green beans and some raspberries (I can get a few raspberries down here and they are great, but they are just not the powerhouses like the ones I got back on the farm in Iowa). I felt better after that, but still…all that squash…

Zucchini bread and squash muffins

So I got to work making squash muffins courtesy of a recipe from my CSA newsletter. Sounds weird, but they really do taste good. (Especially with butter and a little honey!) I made two dozen of those, put some in the freezer and some in bags to give to friends. Then I made a loaf of zucchini bread from my How to Cook Everything book. I’ll have to tell you how that tastes later because it’s in my freezer right now, which is just about to explode.

Last night I made a tomato and cucumber salad with Vidalia onions, with just a little salt and pepper, fresh parsley and a drizzle

Tomato and cucumber salad

of olive oil. Super yum.

I also found a recipe for squash fritters so I thought I would give that a try for a little appetizer. You grate the squash, strain and squeeze out the moisture, then combine with flour (recipe calls for almond flour but I had none, so I used arrowroot flour…anyone know if that makes a big difference?), seasonings, and egg. They ended up looking grate and tasting good (test subject Bill had four or five of them) but they were a bit soggy. I think I wasn’t aggressive enough in

Squash Fritters

squeezing out the liquid. Next time those squash won’t know what hit them. They were fun to make, though, and it was actually my first time using coconut oil. Tasty stuff!

For a main course I made a beef and eggplant stir fry with red bell pepper, green bell pepper, misc hot peppers and those light green not-hot peppers that grow around here that I have no idea what they’re called. For the seasoning, I coated the beef strips in this Chinese 10-spice I got at the farmer’s market, then made a

Scratch and sniff

sauce with a little water and cornstarch to thicken it up. The beef was a sirloin steak from Nature’s Harmony Farm. I used the leftover coconut oil from the fritters to do the frying.

It was SO GOOD. The beef was tender, the veggies were slightly crunchy, the sauce was phenomenal. Truely, I wish this was a scratch and sniff blog with a taster option because I can’t even explain how great this smelled and tasted. And all I really did was throw stuff together. A smart cook uses good ingredients so they don’t have to work as hard Test subject Bill went back for seconds.

Wheaties, hit the road.

When I woke up this morning there was still work left to do on the produce barrel. I stirred some of the sweet and hot peppers into my morning eggs, tossed in some chopped tomato and topped it with a dallop of sour cream for a southwestern southeastern egg dish. I cut up a baby cantelopue (those things are so darn cute) and used the raspberries I didn’t freeze to make a dessert for my breakfast. (Who says breakfast can’t have dessert?) Add some toast made from Ezekiel bread from the farmer’s market, a cup of tea and a glass of real milk and that’s what I call the breakfast of champions. Wheaties is for chumps.

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

Finally, and this has nothing to do with produce, but after all that effort I needed a sweet treat. A couple eons ago I had this Care Bear cookbook. It was filled with ridiculously sweet treats for kids to make, but the one thing I made over and over again was the Nutty Shake. It has been probably 20 years since I made one. I was due.

I used some of my homemade vanilla ice cream, some organic peanut butter, milk and replaced the white sugar that the original recipe called for with honey and let it rip in the blender. I think I used a tad too much milk because it didn’t come out as thick as I wanted, but it didn’t matter. I sucked it down and was grateful.

I know this all sounds like a ton of work, but I am so relaxed right now. We ate well and there’s more in the freezer for later. There’s just something about real food that makes me smile.

Georgia Onion Soup

French onion soup has always been one of my favorites. Rich broth and onions and cheesy goodness…what’s not to like? I recall trying to make it once a number of years back. It isn’t a good memory. It was time to conquer the soup, this time with a twist.

I made beef stock using my trusty How to Cook Everything book and Nature’s Harmony Farm beef bones. I’m getting pretty good at stock making and it’s not nearly as scary or time consuming as I feared. Of course now I have a freezer full of little containers of stock. Good thing I invested in a deep freeze.

I could have knit a sweater in the time it took these onions to carmelize.

