Bananza? Bonanza? Bonanza doesn’t look right, but Bananza gets red squiggles under it. I guess I’ll go with Bonanza.
So, Sunday was Duck Day! I popped that sucker in around 8 or 9 and followed the recipe almost to a T. Three comments of note: 1. I didn’t pull off all the quills. I pulled off a few and then got bored and tired and stopped. We just ended up not eating most of the skin. 2. The molasses in our cupboard, come to find out, expired in 2010. I had to improvise. Instead of of 1/4 cup honey and 1/4 cup of molasses, I went with all honey. I also had no Sriracha, so I used Tapatio. We were in a whiskey kind of mood on Sunday (we started out the festivities with a shot of Templeton Rye), so I added a couple tablespoons of Jack. I don’t have a pastry brush, so I just poured the glaze on the duck. The glaze was so tasty, however, that we scooped up the leftovers from the bottom of the pan and dipped the duck pieces in it. 3. I think I overcooked it. The recipe said to cook the duck for 4 hours, but it didn’t specify what size of duck to use. Mine was around 5 lbs. The legs were tasty, but the breast meat was a little dry. We ate most of the bird for lunch, and I pulled off all the leftover meat. For breakfast I chopped it up and sauteed it in duck fat with some veggies. We ate it with avocado and scramby eggs. Muy bueno!!!
So, would I do it again? Yeah, I sure would. It was an Event! The duck was tasty, I got almost 2 cups of rendered duck fat, and I was able to spam all my Instagram followers with hourly photos of a duck cooking. Good times.
For dessert, I made Love You Long Time Chocolate Cupcakes. These things are so good. You don’t even know. Unfortunately, being wiped from slaving over the duck all day (and from drinking a couple of whiskey and sodas), when I was putting the pan of cupcakes into the oven, I hit the shelf and ended up spilling half the batter on the open oven door. ARGH!! I was able to salvage about half of them, and they ended up delicious. They have no added sugar – just ripe bananas to make them sweet. Tim and I loved them. I’m not sure if someone who is used to eating a lot of sugar would think they were as good, but we’ll definitely make them again.
Speaking of sugar, I also made Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies to take into the office. You make regular PB cookies, but then you make this filling of PB, vanilla, and milk, and then you make peanut butter cookie sandwiches out of it. They were wicked good. I felt a little bad making them and unloading them on my coworkers, because I just read this article. Sugar is poison. Sweet, delicious, hideous poison. If you want to poison your friends and family, let me know in the comments, and I’ll send you the recipe.
For supper last night I tried another new recipe: Apple and Butternut Squash Hash. This recipe was super simple, yet super delicious. We had it for supper last night, and I ate it for breakfast and lunch today, and there is enough left for breakfast tomorrow.
For supper tonight I made Low Carb Italian Wedding Soup accompanied by Coconut Flour Muffins (from The 21 Day Sugar Detox). The soup turned out really tasty. I dirtied about 1/2 of our dishes though and had a run-in with a ziploc baggie of frozen chicken broth. I ended up breaking a bowl and burning some of the precious duck fat whilst wraggling with the baggie. But, well, you know. It’s all over now, and we had delicious soup with MUFFINS! Paleo muffins though – no sugar – just coconut flour, eggs, coconut milk, coconut flour, baking powder and salt. Tim said they tasted like macaroons (did I mention they have coconut in them?). I broke mine up and added it to the soup. It was nice to have a bread-ish texture with the soup. I think they would taste fantastic with some raisins and/or dark chocolate chips.
So that’s all my recipes for the past few days – lots of winners and will-make-agains in there.
Oh, and we didn’t just EAT all weekend. We also biked 15 miles and ran 5, raked the lawn, and cleaned the house. So we burned off some of the energy at least!
Take care, and I’ll let you know how the rest of the week’s recipes pan out.
