Today was our anniversary. My amazing wife cooked a meal worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant. It was simply delicious; professional chefs would have been envious.

Garden salad with herbs, from her hydroponic garden.
Maigret de canard with risotto alla piemontese and banana au gratin with crème fraîche (the dish is a sort of French/Italian combination of her own creation)
Condensed milk and dark chocolate-covered organic strawberries

The wine was an Argentinian Malbec called Tapiz, rated 94 by James Suckling.

I love this woman...

Breakfast for dinner:

• Blueberry pancakes made from Bisquick

Wow! Canard = duck, for the less European. Looks fantastic. I've got some cherry tomato and butter lettuce seeds coming. Have not seen any way to buy lettuce and decontaminate it. I can do hydroponic or just grow them in enriched soil. I also have peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, and pea seeds coming. Grown them all before. I can do it again.

Had a very nice passionfruit vine a few years ago, until the gophers got it. We actually sold some to a packing house. Still have a few avocados and an orange tree. Neighbor lets us pick her unused avocados and cherimoya. That cherimoya is fantastic, though few Americans even know what it is.

GNT: That's a lovely duck breast! I'm jealous because I can't get them around here and have to break down a whole bird if I want just the breast.

Texas style smoked brisket, grilled asparugus, fried gnochi.

Peach cobbler for dessert made from U-Pick peaches just up the road.

Years ago I lost/forgot the recipe for the cobbler I grew up with. I've tried dozens of recipes since then and have never been able to duplicate it. A litle while back, this came through my newsfeed...

This is it folks! What cobbler was meant to be!

Yes, that duck breast was just delicious and my wife got it just right, medium rare inside, and crispy and spicy outside.

This cobbler looks yummy!

If you love duck let me tell you about something wonderful...

Rotisserie duck. Possibly the most rich and decadent fowl on the planet.

That cobbler ranks high on that scale too, I used French butter and soft winter wheat maybe a little past it's prime. But it's a depression era recipe.

Right now I've got some split pigs feet simmering with lots of onions and jalapenos and garlics and such in a rich bone broth I made a while back. It's turning into a vaguely Mexicanesque pork based French onion soup. I'll pick the meat from the feet and make little street tacos. Wish I had an avocado.

Our neighbor's peach tree, which "suffers" from benign neglect, hangs over the wall and it currently has what I estimate to be about twenty pounds of small peaches and I am having difficulty getting my wife and daughter excited about the prospect of peach pie and peach cobbler.

Maybe I should ask you to move in with me and put Karen and Bri down in Florida.

I'd have them motherf*ckers off the tree and in the oven so fast your head would spin. Typically those little peaches are super sweet and juicy!
Other than pealing the peaches this recipe is fantastic even for the novice cook. Thin skinned peaches can just be cut up without even peeling them. It can be made from drained canned peaches too.

Jeffery I can guarantee you...if you make the cobbler they will come.
It smells fabulous while it bakes, the chewy crunchy top is what dreams are made of and the dough soaks up all the wonderful peachy goodness that will take you back to the sweetest peaches and sweetest spring times of your life.

Cobbler is properly served warm with Ice cream. It's great left over but once it's covered it loses the crunchy top. I can eat a whole one in three days.

The only reason I know ANYTHING about raising peaches or picking them is because of my crazy ex.



Linda grew up on the family farm, which happened to include the largest and most productive peach orchard on the East Coast. (Pennsylvania bordering with Maryland) and they provided fruit for something like twelve different supermarket chains up and down the Eastern US.

The farm is still a productive farm today, but the crazy ex-wife passed away about four years ago.
These are Yellow Freestone peaches, which are common to the Western US even though they can be grown almost any place you can grow peaches.

I used the term "benign neglect" because the neighbor doesn't water the tree or otherwise do much of anything, but perhaps the only penalty is the size of the peaches because that also means these lovely gems are as organic as it gets and free of all pesticides.

I'm going to start picking them tomorrow

I really love her peaches wanna shake her tree......