Cullinary Adventures with Rachel

~ Highlight of the Day: Getting my bike lock cut by BYU police - I really hope I make it into the BYU Police Beat! :) ~

 

I cooked a lot of new stuff this weekend. I must be finally getting bored of all the recipes I discovered at the beginning of the semester :)

 

Friday night I made Stuffed Peppers:

 

 

 I had been craving these like a crazy person for a good half a week, so as soon as I got home from class on Friday I started busting these out. I pretty sure these are unlike any stuffed peppers ever made before - but they turned out great :)

 

It's just ground beef (the not-lean kind, cause it's cheaper and all that jazz) , worcestershire sauce, a small can of tomato paste, a can of diced tomatoes and green chilies, and salt. (topped with liberal amounts of cheese, of course)

 

Then Saturday morning I got kind of ambitious and decided to try something other than bacon and eggs for breakfast. So I made these really cute little sausage and egg muffins:

 



 

 They taste great. Especially the ones with a sun dried tomato in them. But the pan was so hard to clean. I think I was scrubbing that muffin pan for a good hour. Not fun. Next time I'm using the little papers.

 

These are great for quick breakfasts though, which is nice when I'm supposed to be somewhere at 8 or earlier every day of the week :) 

 

And then there was the duck.

 

I first ran into this little guy in the frozen meat section of WinCo. I was looking for chicken, and got distracted by the large frozen turkeys. I thought, 'how long would a whole turkey last me? about a month? Maybe two?' And then I looked at the prices on the turkeys, and then at the five lbs of corned beef and 4 lbs of ham I already had in my cart. And then I saw the frozen ducks.

 

'How hard can that be?' I thought. I had never had duck, and the size looked so manageable! So I brought one home and stuck it in the freezer.

 

And that's where it sat for two and a half weeks, till I went shopping again and needed more room in the freezer. So it got bumped to the refrigerator to be prepared for cooking.

 

I have never dealt with meat that looked so much like the original animal. . . it was. . . new.

Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for all of you) my roommates were all busy getting ready for church, and didn't catch my reactions to preparing this duck on video :)

 

 

I know when my dad makes the Thanksgiving turkey he stuffs it full of oranges and onions, so I figured, why not?! And I had a random lemon half left over from an avocado pie I'd made Saturday morning, so I threw that in there too - just for good measure.

 

 

After two hours I had a beautifully roasted duck,

and a bunch of burnt onions and oranges.

 

 

And even though it took me a good 40 minutes to carve it (how am I supposed to know where there's meat on a duck?!) It was totally worth it, and definitely a success.

 

Oh! And Easter's coming up! We died Easter eggs with our Family Home Evening group today - gotta love Easter eggs :) 

So there you have it. One weekend full of lots of time in the kitchen, and lots of good food :)