Jeff's Birthday!

Jeff's Birthday fell on Labor Day this year, which meant that I had to work.  Working on Labor Day is a good thing, though, because we get paid time & half.  Plus I only worked for half the day since I had to prepare for Jeff's French-Themed Party.  I had been planning the menu for a month or so (ever since Jeff watched Julie & Julia for the first time & asked me to cook something French for him).  The only recipe in the entire book that would feed a large party was something called Braised Goose with Meat & Chestnut Stuffing.  I had to special order a 9.6lb goose from one of the grocery stores & I stuffed the thing with ground veal & pork & roasted chestnuts.  For the sides, I made braised chestnuts in a fantastic glaze & braised leeks. 

For the dessert, I made a strawberry tart.  We started cooking for this feast 3 days ahead.  Saturday we made the tart crust, which took awhile but was a lot easier than I had first anticipated.  The recipe to make a tart crust in 10 pages long & illustrated & Julia even admits that it is difficult because of all of the sugar in the dough (cracks easily & is hard to roll out).  But I did it & was very proud of the fact that the finished product looked like the picture!  Saturday I also made the custard filling for the tart.  Custards are extremely temperamental & it is very difficult to keep the bottom of the pan from burning.  But its OK if it does burn, as long as you smell it in time to keep the custard from getting a burnt taste.  This is what I have learned.  So the custard came out fine, even if the bottom of the pan was a little burnt.  Sunday we made the stuffing for the goose, which was pretty easy. 

Monday, I went to work in the morning & Jeff cleaned all day & put the goose in the oven for me.  He did a good job, following all of the instructions Julia & I laid out for him.  The only difficulty was that I had assumed that the goose did not come with its liver (assumed this was something to buy separately & I decided to just skip that step).  Well when Jeff opened up the bird, he found the liver, heart, gizzard, neck, etc.  So he was a little confused & just fried everything up together as the recipe stated, including the liver which was supposed to be reserved for the stuffing.  Oh well, we survived.

I got home at around 3:30pm & had about an hour before I needed to get started on the other dishes.  So I cleaned myself up & changed for the party & by the time I was ready to start cooking, the skies opened up & let down a downpour that I can describe as akin to a complete white-out.  We had a river outside of our house.  At that point, I realized no one that lived more than 5 minutes away was going to make it to our house.  Who wants to drive in that kind of storm?  So I wasn't surprised that no one from my work came & some of our other expected guests didn't arrive either.  And most people didn't arrive until 7pm (instead of the original 6pm start time).  But we did end up with about 15 people at our house, which is probably max capacity for us. 

The goose was eaten very quickly & it was good.  No one had ever tried goose before so we were all comparing notes.  It is red meat so it is very dark.  It was good but my favorite was the stuffing.  So tender & flavorful!  And the chestnuts were very good too, as were the leeks.  Everything was very flavorful & yummy.  And of course the tart was to die for!  Everyone left at around 9pm, which wasn't surprising as everyone had to work or go to school the next day.  I was grateful because I had to work at 7:30am Tuesday morning.  I think everyone had a good time & I'm fairly certain everyone enjoyed the food  :)

This year Jeff wanted a new suit for his (hopefully!) upcoming interviews this fall.  After shopping around & discovering that Jeff is a size 34 (largely unmade by most companies), we finally settled on a clearanced number at Macys.  Its a very nice suit & it looks great on Jeff!

Tuesday I cooked up a meal that I have not had since I moved from AZ.  My Dad is laughing as he reads this because the idea came to me when I was on the phone with him & I randomly asked for his bean recipe.  Dad was shocked because who doesn't know how to cook beans?  Get beans, add water, done, right?!  This was evidence that I have been away from the west coast for wayyy too long!  We eat black eyed peas here, not pinto beans.  So I nagged Dad to give him his "recipe" which is essentially what I wrote above plus a few spices.  I put everything in the crock pot Tuesday before work.  When we came home, the house smelled heavenly.  There is truly nothing better than home cooked beans in my opinion.  The taste is so much better than the canned variety.  I will definitely have to remember this in the future :)

This weekend I am going to attempt to make Osso Bucco, which veal shank.  I am excited, it looks really good!  :)

Today is my day off & it looks like so Tammy & I have been lazing around the house.  Reading, watching TV, playing on the PC, sleeping, etc.  Tammy of course wants a walk & is begging me whie I write this but I just don't have the energy after a long week at work (6 days straights).  We will probably end up at the dog park shortly.  And next week, the whole Muehlbauer clan here in NC will be traveling to Lake Tahoe for a wedding!  I am very excited as it is a much needed vacation.  Now is the time to travel since before we know it the Holidays will be here & no time off will be allowed.  This will be my 10th Holiday Season in retail.  I guess I'm a survivor by now  :)