From a seed grows a tree

Many cubic yards of tree branches, reduced to a small pile. Destined for mulching duties.


Lose a tree, gain a tree. I'm making house numbers, inspired by the deodar cedar in the front yard.

Bird flu

Feeling under the weather lately. Not good. I found a dead hummingbird on the patio this morning. Must be the bird flu! I recycled the hummingbird into the compost bin.


Chopped up tree parts. Awaiting chipping, and then into the compost bin. (Yes, I own a blow torch, a chainsaw, AND a wood chipper.)


I miss the parrot tree. I'm very angry about it actually. The entire neighborhood has been non-stop chainsaw and leaf blower noises nearly 24/7. Really puts one in a funk.

Branching out

Neighbor to the back lost the giant parrot tree. Poor homeless parrots. But I gain a view of the mountains. Some damage to the power lines and their guest house. Sad to see this beautiful tree go. I was tempted to ask the tree trimmers for the wood chip mulch, but they high tailed it out of there before I made it back there.


My own bottle brush tree fared slightly better. Most of the foliage needs to be taken down, but with a few choice trims with the chainsaw and some time, it will come back. Yes, I own a chainsaw.


Pool scoopin' day 2. Some people pay good money at spas to soak in some herbal concoction. I will call this "bamboo leaves citrus peel pore tightening soak" and charge money for access.


Carving completed. Curse me for always picking the time consuming complicated projects.


Yes, in addition to a chainsaw, I also own a blowtorch now.


Bruléed baby monkey bananas with a drizzle of orange juice. Warm crunchy yumminess. My sculpture and food styling seem to match.

Scoopin' crap

Pretty much a damage control day. I did manage to put in some billable hours, so all is not for naught. Fixing fences, picking up branches, sweeping the driveways, throwing out all the spoiled food in the fridge. Lots of trucks and heavy equipment rolling through all hours of the night. Not all that peaceful for all the lack of power yesterday. Hours and hours of fishing out debris from the bottom of the pool. At the bottom, I found: 1 microwave cart, 1 tube of silicone chauk, 4 pieces of mdf trim, 8 office depot file boxes, 7 miscellaneous mail order boxes, 2 plastic bags, 3 flower pots, 1 filing cabinet box, 1 small bushel of dried up plaster blobs, 16 manila folders, 7 tree branches, 46 letter size history papers dating back to the Cornell days, 3 oranges, and 4 tons of leaves. Boy are my arms tired.


#3 of 4 in the clay tile series. Anal retentive Davy pulls out the rulers and ellipse guides for hand made tiles. The clay studio where I'm taking a class is filled with hippies. Whenever I'm there, I feel everybody is moving in slow motion. But it's probably just me. I tend to have my dial set on 11 all the time.

Breaking wind

18 hour power outage. It's starting to turn into Lord of the Flies around here. No fridge. No stove. No heat. No tv. No hot water. No shower since Saturday. No phone. No internet. Nearly everything in my life depends on things electronical. I'm having flashbacks to last winter when I lived through the remodel in similar conditions. Such is progress. Time to haul out the camping equipment.


70+mph winds took down my next door neighbor's red cedar tree. It took down some power lines and shorted out all the street lamps on the block. Thank goodness it missed their house by mere feet. I will count the tree rings when I walk Preston tomorrow.


Angels trumpet tree leaves have all been stripped off. Naked angels.


What a mess.


Everything wound up at the bottom of the pool. Sigh.


My old microwave cart commited suicide by jumping into the pool. I had the unfortunate task of fishing out the body.


Another casualty of the wooden type. Thankfully, Preston was too scared to run away. Wouldn't leave his bed.


No power, no tv, hungry, and stinky. So I carved most of the afternoon. Good excuse not to work behind a computer. Though, I have to admit, I did have wifi working by connecting the modem and wireless gateway to my camping battery generator. But I'm using the power outage as an excuse not to work.

Chef Boy-arh-davy

The pasta maker is my new favorite toy. The little green specks in the noodles are parsley.


The Davy version of beef-a-roni.

Bottled up

Stracoto with porcini mushrooms. Otherwise known as frou frou mushroom pot roast. I saw this on television months ago during my kitchenless days and have been drooling ever since, itching for a chance to make this. I'm not sure if it was the hunger from waiting 3 hours for this to burble away in the oven, or the third glass of wine by the time this was finally done, very tasty. The meat just falls apart at the first poke of a fork. Perfect for a cold winter night- as delicious as I imagined. Sigh. Another 10:30pm dinner. I probably should have started cooking earlier in the day, but I spent all afternoon furiously sanding some tiles at the clay studio. Damn anal retentiveness. Leave it to me to try to make hand made tiles look like they come out of a machine.


