The holidays are kind of hard to ignore around here, Christmas, New Years and Easter come twice a year, just one week after the other, so Christmas was yesterday, again...New Years will be next week, on the 14th, so it's called the Old New Year, it's because of the old calendar system they used to use, I can't explain it any better than that.
So a week or so ago I was walking down the sidewalk looking for someone to sell me an iPhone battery (almost impossible) and I nearly tripped over a little old lady who was selling a duck, right next to her was a young woman selling cranberries, so knowing I would need comfort food since there were no batteries to be had, I bought the duck and the berries. The duck did not come included with a shopping bag, all good shoppers here are supposed to leave home with a shopping bag...since I wasn't planning on buying anything bigger than a battery that day I had no shopping bag. I don't like to shop, so I don't ever have shopping bags on me...
I offered to pay good money for the ripped holey bag the duck came in, but now, that grandma told me to be off and buy my own bag, in tones which I recognized were not to be argued with, so anyway, I got home and we eventually baked this duck.
We made some very nice stuffing to stuff it with before baking it, but come to find out the duck was stuffed when we bought it! See all the nice stuffing?
We had delicious Danish Red Cabbage, a recipe from my Danish friend, Evelyn.
I was thinking I was wearing my ratcatcher here, but doesn't look like it. A ratcatcher is a special shirt worn by equestrians for dress up I guess is the best way to describe it.
This picture was taken in Festus, Missouri in about 1974. It's me and my dad. The horse is Carrigan, I was told he was a descendant of Man of War a famous race horse.
First let me tell you that we did buy an install disk, in fact my dad has three install disks, so the license is paid for. But since I don't know how to apply the patch myself I downloaded one of the Kalyway distributions. It was exciting to install it last night and see it work fairly well on the old hard drive of my Dell pc; that is I had no sound and no wireless, but otherwise it was a near Mac experience. Here's what it looked like:
I think that's the aurora borealis glow off of Dave's elbow, actually the standard Leopard desktop image. Since that effort put me back quite a bit on my REM time I tried hard to make up for that by cooking good food today. Here's what it looked like:
I got the recipe from the October issue of Prevention magazine. We keep it on the bathroom floor for lack of better inspiration in that room. Anyway, here's the recipe:
Prepare 8 oz whole wheat rotini according to package directions. (I simply boiled some noodles) In medium saucepan, simmer 1/2 12 oz package frozen butternut squash (I bought an unknown variety on the hoof out near the bus station) until combined. Remove from heat and mix with 1 c shredded reduced-fat Cheddar cheese, ( no Cheddar here, just whatever) 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp dry mustard, and pepper to taste. (I added Lebanese zatar) Pour drained pasta in to baking dish stir in cheese mixture and top with 1 Tbsp each Parmesan and bread crumbs. Bake at 375 F for 20 minutes.
I also added 2 beaten eggs to the squash. It was kind of a fun way to hack mac and cheese.
As we were eating I dug the label for the noodles out of the trash can to wonder what they used to make them green..."spinach?", we wondered...here are the ingredients:
durum wheat semolina, wheat germ, red chili, black squid ink, dehydrated beet root. Contains fish...
Anyway it was vegetarian. I topped mine with chopped walnuts to give my plate a real gourmet effect, it tasted great and I was glad for the crunch as I wondered about the nutritional benefits of black squid ink.
There's little dots on my map from lots of far away places, so I'm curious...who are you? How did you find me? Do you keep coming back? and what do YOU think?
