Duck + Tweezers

Let's pretend it's Thursday!

Also, if you're vegan: LOOK AWAY NOW!

Last week was "Asian week" in Lidl. There were colourful dips and friable bits, coconut ice cream and unripe mangos. Of course, whenever there's a "special" week, people swarm down like locusts and consume the things I like. In this case a set of multi-use chopsticks. But plenty had been left over and I started browsing. Slowly, like a meet-cute in a romcom, I saw it: Duck! Asian Week Special! 2.99euros/kilo! I didn't give it a second thought. Into my basket the duck went and I happily skipped to my car, looking forward preparing this for the first time. Not once did I think about why it would be so cheap. Even chicken is more expensive, though far more common in these parts. No, no, I was in a duck-haze, floating on cloud duck, or really any other expression I can maul by using the word "duck" in it.

Came home, started browsing. Some recipes were simple: Pop duck in oven, bake 20 minutes per pound plus additional 20 minutes. Nah, that can't be right. It can't be that simple! If it were that simple it wouldn't be duck, it would be chicken! I found one I liked finally. It was fairly long and I followed the logic of "If it sucked, nobody would put this much time into it, so it must be good!" I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jessie Cross (aka TheHungryMouse) for the amazing roasted duck recipe. But more on that later.

I was about to find out why my duck had come to me so cheaply.

FEATHERS! EFFING FEATHERS EVERYWHERE!

property of http://fernbank.edu/

More precisely, quills. The long, fluffy bits of feather had been removed and the strong, sharp bases remained. I couldn't just shave the duck, like you would a pig (or so I hear), since the quills went about a centimetre or even more under the skin. That would make the skin kind of gross to eat, wouldn't it? Crunchy, but gross. I stared at them. Defiantly, they stared back. Should I throw it away? No, that would be wasteful. There aren't just kids starving in Africa, there are kids starving everywhere. We don't throw food away. Okay, okay, just breathe. I really wanted to ragequit this whole duck adventure. But the Scrooge in me would not let this bird go to waste. After a few futile attempts at removing the quills by hand, I decided that my tweezers would have to be sacrificed to the hairy duck gods. 

And so I set to work.

After three hours of this mind numbing work, I could swear the damn duck was alive and growing extra quills just to mess with me. The work was never-ending. Also, word of warning: If you happen to have severe trypophobia, this is not work for you. Especially around the tail. I have it mild, so I could just suck it up, but seriously, don't do this if you have a problem with holes.

My mum would occasionally stroll by, giggle unhelpfully, ask me why I don't just give up. I do not give up! I will not be bested by a dead duck! THIS IS WAR, WOMAN! Don't you see?!

Yeah, I get ridiculously intense about weird things.

After three hours, I was exhausted and cross-eyed from plucking. I had about enough quills that, had they been whole feathers, I could have stuffed a decent pillow. Here's some advice: If you, like I, fall for the cheap duck ploy and need to do your own bit of plucking, have a bowl of water close. It's much easier dunking the tweezers into water as a means of removing quills than trying to do it with your fingers.

Another two hours on the next day and my duck was now as smooth as a smooth duck should be. HungryMouse's recipe, though in theory simple, required a lot of time. Four and a half hours, to be exact. In the end: Worth it. It was everything it promised. Crispy skin, beautiful, tasty meat. And duck fat from the extra skin! Who knew you could do that. If you, like me, are not a native speaker, the process is called rendering. Here's a nice recipe on how to do it by TheBittenWord.

Waste not want not, right? I felt bad about wasting the duck innards, so after some searching, I came to Hank Shaw's page, Honest Food and found a recipe for dirty rice, a dish unknown to me until that point. It turned out amazingly well and I can suggest that, if you make this, you put in both the green and jalapeno peppers. Gizzards turned out not to be my thing - too firm and too chewy, but the rest: heart, liver and unidentified darker organ (I used the neck for soup), were simply delicious and went well with the texture of the rice. Turns out, my mum loves gizzards and here's why: She grew up in the country and whenever they were good, they would get gizzards as a prize! In those days, you weren't picky about your food and getting extra meat was next to being declared a saint.

And that is all! My duck was roasted and then decimated in two days, I still have some dirty rice and a cup of lovely duck fat, which people keep telling me I should use for roasting potatoes. Once again, tweezers save the day!

Until next time!

Love,
LaDIY Tasha

P.S: Did I mention I was humming the Ducktales theme song the entire time I was preparing this bird?

[Inkscape] Straight corner on a rounded rectangle in 10 clicks

That was a long title...
Here's the thing. I'm an Inkscape n00b and as such any long and complex procedure description sends me into a tailspin. I've looked for tutorials on how to make a rounded rectangle have some rounded and some regular corners.... or the other way around: a rectangle having one or more rounded corners. All my searching yielded results that a seasoned pro would find simple, but which made me feel fairly incompetent.

So I came up with my own solution and here is how it goes:

Btw, all the images can be enlarged by simply clicking on them.

Click 1:

Click the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle. Doesn't have to be what you're looking for as an end result.

Click 2:

Click on one of the lines of your rectangle to select it.

Click 3:

Look up. You should see something like this bar. Click in the measurement drop-down menu and select your measurement units. My inner engineer likes millimeters, but you go with whatever you like.  W is for width, H is for height, so enter the measurements you want for your rectangle.

Click 4:

On your rectangle, there is a little circle point. This will make it a rounded rectangle. If you click and drag it up or down, it gives you a curve on all four corners. You can also adjust this on that menu up top, for the sake of precision.

Click 5:

Find the Path drop-down menu and click it.

Click 6:

The first option on it is "Object to Path". Click that.

Click 7:

Now your rectangle has a red line running through it. Pick out the corner you want to remake. There should be two little circle points on each side of it. Hold the Shift key and click on each dot.

Click 8:

Find the "Make selected segments lines" button and click that. Suddenly, instead of a curve, there is a line connecting your two selected points.

Click 9:

Click on the lower of the two point and read off its X coordinate. You can copy it or just remember it.

Click 10:

Click on your upper selected point and enter the same X coordinate. This will shift that point to to right above he other one, giving you a straight angle.

There! All done! OK, so it's technically about 14 clicks, but "10 clicks" sounds better, right? This was the simplest way to do something like this, for me. I hope it helps someone out there who's starting out in Inkscape, too.

If you've enjoyed this little tutorial of mine, leave a comment and feel free to check out my other posts. Until next Thursday!

LaDIY Tasha