Merry Christmas!

A beautiful cold, crisp, sunny, winter day here on the homestead. We went goose hunting together this morning. Colleen brought her knitting. Kind of made for a funny image. Later we had a meeting about a business plan and vision for the farm. We discussed how to make the farmer's market our "summer jobs" when the teaching year is over. We came up with a list of what we wanted to grow and sell. Both vegetables and value added products. We narrowed down the list of names for the farm to just a couple.

Then we had a beautiful roast duck for Christmas dinner.


Duck a l'orange. First, I stuffed the duck with a combination of apples, onions, and celery. Put it in a roasting pan covered with cheesecloth dipped in lard. And baked covered at 350 for about 45 minutes.

While it was baking, I put on some garden Acorn squash and made the sauce. To make the sauce I combined,

2 tbsp. melted butter with,
2 tbsp. flour

turned off heat and added,
zest of one orange
2 tsp. sugar
1/8 tsp. of mustard powder
3/4 tsp. of salt

stirred and added
2/3 cup orange juice
1/3 cup chicken broth

heated on medium heat until thickened, then stirred in
1/4 cup peach jam. (it was supposed to be orange marmalade, but we were out of it)

Stirred until jam melted, turned off heat, and covered.

After the bird had been in the oven for 45 minutes, I took off the cheesecloth and the cover on the roaster. Basted every ten minutes with the sauce. Cooked for another 20 minutes or so. Until bird was tender.

It was marvelously tender for a wild duck. Not "gamey" tasting at all.



Served with garden squash from our root cellar, and a salad.

Merry Christmas to all. Hope you had as lovely a day as we did.