Dancing with Myself

Talk about Good!

I made duck and sausage gumbo for a reception my staff hosted today.  It totally rocked! 

I love duck.  I order it almost every time it's available to me on a menu.  I almost never cook it at home.  Why is that?  I'm not sure.  Too complicated?  Maybe.  Too much fat?  Probably.  Or maybe I'm just picky.  I only like the breast, the legs and thighs.  Nowadays you can buy just those parts.  How sweet is that?  So I decided to make duck and sausage gumbo for only the third or fourth time in 30 years of making gumbo. 

It took only three phone calls to find duck legs.  Whole Foods in Berkeley had them at $5.99 a lb.  What they were selling as legs was actually the leg and the thigh which was perfect.  They were packaged by the pair, so I bought four pair, which weighed just over four pounds. 

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This is what the meat off of eight legs and thighs looks like.

They also had andouille sausage, so I bought some of it as well.  Sausage adds quite a bit of spiciness to the gumbo.  Before adding it to the gumbo, I like to brown it separately in a skillet.  Like this:

But I've gotten ahead of myself.  The first thing to making a gumbo is to make "da roux."  Back twenty years or so ago, when my cousin Sue was still alive, I'd get everything ready to go, make myself a drink, get the roux started and then call her so she could talk me through to getting the roux dark enough. 

This is Sue Baby at about 7.  We'd laugh and tell stories remembered from growing up together.  I'd say "well, it's about done now," and she'd say "no, it ain't near ready.  Keep stirring that roux."  Sometimes it would take two drinks and as long as 45 minutes to get the roux dark enough for Sue-Baby--that's what I called her, my Sue-Baby.   

Is this roux dark enough sugah?

When it is right, you add the "holy trinity" of Louisiana cooking:  a mirepoix of onion, celery and bell pepper.  I always use half green and half red bell pepper--for the color.  It's prettier.  See for yourself.

Thank god I'm a better cook than a photographer.  Cook this mixture for about 5 to 10 minutes and then add to your stock which you'll have been heating in your soup pot.  For this recipe, after I boned the duck, I cooked the legs and skin and such in a good quality chicken stock, just to leach out any duck flavor that might be lingering in those bones and skin.  After straining that, I put it back on the fire and get it hot.  I used three quarts of stock for this soup.

Now it's gumbo.

This was one of the best gumbos I have ever made, and I've made a few pots of gumbo, I gar-aun-tee.  I sure wish this were scratch and sniff, but y'know if it were we'd get out of control in a minute. 

Oh, and I looked too damned cute.  Sometimes I just can't believe I was born in the first half of the last century.

I hope I feel this cute tomorrow.  I'm heading out after work looking for other Louisiana emigres with whom to share a drink, maybe a laugh or two, and memories of New Orleans.  You know it ain't there anymore, and what is there isn't what we remember. 

Happy Mardi Gras.

Mardi Gras!

Chris Rose was on the Newshour earlier this week and said "Of course we're going to celebrate Mardi Gras.  We celebrated Christmas, New Year's, so why wouldn't we celebrate our own holiday?"

I celebrate Mardi Gras.  It's important to me.  Always has been.  It's part of my Louisiana heritage.  I don't even think about it, it's just something I do.  I threw a big party last year, but I'm taking this year off.  That doesn't mean I don't celebrate.

Tomorrow, I'm making a king cake and a big pot of duck and sausage gumbo for work.  My staff is hosting an afternoon social on Monday for the newest justice and her staff.  Today I cooked the duck for the gumbo and made a compilation cd of Mardi Gras party music.  It totally rocked!  Anybody that wants a copy, just let me know.  I'll be happy to loan you one of my personal copies.  Wink.  Wink.

I'm so funny about recipes.  I believe in them but never follow them.  I have used the same recipe for duck and sausage gumbo for 30 years.  I couldn't find it.  I went online and searched.  I found plenty of recipes, but none of them even approximated my recipe.  I found one on the L.A. Times website, but it's the most awful, untested recipe that you'll ever encounter.  I don't really need a recipe for gumbo, I just like to have someone else's opinion. 

For the king cake, I'm doing a devil's food cake from a mix that has a praline type sauce and then is covered with whipped cream.  I'll write Happy Mardi Gras in purple icing on the top and put a decoration or two on it, and then slip a plastic baby in one of the pieces.  Works for me.  I don't know if you've ever had a New Orleans style king cake, but they're not very good.  They're basically a sweet dough pastry with yucky sweet icing dyed purple, green and gold--the Mardi Gras colors.  Mine will be ever so much better. 

Happy Mardi Gras, all.

 

The Olympics

Everybody else has talked about them, I might as well add my two cents worth.  Boring.  I don't pay a lot of attention to sports.  I'm American enough to like baseball on nice summer days, and I'm always for the home team.  I have an odd preference for the National League over the American League and have no idea why that is so.  Probably something to do with the New York Yankees.

