Dad's Workbench: A Dad Blog

Bacon and Eggs

On the weekends it was tradition for my dad to make breakfast. Most of the cooking was done by my mom who is the world’s best cook. But the weekend breakfast was his. Usually it was pancakes or bacon and eggs.

Those were great memories even though I was never much of a breakfast eater. Dad however could eat breakfast any time of the day or night. If you wounder why some restaurants have a breakfast section on their dinner menu it is because of people like him.

I now have my own family and have started liking the breakfast thing on weekends. It is funny how family traditions start.

Some traditions start for the sake of something to do and others are started from necessity. For my dad the tradition was started because he needed to give mom sometime to get ready for church in the morning and it was time with us (and he loves breakfast). For my our tradition is simply for the fact of spending time in the morning together and also that I don’t really like toast or cereal.

It is also interesting to see how family traditions combine and form new traditions. Like our Christmas which is a combination of:

1. pickled herring (fish) & Gjetost (goats cheese) for breakfast (Swedish)
2. Perogies and sausage for dinner (Ukrainian)
3. My wife likes ham for dinner
4. And lots of chocolate throughout the day

So we have very interesting food on Christmas day.

Boy, I wonder how my kids will turn out!

It will be fun to watch and see how these traditions grow as our children get older. It will be fun to watch and see them develop their own when they get married (far far in the future).

BTW: why do I post so much about food?

Simple Clam Chowder For Wife

Sometimes I am a lazy guy. I am the king of shortcuts. I use every short cut key on my computer and I use every short cut when I cook. I figure it must be the lazy people who invent everything because they don’t want to work.

My wife LOVES clam chowder. Feeling kind of lazy and loving shortcuts I decided to invent my own lazy mans clam chowder. Here is what I did.

In the slow cooker I placed the following:

Clam Can

• 142g can of clams
• 1 can of cream (use the clam can)
• 106g can of medium shrimp
• 1 can of potato soup
• 1 onion chopped
• Garlic powder
• Salt & pepper
• 2 cups hash browns

If you want exact amounts of the ingredients I don’t know I just throw in what I thought would be good. Then left it in the slow cooker on high for 3 hours. Unfortunately my wife ate it all before I could get a picture for my blog so that’s why there is only a photo of the clam can.

One Legged BBQ Duck Dinner.

The waitress stood there and just starred at us while we looked through the menu. She stood there the whole time even though it took us a long time to scan through the menu written in Thai. Finally after looking through the pictures of strange dishes we found few that looked good. The waitress tried to explain what we were ordering with hand signals and very few English words that we could barely understand.

That was my first taste of duck. It was one of the best things I had in Thailand. There wasn’t to many things that I would consider good in Thailand but the duck was good. So this weekend I thought I would try to make duck. When I brought it home it had only one leg and for all the work and the amount of meat we got I think next time I will buy just duck breast even though they are at least twice the price. Here is how I made my duck, rice and green bean dinner:

Ingredients:

1. A duck (preferably a two legged duck as that is where a lot of meat is.)
2. Four shallots
3. 2 inches of ginger
4. 9 cloves of garlic
5. BBQ sauce
6. Hoisen sauce
7. Soya sauce
8. Salt and Pepper
9. 2 Tbsp butter
10. 1 Tbsp Garlic powder

Instructions:

Shallots, Ginger and Garlic

1. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.
2. Chop the shallots, ginger and garlic into chunks. Add some salt and pepper then set aside for later. This will be used to stuff your duck.
3. Cut off any extra skin from your duck. There will probably be lots of extra skin on one end.
4. Stab lots of holes into the skin. This will help let out all the grease since ducks are fat!
5. Add salt and pepper to the out side of your duck and stuff it with the stuffing from step two.
6. 

   Stuffed Duck

   Place your duck into a roaster, cover and put into the oven.

7. Set a timer for one hour.
8. While you wait. Clean and cut your green beans.
9. Boil your green beans for about 7 minutes.
10. Then drain and rinse it in cold water immediately.This will stop the beans from continuing to cook. (This is called blanching)
11. After the first hour of cooking, turn the duck over and pour out all the grease.
12. 

    Boil Beans

    Return the duck to the oven for another hour.

13. Repeat the process of turning the duck over and draining the grease every our until the duck has been cooked for 4 hours.
14. After 4 hours take the duck out of the oven and let set in the roaster.
15. Once the duck is out cook your Uncle Ben’s rice
    this should take 15-20 minutes.
16. When rice has cooked for 10 minutes,
    place a two Tablespoons of  butter
    and garlic powder in a small frying pan.
17. 

    Uncle Ben

    Finnish frying the beans in the pan for about 7 minutes on medium high heat.

18. Once the beans and rice are nearly done, place duck on a cutting board and cut the wings and legs, next slice the breasts and then pull of any other meat.
19. Dish the rice, beans and duck on two plates.
20. Pour a spoonful of the BBQ sauce from the roaster over the duck.
21. Garnish the plate with six or seven cherry tomatoes.
22. 

    Carve the Duck

    Server to your wife.

23. Either you will be a lucky man that night or you will be in the dog house.

Conclusion:

• Check if your duck has all its legs before purchasing.
• It is easier to dine out.
• Duck is Good!

One Legged Duck Dinner