Too Many Cooks

Last Friday was my mother's birthday.

In honor of the nth anniversary of her 19th Birthday, the three children prepared:

1. Lobster Salad
2. Roast Duck and Pork Tenderloin Medallions with a shallot sauce and glazed carrots and glazed pearl onions (if you want to sound fancy, you say "glazed root vegetables")
3. Chocolate Mousse with espresso

My sister was in charge of the salad, my brother was in charge of the chocolate mousse, and I was in charge of the main course (and, as my sister said, "He was the producer").

Notes:

• A five-pound duck is not enough to feed a family of five.
• That's why we got the pork to go along with it.
• If the instructions say put "ingredient A in the bowl with ingredient B" and you did it the other way around, that's ok.
• You really need very little water to glaze vegetables.
• Carving a duck is really very different from carving a turkey or a chicken. The bones are all the wrong size and they're in the wrong place.
• Duck is also pretty tricky to roast: the breast is done much sooner than the legs are, so you end up having to take it out when the breast meat is done, chop it up, and then put the wings and legs back in to finish.

The parental units' contribution to the dinner was a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. It was, all in all, a great (if slightly behind schedule) success.

Now all I have to do is pull off a miracle for Thanksgiving.

Did I mention that it's supposed to snow four inches tomorrow?