By the second glass of wine, I started taking away the mismatched spice bottles leaving only the black lidded glass jars. All differently colored and shaped containers get banished into the drawers, out of sight.

Squishy Booty

I was feeling absolutely crummy yesterday. Stuck in bed with the bird flu. Well, probably not bird flu, but I'm going to tell everybody that I had the bird flu. Much needed panda therapy today. Drove a total of seven hours to spend an hour staring at pandas. I guess you can call that obsessed. I prefer to think of it as paying tribute to my distant relatives.


Baby panda. I dub thee Booty. Because she has a big butt.


This is Squishy. Squishy is Booty's big brother. He was much cuter than Booty as a cub. We have a special connection because we both hail from Asia, lead lonely solitary lives, and have trouble finding mates.


Baby and mother, schlumping. Such a dramatic pose.


Here we have Ennis and Jack, running off to Brokeback Mountain for a "fishing trip." Alma is left behind with the screaming kids. Alma is outwardly suspicious because Ennis never brings back any fish. But in her heart, she knows Ennis' truth. She is hiding her head in shame.


Kong, looking longingly at his beloved but unattainable Ann. The part of the overweight hairy ape is played by Peter Jackson.


Tomatillo Braised Pork.


Duck Confit.


This hippopotamus kept following me. This seems to happen to me a lot. I remember the hippos at the Taiwan zoo used to do the same thing when I was three years old. I probably smell like hippo food.

Hookers and beer

The neighbor's pet ducks and geese are nowhere to be seen. Coincidence? Did they fly the coop? Are the owners hiding the poultry from me? Or have the neighbors smelled the delicious scents wafting over from my house and pressed said ducks and geese into culinary service?

Tonight's menu is inspired by misogyny, prostitution, and venereal disease.



Hoe Cakes. Light, airy, and crunchy. A bit corny. Just like real ho's.

Seedy Strip Steak. Marbled pieces of beef marinated in soy, mustard, and assorted secret ingredients. Encrusted with sesame seeds and seared until the outer layer is toasted and fragrant. Rare in the center. Just the way I like it. The marinade ingredients are secret because I threw a bunch of herbs and liquids into a bowl and I don't remember what I actually used.

Herbed Peas. (Herpes) I couldn't resist the pun.



Black and Blue Bruised Tart. Well, it started out black and blue. After a few minutes in the oven, the blueberries and blackberries turned into the same shade of purple. Drat!

Ducked out

Raspberry and nutella crepe cake. I still had some crepe batter from last night's ducky crepe episode. A few pinches of sugar, a splash of vanilla, and a generous blorble of amaretto changes it into a dessert crepe batter. No duck in here. I saw a crepe cake on television a couple of months ago and it dawned on me to use the extra batter to make one. This was pretty good. Next time, I'll try using a lower protein flour for more tender crepes. And the filling needs to be lighter and fluffier. Perhaps flavored whipped cream. And I'd sugar and brulée the top. Next time will be much better. Something potentially trancedent here.

Day 8. I am putting a stop to Adventures With Duck 2006 (tm.) Enough is enough. I love duck, but it's time to move on. So I will use up every last remaining morsel of duck tonight.


The beginnings of duck gumbo. With authentic cajun filé powder. Made from ground up sassafras leaves. I like saying "sassssafrassss." Say that with me. "Sassafrasss!" The okra magically formed the shape of a star when I added it to the pot. A divine sign that I was going to be a superstar. So excited at the prospect of fame and fortune. Then I realized the okra was just following the pattern of the stove grates because the areas over the grates are lower in temperature and hence, have less bubble turbulance. Once again, science explains away supernatural phenomena. Sigh. It's probably a good thing I didn't use the back burners. Those have the an inverted star pattern. Had I used the back burners, the okra would have taken the shape of a pentagram, and then I'd have freaked out at receiving a message from Satan.


Duck and shrimp gumbo. Duck fat and flour made the most incredible dark mahogany roux. The duck meat stayed tender and moist. Shrimp was extraordinary in texture because I did a quick brine before I added them to the pot. Shrimpy crunch and snap, the way shrimp is supposed to be. A lot of yumminess for what is essentially leftover duck stew.


