I’m alive!

The thesis craziness is all over and it’s submitted.  No one wants to read it.  Trust me.  It is likely riddled with grammatical errors, theory errors, research errors, interpretation errors, and all the other kind of errors you can think of.  Shhhhhh.  I don’t want to think about it.  I’m working, for the time being (freaking recession), for a company now doing what I do –designing open-pit mines.

Paycheques are awesome.

An old set of pictures from thanksgiving (the canadian one, so even older than november!) but full of yummy tasty things.  Me and B collaborated on a meal and spent a lot of time cooking it while getting sauced on wine and beer the entire time.  End result?  Tasty.   Lots of stuff cooked from the (now old) copy of Bouchon, which I recommend to anyone.  It’s certainly opened my eyes quite a bit in terms of technique, particularly when coupled with Cooking, by Peterson.  I’ve started paying a lot more attention to the ingredients and my food has certainly gotten better because of these two books.  Worth the investment.  Come on, I know some of you have Chapters gift cards from christmas!

In sort of matrix row from (acros, down, across, down, across.. 1,1 1,2 2,1 2,2) and so forth:

1,1: cutting up roasted cornish hens

1,2: cornish hens coming out of the oven

2,1: butternut squash soup with nutmeg creme fraiche (bouchon) with marinated goat’s cheese salad (hot! hot! hot!)

2,2: vanilla crepes with vanilla pastry cream and peaches (bouchon)

3,1: me working behind some flowers

3,2: breaking my pastry cream cherry

4,1: plated duck confit (this is worth the price of Bouchon alone! So freaking amazing that I keep making it over and over)

4,2: B making the soup from vegetable stock

5,1: me with a fro mowing on the duck confit (contented)

5,2: trussing cornish hens (it looks like I know what I’m doing but really folks, no BDSM leanings here)

6,1: B being my kitchen wench

6,2: happy B post duck confit looking a little cow-eyed

7,1: butternut squash soup in the making

All in all it was a yummy yummy dinner.  Really folks, go out and find a copy of Bouchon.  The duck confit alone (better than a lot of duck confit I’ve had in restaurants) is worth it.  I cheated a bit though as I have a wonderful sausage, pate, and other meat king in town who sells amazing duck confit for $3.99/leg which is cheaper than I can make it myself (and probably better).  At that price, I find myself buying them all the time.  Shredded into salad, smeared on bread, stuffed into ravioli, tucked into crepes.  The stuff is amazing.  If you are lucky enough to have a source of cheap duck confit, the recipe in Bouchon will blow your socks off.  Go buy it.

I’m not going to give up the recipe (buy the damn book!) but two seconds of googling found me, uhm, this: http://www.thepauperedchef.com/2007/04/the_duck_confit.html which should more than answer your questions.

Not bad for two students (then) on a budget, no?

-m