Practice makes perfect

I guess I'm warming up, practicing, or avoiding thinking about it by cooking but the whole time we have been in Montreal I have been cooking.

I've been working on what I call food cycles. So I buy a chicken whole and butcher it and then make stock from the carcass, brine the meat, make a salad with chicken breast the first night, casserole(like Tuscan braised chicken) with the legs and thighs and wings and a soup with the stock(like cream of cauliflower). Roast some vegetables, throw in some rice and a little pasta and that's dinners for a week.

There is freshly rendered duck fat in the fridge and some confit'd duck legs, duck rillettes as well as a quarter of a lobster and some lobster stock and right now I have some veal bones in the oven roasting up to make stock.

Last night was the first night that we didn't have a bottle of wine.

I don't think we can live like this forever but as the last hurrah of my 30's it is fun.