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The weather continues to alternate freakish warmth with dreary chill. Today it got up in the high 70s; tonight it's supposed to drop to the low 30s. I don't know why everyone in the state isn't sick yet.

Today was one of those annoying days where lots of time is wasted and not much is accomplished. I had my weekly meeting with my boss, which was fine but we didn't really have that much to discuss, what with the holidays coming up. Then another meeting that was fast and productive (another independant consultant who likes wasting her time even less than I like wasting mine), then another meeting that was lengthy and totally unproductive. Because the guy didn't show up, but I spent about 45 min. waiting for him. Argh. That was followed up by several hours of running errands that should have taken much less time. I felt like I was wading through molasses at the supermarket. I don't know what was wrong with me today.

I forgot to mention yesterday that on our way home from the pottery festival, we stopped at the Le Creuset outlet store. Most of the stock was no real bargain, but they did have seconds and discontinued products in the back. We ended up buying a spiffy 4.5 quart oval casserole. I've wanted one of these for a long long time, so this was very exciting.

I justified the expense by thinking how much easier it will make the chicken dish we're going to cook over Thanksgiving weekend, the one that's roasted and flamed in cognac. But in the meantime, I broke in the casserole today by roasting a duck with turnips, a la Julia Child. I thought about making duck l'orange, but decided that the one with turnips sounded heartier. In retrospect it was a very good decision because the duck with orange sauce would have taken a lot longer. And my errands ran so much longer than expected, we would have ended up eating pretty late. Maybe I'll make duck l'orange for Christmas Eve dinner. (Since we're both on the air Christmas night, at different times, we're probably going to have a mid-afternoon restaurant brunch before our shows. So I'd like to make a nice dinner on Christmas Eve instead.)

But the duck with turnips was very very nice. It was roasted with the lid on, so the skin didn't get crispy, but this technique seemed to do really well at cooking off the fat under the skin. And the rich duck meat nicely mellowed the turnips; they weren't bitter at all. Julia says to simply degrease the cooking liquid and use it as a gravy, but I added a bit of stock and a bit of port and boiled it down on the stove, then swirled in a pat of butter to thicken the sauce. After all, that's the whole reason to use Le Creuset: so you can brown the meat on the stove, roast it in the oven, and finish the sauce all in the same pan.

The only negative thing I will say about the duck is that it wasn't plucked as well as I've come to expect from poultry. There were a number of tiny feathers still attached, as well as stubby bases of feather (quills I guess?) all over parts of it. I picked them out as best I could without tweezers (no way was I going to use my good eyebrow tweezers on a raw duck, I mean that's gross both ways) and we didn't really eat the skin anyway. I wouldn't have cared except for the additional prep time, and also the fact that if I'm going to spend $20 on a duck they could at least pluck it for me.

One thing I wrote about in my entry that got lost yesterday was the seemingly endless supply of questionable renovations done by previous owners of this house. For instance, take a look at this photo of the living room right after I moved in. Now stop wondering why I would have bought a house that looked like that, and take a look at the walls. Fake wood paneling, wallpaper, chair rail. Ecch. You can't tell from the photo, but the wallpaper is over the paneling. That's right, they put up fake wood paneling, then added that horrible flower wallpaper to the top half of the wall, and used a chair rail to cover the seam. Note also that they missed a spot with the wallpaper, between the fireplace and the window.

The worst "what were they thinking?" job has got to be the bookshelf. Now, I give them credit for the idea. Built-in floor to ceiling bookshelf? Great thing to have. And if cheap-ass, knotty pine that sucks up paint was all they could afford, OK, paint is cheap. Even the country kitsch scrollwork at the top, no big deal, we can knock it out. But why, oh why, would they install the bookshelf over wall to wall carpet? I'm no home improvement expert, but it seems to me that a permanent fixture should stand on the floor, not on top of a carpet.

The bookshelf was also over the fake wood paneling. When we removed the paneling a rough edge was left along the edges of the shelf. But I find that a bit more understandable: I can see how one might think of fake wood paneling as a permanent element of the room (I mean, gack, but I can imagine that the person who put it up would think that), so the bookshelf would naturally go over it. But carpet? What were they thinking?

After dinner Georg gave the bookshelf another coat of paint. It could probably still use some touching up, but since it's going to be totally full of tall books most of the time, we might be able to get away with it as is. Meanwhile I scraped the excess paint off the window panes, which made a surprisingly big difference. Unfortunately I didn't get much cleanup done tonight because 1. Thirteen is really freaked out by all the furniture moving & I thought she'd had enough stress for one night, and 2. I'm tired. I'll start putting things back tomorrow after my show.