Today everything is ducky!!!

With the bad weather, being gone and being sick it has been more than a month since I have fixed a "company" meal and I  am on Sunday..  DH especially requested I serve duck crepes (one of his favorites)  and I found a recipe  for duck breast in sweet potato crepes with a blackberry sauce..

I wonder why so few people cook duck... It couldn't be easier to cook than in a slow cooker. Besides being delicious it is really quite economical for a special meal. When on a restaurant menu it is usually a very pricy meal but I can get a duck for $2.98 a pound which compared to beef or seafood, is quite cheap and I can get 3  meals out of a six pound duck..  So today I thawed a duck, cut it up and it is in the slow cooker... I put it on a bed of onions, rubbed it with poultry seasoning and stuffed the breast with parts of an orange....added a little white wine and it will be done tonight and I will cool it overnight in the frig and take the meat off the bone tomorrow. I save the skin separately and put it under the broiler until it is crispy and delicious and then slice it thin and use it as a  garnish.


We can have one meal with the legs as they are large, another meal  (or two)using the breast meat  and finally I get a lot of "confit" (which is a fancy word for bits) from the wings, neck, back, heart etc. and it can be used with pasta, dumplings, etc..  The Maple Leaf Farm site is loaded with recipes using duck and has everything from appetizers to duck soup.

When it is cool I save the duck fat and freeze it to use later. There is a long, delicious culinary tradition of cooking with duck fat.  If you google "duck fat" there is no end to the sites singing its praises.   The high smoke point of duck fat makes it a chef favorite; it can be cooked at high temperatures without smoking or altering   flavors. The French have known all along: duck fat is low in saturated fat and high in unsaturated fat, making it one of healthiest animal fats you can eat. And a large selection of brands of duck fat are even sold on Amazon.

The day started out well with the duck but when I tried to finish the last of the cookbooks the last albums I bought didn't have enough pages and then I decided to work on the fiesta necklace and became discouraged and packed it all up and it is history for now.. So I wrote the blog and now will take a nice nap to rest my eyes and hope the afternoon goes better.