Again referencing the onion soup recipe in How to Cook Everything, I sliced up some local Georgia Vidalia onions with my mandolin (the slicer, not the instrument). Into the pot with some butter they went for a nice long rest. Maybe it was a watched pot never boils syndrome, but those onions took FOREVER to carmelize. I kept looking at it and wondering if they were real onions.

Finally when I had gotten some color I added my freshly made beef stock, herbs and some cognac (uh-huh!).  When that had heated through it was time for the oven. I took a piece of my homemade bread, toasted it and stuck it in a small soup crock. The soup went over it, then I topped it off with this farmhouse cheese that I got in my CSA box that tastes kind of like gruyere (you know, since this was not French or Swiss onion soup – this is GEORGIA onion soup.)

Georgia never tasted so good...

After about ten minutes in the oven, my soup was ready. Once it cooled off a bit and I got a taste, it was so worth it. Sweet and salty, rich and cheesy, made from mostly local ingredients…man. You just can’t buy that in a restaurant.

Duck Tales

When I was a kid, my older sister had ducks. They liked to swim around in the creek and hang out under the bridge. One afternoon, she and I watched little baby ducks hatch out of their eggs. Whenever hunters came over wanting to hunt pheasant on our property, she would go bonkers afraid that they would shoot her ducks. The beginning of a duck and the end of a duck – I witnessed the anticipation of the first and the fear of the second. But when I think of duck now, the experience I had last Saturday will be what comes to mind.

Entering Nature's Harmony Farm

A few weeks back I got an email from my heroes at Nature’s Harmony Farm offering free ducks. All I saw was “free” and “duck” and I was like woohoo! Yeah, ok! So they said we would have to remove pin feathers (whatever those were) ourselves because they were having a difficult time doing it efficiently on the farm (hence the free part of the deal). I was thinking that I would get a frozen duck with some pain in the tail feathers to figure out how to pick out on my own. Then I learned that in order to obtain said free duck, I would actually be

The poultry processing center.

on the farm helping process the ducks. (Process = live duck to dead, gutted, bald duck ready for duck a l’orange.)

Shoot first, ask questions later. Don’t read the whole email. History repeats itself.

At first I was like ummmm….but I said I wanted free duck so I was willing to own up to my obligation. So I made the trek up to Elberton, GA to practice some real old ways kung fu…duck processing.

Peacocks: either administering last rites, or telling the ducks about how hosed they are.

Most of the ducks were caught and in cages (yes, these are real free range ducks) when I arrived. I helped clean up the processing area and met the other helpers as they arrived. There were a small number of us plus Liz and Tim, the farm owners. Primed and ready, we all watched solemnly as Tim began the process. He put the duck head first into an upside down cone, then sliced the major artery and allowed the duck to bleed out. Because humane treatment is important to them (and all of us helpers) Tim made the effort to ensure it was done properly and that

Scalder (front) and de-feathering spinner (back). Killing cone in the back with a few ducks in it.

minimal suffering was involved.

Apparently we were a little too solemn because I think we made Tim self concious. “You all are looking at me like I’m the bad guy,” he said with a small grin. But it wasn’t that. At least for me, I needed to see it happen. I needed to have that much participation in the end of life moment. If we are going to eat animals, we should not divorce ourselves from the process or lie to ourselves about what happens.

Ducks going into the scalder.

In factory farm processing, the animals live a horrendous life in cramped quarters, wallowing around in their own feces and being jacked up with Lord only knows what chemicals/antibiotics/hormones, then meet their end by someone who has no regard for their lives. Not so on Nature’s Harmony Farm, where the animals are allowed to be themselves, doing what it is God meant them to do. Swim. Peck. Quack with other ducks. And when the time comes, the last thing they see is someone who respects them and honors the value

Plucking the rest of the feathers.

of their lives. The cycle of life will end one way or the other, and if I was a bird I know which one I would choose.

Once the ducks are off the cone, they go into a scald which loosens the feathers. After that, they go for a spin in a plucking machine which removes most of the feathers. From the spinner to the table, the ducks loose their feet and heads. At least one volunteer was willing to help with that part (not me – I didn’t get a waiver from Bill to use a knife. He knows

Eggs removed from a female duck during evisceration. Liz told us that ducks are born with all the eggs they will ever have. Here these eggs are in various stages of maturity. Intersting in a Discovery Channel kind of way.

how I am.)

