My life, for the past 8 months has been a constant go go go, with little time to myself. I think it's finally all caught up to me. This week I finally hit the wall emotionally and physically. Today I had to just stay home, for the whole day, hope that losing those few extra dollars doesn't put me over the edge financially, which I'm not sure why I'm worried about that, I'm already over the edge, and hope that this fever I've been living and working with for the past 3 days will finally go away. I think the fever is making me delirious, because I almost had myself convinced that my body is just running hot naturally in defense of my impossible to heat freezing cold house.
Which brings me to my prosciutto project. ("I've got a natural meat locker, I might as well cure meat.")
The instructions said the duck breasts should lose 30% of their original weight - and that should take a week. The week has come and gone. They weren't at 30%. So, after God knows how many hours of sleep today, I wandered into my refrigerator - um I mean kitchen - and got a cup of coffee - and there were my duck breasts out in the meat locker/foyer staring me down. Hmmm. I wonder.
At 30% weight loss they should weigh 11.9 ounces.
They are at 12.9 ounces today! One more ounce to go. I'm thinking they may just be ready by this Sunday - which would be 2 weeks from the beginning of this project. I guess I should have factored in the moisture of the North Coast and of this house. I think when Michael Ruhlman said they should hang in a moist area that always stays between 50 and 60 degrees, he wasn't thinking about those of us who live in a rain forest.
As for the other part of my charcuterie experiment with the duck, the duck confit came out perfect! I didn't get pictures unfortunately. It was all I could do to get dinner together last night. I was feeling pretty under the weather, but my 12 year old and 7 year old raved about the duck! How many kids can say their mom serves up duck confit for dinner? Way better then anything from a fast food joint! They even loved my botched first attempt at homemade pumpkin gnocchi. So ill or not, I've still got it in the kitchen.
The rest of my day, that which hasn't been spent sleeping or weighing meat, has been spent checking out video's from IFC and discovering this funky new show called Portlandia. When I saw this video called "Is It Local", I had to laugh. To me this clip doesn't just poke fun and Portlander's, but at all of the local food activists out there who take things to ridiculous extremes ( we American's can really get carried away with our causes). Don't get me wrong, I'm all about eating local when you can and in season, but you have to admit, there are some nutjobs out there who come close to taking it to this extreme.
Here's your chuckle for the day. Enjoy!
And I swear the last time I ate at a restaurant in Portland this lady was our waitress!
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