New Pet?

Whew. I took some time off blogging while I did several weeks of movie work, which is now winding down. And a good thing, because clearly my little farm needs more attention...



Roommate Anne went to collect eggs today and instead she found a bizarre little hatchling. This poor guy showed up yesterday, apparently motherless and alone. Keith and the hens chased him away together.

Last night I took extra care to make sure I didn't lock him in with the hens - an opossum will kill a chicken, though I think the opossum needs to be a bit bigger to do that. He wasn't in the henhouse then and he wasn't there when Keith let the hens out this morning. But I guess our henhouse was an irresistible spot to hide out for the day... at least, until our hens beat him up and chased him away.

Poor little orphaned opossum. He just wants a safe place to sleep. And maybe a fresh egg to eat.



I hope he doesn't come back. I might have to adopt him. Wonder what the cats would think?

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Charcutepalooza: Duck Prosciutto

I promise, I have had a lot going on besides Charcutepalooza. But dangit, Charcutepalooza is the fun one of all my current projects! And finally today we got to enjoy its benefits.

The duck prosciutto was ready last week, but we were busy and only had time to try a little nibble. Our duck breasts had quite a bit of fat on them, which wasn't so good to eat straight, but I learned I could trim it off and use it to give an amazing richness to a pot of beans. Beyond that, we wrapped up the duck prosciutto and stashed it in the freezer for a better day.

Today was that day, and I decided that if you can't have a fancy appetizer for breakfast sometimes, then you aren't really living. I've always seen pork prosciutto served in thin slices wrapped around chunks of melon... and I got to thinking that the sweeter acidity of a mango would go nicely with our juniper-cured duck prosciutto.

The great thing about having frozen the prosciutto: It was easier to slice it very thin. And by the time I had the mango peeled and cubed, those thin slivers of duck had thawed out. So I just wrapped them up and plonked them on a pretty dish, and we nibbled our mango-prosciutto bites with our fingers over the newspaper. I had coffee because I'm a junkie, but Keith had his with peppermint tea, and in retrospect I bet that was really lovely with the fruit and duck.

So that's project one of Charcutepalooza, and I still have plenty of home-cured duck prosciutto in the freezer. (I'm thinking I need to chunk some of it up in the spring and make a pasta dish with duck prosciutto and the first little green peas from my garden.) Next up is homemade bacon, and I was out pricing pork belly for that today.

It's funny how cooking expands your horizons. Five years ago, I was in Hollywood experimenting with new produce from the Sunday farmers' market at Sunset and Vine. Three years ago, I was new in Portland and beginning to try my Grandmother's old freezing rituals and planning my garden. Two years ago, my dabbling interest in canning took off into an ever-growing epic that now consumes my summers and allows me to go Christmas shopping in my own pantry. One year ago, I started making cheese. And now that I've nailed down the science and craft of freezing and canning, my preservation inclinations are coming to include charcuterie. Not bad for a former-vegetarian urbanite.

And I find the more I learn, the less I know, and I like it that way. This way I always get to keep on learning! Now, on to that pork belly...

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My Husband Rules.

So I have this small, ugly kitchen that we're slowly working on. I have a decent-sized cookbook collection and they were all piled on a small table at the end of the kitchen, until we got a new huge dining table to put there. The cookbooks have been shuffled around to various spaces in other rooms and were resting on a bar table in the parlor when Keith, listless with cabin fever, decided he could build a shelf for them.



Without any prompting whatsoever by me - I was dealing with the pile of cookbooks in the parlor without any problems, though I knew it wasn't a permanent place - the other night Keith set up shop in the garage and began to tinker. Before I knew what he was doing, he had fashioned a shelf that would fit under the cabinets of my open walk-in pantry, and would mount to the walls and bottoms of the cabinets so that I'd still have plenty of room on the counter beneath.



In the time it takes me to make dinner, he'd installed it, fastened molding to hold it in place, sanded and spackled where necessary, and begun to paint it.



The next morning it got another couple coats of paint, and we let it dry for the rest of the day.



Keith did all of this by himself for about $5 in scrap wood and assorted supplies he found in the garage. The paint was the same paint we'd used on the kitchen walls. I had nothing to do with this project whatsoever, and I'm amazed at Keith's skills here. Just for purposes of comparison, here's what the kitchen looked like when we moved in.



Here's what it looks like now. Still not great, but better!



And here's my new shelf, which we loaded with my cookbook collection this morning. Keith had thought I'd have loads of extra space after the cookbooks were in. He underestimated my years of cookbook lust.



I love this guy even more than cookbooks.



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