After the extremities are removed, we got to work removing the pin feathers and any other feathers left on the duck. Tim and Liz said these were going much better than the ones they’d done before, but it was still a pain. Little tiny feathers remained that stuck to our fingers or stuck back to the duck. Some were easier than others, but we persevered and had plenty of time to get to know our fellow processers.

After the de-feathering was completed, it was time for the really fun part: evisceration. Liz showed us how to open

Me working on a gizzard.

up the duck and carefully remove all the guts. I didn’t do the actual evisceration part, but I did separate the liver, heart and gizzards from a lot of duck guts. I also learned how to clean and cut up the gizzard. I was afraid at first (especially because it involved the knife, don’t tell Bill) but I got the hang of it.

We processed thirty ducks and helped clean up the processing shed over about four hours. I packed up my cooler with five ducks, a small bag of the organs to give it a try, and some of the feet for stock making.

After it was all said and done, I did not feel grossed out, wrong or mean. I felt like I’d done honest work (will work for duck?) and did a reasonably good job of it. And there was no doubt where my ducks came from or how they had lived. I had a local, organic, sustainable and ethical cooler full of duck that I had helped process myself.

Roasted Duck!

I was anxious to cook a fresh duck, so one stayed out and the other four went into the freezer along with the feet and offal. Using a recipe loosely based on this one, I went about roasting my duck. I was told low and slow was the way to go…but apparently I didn’t do it low enough. After 40 minutes at 325 degrees my temperature probe (which I had probably misplaced) was telling me the thigh was done. I thought it was telling me lies so I turned down the temperature and left it in the oven for about a total of one hour forty-five minutes.

I think that was a mistake.

Not low enough, not slow enough, I’m thinking was my kung faux pas. The duck came out looking fantastic, but it was tough and the skin (which tasted fabulous) was not crispy, but kind of rubbery. The flavor of the meat was great, but you had to want it. Chewing was a bit of a challenge.

Test subject Bill agreed that it tasted great, but suggested a soup for the leftovers. So I stripped the bird as best I could and cut the pieces up into small chunks. I threw together a soup of duck bits, home made chicken stock, some potatoes and onions from the farmers market, a can of kidney beans and seasonings. It actually turned out pretty good and cutting up the duck meat into small manageable chunks made it much easier to eat.

I felt better about the whole thing after the soup success. And I have four more ducks to perfect my process. I will not be discouraged!

Having participated in the process was a valuable experience and I am so glad I did it. It truely does bring you closer to the food that is nourishing your body. It isn’t artificially sanitized the way buying chicken breast on toilet paper wrapped in saran wrap is, or a bag of apples that came from who knows where that has touched who knows what. You know the truth when you do it yourself. It’s honest, it’s real and it’s yours.

I was told that the true meaning of kung fu is time and effort, a studious, dedicated person. I thank Tim and Liz for the time and effort and for teaching me this duck kung fu.

Georgia Harvest

I’ve been going hog wild this summer, between the farmer’s market and my CSAs, I am completely out of control. Test subject Bill agrees, but he’s not complaining too much

Lettuce, melon, blueberries, tomatoes, sweet corn, cucumbers...mmmm

Here’s an example of some of the fine produce I’ve pulled in recently. It’s hard work opening my CSA box and getting to the farmer’s market early enough to hog all the good stuff for myself, but it’s worth it. (This past Saturday I was there at the crack of dawn because I heard a vendor was going to have raspberries. DUDE. I was there before they were.)

And from this fine haul I had an exceptional dinner – a BLT (using my own homemade bacon from pastured Georgia hogs, tomatoes and lettuce from my CSA), sweet corn from the farmers market (got

You can't see the bacon too well in the BLT, but trust me. It's in there. Hehe.

some in the CSA box too but that got blanched and frozen), a little salad and cantaloupe and blueberries for dessert. I just have to say…that CSA canteloupe was the bomb diggity. Usually I’m kind of meh when it comes to this particular melon, but this was so fresh and sweet I ate every last morsel. It was better than dessert.

And it’s only the beginning of August now. It’s not over yet. I love living in Georgia.