2/1/10—Day 1 done

I dragged myself out of bed this morning at 8:30 a.m.—a good hour before I'd usually even consider being up and at 'em. After dealing with the ongoing ant infestation in my kitchen and emptying the dishwasher of clean crockery to make way for the dirty stuff that had piled up in the sink and attracted the ants in the first place, it was time to start my day with a bowl of breakfast quinoa, as recommended in this month's MSL. A dust-covered jar of the strange little grain has been living for years on my top shelf between some very scary-looking homemade pickled mushrooms gifted to me many years ago and a jar of what appears to be fig preserves of unknown origin. (see photo 1)

Although Martha recommended preparing the quinoa on the stovetop with milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, & blueberries, I decided to apply my favorite oatmeal ingredients and cook it in a lidded casserole dish in the microwave. I used milk and orange tangerine Juicy Juice, a dash of nutmeg, splash of vanilla, a handful of craisins, a pinch of salt, and a generous chunk of butter for good measure.

It takes less than 5 minutes to cook a giant bowl of oatmeal this way, but that damn quinoa took for-fucking-ever! It went through at least a half dozen 5 minute cycles and nearly twice the recommended liquid before the stuff even started to take on that translucent sheen that means it's done. Even then, it was still pretty al dente & I added a couple generous splats of my homemade yogurt to transform the sandy pile into something resembling creamy mush (yes, I make my own yogurt—there's more than a little Martha in me after all!). It tasted pretty good, but I'm just not into the weird chewy caviar texture of quinoa—now I know why that jar sat neglected on the top shelf for so long. (see photo 2)

Martha's calendar for today lists "Work out" and "replenish firewood." For me the former means a few rounds of sun salutations and dancing warrior in between checking on the quinoa and batting my little dog Andromeda away as she shoves her slobber-covered squeaky monkey toy in my face and takes over my yoga mat only to outshine me in downward-facing dog. As for the latter, I don't have a functioning fireplace, so a brief visit to my next-door neighbor's fenced-in yard where Andi loves to sniff and scurry all over a fallen tree will have to qualify. After five minutes of snarfing about, Andi squeezed out a massive poo pile in a tangle of ivy & I figured it was time to get outa there & on with my day.

But first I had to get the duck confit in the oven.... I'd planned to make an MSL-endorsed Persian rice dish for dinner tonite. The recipe calls for duck confit as an optional ingredient—one that prompted me to ask the question "What the fuck is duck confit?" The internets enlightened me: it's the salt-cured legs & wings of a duck, poached in duck fat. We just happened to have a whole duck in our freezer (my husband Charles has a meat-hoarding disorder and picked it up on sale a few months back).

I'd only cooked duck for the first time a couple weeks ago. Just before Christmas we caught our neighbor, Caleb hauling a couple of rifles out of his car on a Sunday morning. He was clad in cammo and sporting an orange vest, so it was safe to assume he'd just come from hunting and wasn't about to go postal. He proudly showed off a handful of limp little mallards, their beady dead eyes staring out of shiny iridescent green heads. Caleb offered us a couple of frozen breasts left over from his last killing spree & Charles bowed down before him in eternal gratitude. When I finally got around to cooking them, I simply sprinkled them with Tony Cachere's, pan-seared them, & finished them off in a hot oven for just a few minutes. Served with a side of gingered carrots & cajun spiced rice, they were tender and tasty and surprisingly steaky.

So back to the confit.... I spent the better part of Saturday night eviscerating the thawed quacker carcass with a pair of kitchen shears—removing the legs & thighs, the wings, and all skin & fatty tissues (see photo 3). Following a Gourmet video which I'd found on the web, I rubbed the parts down with salt & spices and forgot about it in the fridge for 36 hours. Somewhere between this morning's ant battle, the quinoa experiment, and the dog's bowel movement, I brushed off the salt as per instructed and slipped Daffy's sundry parts into a 200° oven to slowly poach away the entire day.

By 10 a.m. I was on to my real job—copyediting 40 pages of academic prose on the philosophical implications of lifestyle choices in light of the impending apocalypse. After a few hours immersed in that terrifying crap, I needed to get the hell out of the house! Andi & I took a long walk to the local hippy-dippy grocery co-op where I picked up basmati rice & spices for the evening's Martha-inspired meal.

The rice came off without a hitch, though I refused to peel the potatoes & substituted more of those craisins for the dried cherries called for in the recipe (see photo 4). The recipe also allowed for an option of mixing the confit into the rice, but after pulling the perfectly poached tender parts out of the oven, I decided to follow Gourmet's lead, searing the legs to serve them on a bed of greens with the rice on the side (see photo 5). Lest you think I made a special trip to an upscale market to pick up the fancy greens, know that arugula is among my top 10 favorite foods and I always have it on hand in season, often picking it from my own yard where it's known to sprout up in the lawn after going to seed. And the beet greens were thrust upon me by my neighbor who picked them at her beau's family farm a couple counties over (and I compensate her by allowing my ill-behaved mongrel to shit in her yard!).

Although everything looked perfect, the duck confit was outrageously salty—like drowned-in-the-Dead-Sea salty. Thankfully the subtle perfumey sweetness of the rice & the clean bitterness of the greens complemented the briney meat & provided enough balance to make the whole ensemble more than palatable.

But I'm a harsher critic than Charles, and despite the fact that he was freaked out by the craisins and picked every single one out of the rice (he does the same with peas and corn), he pretty much inhaled the whole plate. In the meantime, I've got a massive pile of leftover rice, a container of congealed duck fat, and a naked limbless bird carcass in my fridge. Perhaps I'll bring a doggie bag to my neighbor tomorrow—I'll just be sure to avoid stepping in the doggie doo along the way.