Unlike most Gay men, I don't really give a rat's ass about figure skating.  Yeah, it's great looking, etc., etc., next?  Of course, this year I have a favorite among the men.  Johnny Weir is too fucking much.  The first time I saw that young man come out on the ice in one of his Bob Mackey inspired outfits, I was mesmerized.  I don't know diddly squat about skating, but I thought his style much too feminine for my tastes.  I like those butch boys more, but I had to admire this Johnny's moxie.  It takes real balls to be a sissy.

The other person who has my attention is Bode Miller.

Is that stud hot or what?  "Go Fast, Be Good, Have Fun" is my new motto.  I'm sorry he's not doing well in Turin, but he's got a free massage coming at Chez Houston anytime he happens to be in Oaktown. 

I missed Johnny's Swan outfit, and missed Bode when he got disqualified.  Damn NBC.  They can't get anything right.

I've been getting more out of Robin Williams of Good Morning America's spots than I have from NBC's coverage.  Is that sad or what?  I guess I'll have to wait for it to come out on dvd.

I know this isn't Johnny's swan outfit, but I couldn't find a picture on the Internet, but I did find this atrocious outfit attached to a snarky commentary by Nancy Armour.  I have no idea who she is, but she did have an opinion or two about the Olympic skaters's costumes.

I'm looking forward to the half-time show and the new commercials.

 

Mind Tripping on a Friday Night

Genius walks among us.

Time to Move On

If Cheney's explanation about how he shot his friend in the face with a shotgun is good enough for Bush, then by George and by golly, it's good enough for me.  After all, he only shot a Republican lawyer.  It's not as if he killed him or anything.  Sheesh.  People, we need to get a grip.  After listening to Cheney and Bush these past couple of days, it's obvious to me the one we should feel sorry for is Cheney.  He shot his friend.  That is such a bummer. 

But before I move on, here's a little something sent to me by a cousin. 

Oh, and one other small detail.  The press keeps saying that Cheney and his friends were hunting quail.  That is simply not true.  It's true they were shooting birds, but they really weren't hunting for them.  The birds at which they were shooting were cage-raised and released just so these old white men could shoot at them (and each other).  That is not hunting.  Hunting is when you have to actually go find the birds.  This is more like shooting ducks in a barrel.  Very manly, but not very sporting.

I'm so glad we've got this behind us now.
 

Shut! Up!

"Clay Aiken being Gay is one thing, but a TOP?"  (Overheard at my neighborhood bar.) 

Oh, Really?

"I ran over to him," Cheney said. "He was laying there on his back, obviously, bleeding. You could see where the shot struck him."

Cheny ran 30 yards?  In his condition?  I'm sorry, I have a hard time imagining that one.

Cheney's a Fucking Idiot, and a Drunk One at That

The first thing you do in a shooting accident is to take responsibility for your actions.  Cheney shot that poor old fucker.  Sorry, Mary Matalin, it's in very bad form to blame the guy who was shot for being in the way of the shotgun blast.

These are the same fuckers who are running the country.  Take personal responsibility for your actions?  Not these bozos. 

Was Cheney drinking?  It's up to him to prove that he wasn't, but since the Secret Service kept the local cops away from him for 14 hours, we won't ever know, will we?  Sounds like drinking was involved to me.  Otherwise, why wasn't the local law enforcement guy allowed to see him?  And why wasn't Cheney at the hospital with his seriously wounded friend?  Some friend, eh?

Just when you think these creeps can't get any lower or behave any more despicably, they prove us all wrong. 

Another Reason I'm Not A Democrat

Popular Iraqi war vet, Paul Hackett, has decided not to run for the U.S. Senate from Ohio.  It seems a lot of the bigwigs, specifically Senators Reid and Schumer, of the party didn't feel he had as much of a chance as one of their own.

Y'know, if those idiots were doing a better job at what they're supposed to be doing, their opinion about who is or isn't the best candidate might be more important to me.  Even the Majority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, was not freely chosen by her district.  Sala Burton, widow of Phil Burton, supposedly annointed Nancy on her death bed.  Their explanation to the Gay and Lesbian voters of that district was that the country wasn't ready for a Gay Congressman.  You children be good, we were told, and we'll take care of you. 

They've been doing such a good job, too.

Oh the Irony! The Irony!

A curtsy to Faggoty-Ass Faggot.

Ann Coulter on religious intolerance.

Making the rash assumption for purposes of discussion that Islam is a religion and not a car-burning cult, even a real religion can't go bossing around other people like this.

Catholics aren't short on rules, but they couldn't care less if non-Catholics use birth control. Conservative Jews have no interest in forbidding other people from mixing meat and dairy. Protestants don't make a peep about other people eating food off one another's plates. (Just stay away from our plates -- that's disgusting.)

But Muslims think they can issue decrees about what images can appear in newspaper cartoons. Who do they think they are, liberals?

Sounds more like evangelicals to me, Ann.