Dinners and garden/orchard stuff

I cooked up one of the ducks, just did it in the slow cooker, with some stuffing (cranberry and apple) and a little dripping, it turned out really well.
Feeling generous, we gave the other duck away to a neighbour.
On an exploration of the freezer I discovered 2 ducks from last year, so these will need eating up soon.
We also butchered (that's the royal 'we', I actually mean G..) another chicken, an old Indian Game hen. I prepared this bird the same way as the young cockarel, by slow cooking first then roasting for a short time. Again this was successful, the meat was firm but not tough and very tasty.
The next day we were given some field mushrooms, so I made chicken and mushroom pasta for dinner with the leftover meat. Then I made some stock from the carcass.

On the farm front, it's great to have the rain, topping up the water tank nicely but it has prevented a lot of jobs from getting done outside. The veg garden is now seriously neglected.
We called in at Koanga gardens the other day and picked up some Maori seed potatoes 'Urenika' and 'Kowiniwini'. I've grown these a long time ago and looking forward to growing them again, in addition to some 'standard' white potatoes, not sure which varieties as yet. Also picked up a copy of their fruit and nut tree catalogue to see about adding to our orchard. Haven't made any decisions yet, although I would like to get one or 2 pears in and maybe a couple of fig trees.

Duck on the menu again

The intrepid hunter returned home this evening after a walkabout with 2 ducks for the dinner table, the first successful shoot of this year's duck season. Yay!

The best things in life are free

yes that's true, but what about chocolate???

This is not the first brand of chilli chocolate I've tried, but unfortunately it's not a 'flavour' very commonly available in the stores and I've been looking out for it for some time.

So I was very pleased to see that Lindt now make a chilli chocolate.

Fortunately G does not like it so I have the whole bar to myself. Even so I want to eek it out for as long as possible, rather than scoffing the lot in a hurry I've been savouring one square each evening!