I went out to the grocery store and I’m happy to report there are no more dead ducks on the side of the road. Perhaps, we can make it a whole week with the remainder of the flock intact. Do two ducks make a flock?
Friends are coming over tomorrow for dinner. We’re doing a seafood extravaganza. Mussels over baguette and grilled shrimp for appetizers. Then we’re making a fish chowder (cod, scallops and shrimp). There’s a beet salad in there somewhere and a dessert the better-half is in charge of because I’m doing most of the rest of the dishes (and he’s just better at it). The mussels are in the marinade right now.
These are the friends who have also purchased half of the enormous pork belly that I’m now smoking. It will be bacon later this afternoon. It’s been a comedy parade of me running from the kitchen to the smoker for the last hour.
To top it off we’re making bagels tonight (the sponge is on!) to put into their Christmas box. You may remember that several weeks ago I was wondering what to do about a gift and whether I had to go with a theme if the salsa ended up in the gift.
We decided to go with the idea of Friday Night/Saturday Morning for their gift. I infused some brandy turning it into ginger liqueur. To that side of the box, I added a jar of the salsa I canned mid-December and I bought a bag of blue corn tortilla chips. The other side of the box contains a small bottle of vodka, a bottle of V8, some of our home-grown garlic, cream cheese and the bagels. Hopefully they’ll like it.
I would love a gift like that!
They were quite pleased. As a joke I also put in a package of Alka Seltzer–which cracked me up when I bought it and is still making me chuckle.