Stovetop popped corn. Popped with duck fat, sprinkled with hand mixed creole seasoning. I couldn't resist trying a duck dessert.

This ends Adventures With Duck 2006 (tm.) Like I set out to do, I've used every last bit of the duck including the quack quack. Mission accomplished. I learned a lot and it was fun using the old noggin to come up with different ways to use duck. That fat poached garlic was just amazing. And now I will let my fat and cholestrol levels even out. I survived 8 days of duck. It hasn't killed me yet.

Duck tails

Day 7. Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. So much duck. Not coherent anymore. Everywhere. Duck Duck. Everywhere I turn. Duck. I see ducks out of the corner of my eyes. They're everywhere.


Brussel sprouts. Lightly blanched with a few garlic cloves for a vibrant green color, seared in duck fat with cracklin's for flavor. Sprinklin' of pine nuts because I like the plink plink sounds that the pine nuts make when it scatters on the plate.


Duck and cheese wrapped in crepe. Next time, I'd probably save myself the trouble of making crepes from scratch. Store bought tortillas would be just as good. But I've owned my crepe pan for five years now, and it's time that I finally learn. Must fulfill the crepe pan's destiny. Now it can go back to making omelettes and hashbrowns.

Duck aspic. Aspic is just a frou frou way of saying "meat juice jello." I shall work on a song about meat juice jello. Meat juice jello... Meat juice jello...


I couldn't help myself. I just had to try some of the immature limoncello. Woowhee! It's strong. I made the same expression that's on the shot glass.

Just ducky

Day 6. I can't believe I've eaten all this duck already. All these duck dishes. You'd never guess that before Adventures With Duck 2006 (tm), I made duck only once in my lifetime.


Ducky caesar salad. Romaine lettuce boats carrying duck bits and toasted pumpkin seeds. Anchovy lemon mustard dressing. Three different kinds of crunchy.


One of the tastiest wonders of the world, duck confit deserves an encore. Thank goodness the confit process preserves the duck for weeks. It just keeps on giving.


Pomme de terre ménage a trois. Yukon gold potato chips fried in duck fat, lightly salted. Such luxurious potato chips. Mashed red bliss potatos with duck giblet gravy. Smashing. Peruvian purple potatos with citrus duck sauce. Purple food is cool.

Wanna buy a duck?

Day 5. I've realized that as long as I have access to ingredients, I can keep on making duck dishes indefinitely. I shall have to put an end to Adventures with Duck 2006 (tm) soon. Before I get tired of duck deliciousness. Feeling the early stirrings of a cold today. I hope it's not The Bird Flu from eating all this duck. But more likely some Frenchie virus from yesterday's meeting with our esteemed friends from across the pond.


Decided to take it easy in the kitchen tonight and rest up. No multi-course spread. Something simple, quick, and easy to make. Whipped up a pasta carbonara concoction- with crispy duck bits substituting for pancetta. What they say about home made pasta is true. The tagliatelle. Oh! A revelation. Even more so with the eggy cream sauce. Wish I had duck eggs though...


Kitchen drawers still anal retentively organized after all this time while my office still looks like it threw up on itself. I think I have my priorities in the right order.


Sad sad dishwasher casualty today. Let's have a moment of silence.

A what?

After a few days hiatus, I'm itching to get back in the kitchen. I find myself getting mad at real life intruding into my cooking play time. Damn that real life! Damn you all to hell!


Step two. Strain out lemon peels and add simple syrup. 20 more days until limoncello matures.

Adventures with Duck 2006 (tm) Day 4. I sense impending duck fatigue.


Ravioli tadpoles. A davychen original creation. Pounded duck wing confit, stuffed in pasta with unfurled tails. Rather than normal ravioli or tortellini, I left them roughly cut, with the filling offset to one side. Tadpoles are designed to be texturally interesting to the diner- a combination of ravioli, lasagne, and linguine. Each bite will be different in taste and texture.


Hand cut tagliatelle. I got carried away with the handle thing on the pasta machine and rolled out lots of extra pasta. Fun! These should be extra springy al dente. But not for tonight.


Tonight's menu was inspired by a kung fu fighting duck-like Pokémon brandishing a leek for a weapon. Duck rillettes ravioli tadpoles with swiss chard in saffron duck broth. For the pasta, I chose a broth instead of a sauce to showcase the long fluttering tails. Saffron more for color than flavor. Leeks seared with duck fat and oven braised in duck broth. Sweetly caramelized roasted on the top and bottom. Duck liver paté on toast. Yummy. And I really like the tadpoles.