The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

Big band jazz lunch @ Mesa

Another Examiner.com salvo: Halloween Peep Treats recipe

Budget recipe: Halloween Peep Treats are silly spooky fun for all ages

You know Marshmallow Treats, those gooey squares of marshmallow-drenched puffed rice cereal, so simple and yet so addictively good? Now imagine substituting the regular marshmallows with Peeps, so that the finished product turns various Peep colors. Now imagine ghoulishly decorating those Treats with "severed" Peep heads and other bits of Peep body parts--optionally augmented with suggestive squirts of red cake-decorating gel. It's tacky, it's twisted, it's even maybe a little transgressive--in other words, it's what Halloween is all about! Follow the link and see how easy it is to make these goofy (and inexpensive) goodies!

By the way--notice to spam commenters

I love to get genuine fans commenting on my blog postings. So much so, that I have my blog set to notify me whenever someone posts a comment, so that I can immediately go read it and see who it's from. That includes clicking any links provided by the commenter. So if the comment does happen to be from a genuine fan of my blog, I get to find out what cool stuff you're up to.

However, if the link takes me to, say, a commercial website selling prescription meds over the web, or touting some infomercial-worthy health product, or any other content that informs me you were only commenting to get your spammish crap attached to my blog, I immediately mark your comment as spam and 86 it from my blog.

I check my email several times a day, so spam comments stay up for, oh, maybe an hour at most. And it doesn't matter whether the spam comment is attached to a new blog post, or one months or even years old--I find spam, I report it.

So--spam commenters--like the one whose comment I deleted just a few minutes ago: please refrain from wasting your time and mine, and quit trying to sully my blog with your crap. I'm just too fast for ya.

My latest on Examiner.com: Smoked turkey parts give beans great flavor

Budget cooking tip: smoked turkey parts give beans great flavor.

They're comparable in price to ham hocks and other traditional beans-cooking meat, but significantly lower in calories and fat-grams -- and they make beans taste yum. Follow the link to read more (and to give my Examiner.com article some luv).

Day of the Dead alive and well at Mesa

This lovely Dia de los Muertos altar is on display in the lobby of the Learning Resource Center (a.k.a. the library) of Mesa College. On my way cross-campus earlier, I saw a booth set up by a Mexican-American student association offering sugar skulls. At least to judge by appearances, multicultural awareness seems to be alive and well at this outpost of higher education.

Bun rieu oc at Mien Trung

A recent post by my foodie friend Kirk on his blog terrific blog mmm-yoso reminded me I hadn't been to Mien Trung in forever. So I dropped in the other day, and am pleased to report that their bun rieu oc dac biet (noodle soup with crab paste and snails, house special version with extra goodies) is just as tasty as ever. Mien Trung is just around the corner from K Sandwiches, so I could easily hit it for lunch any time I'm on my way to or from Mesa. A nice respite from hitting the books and keyboard.

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Backstage before curtain up

James, one of our fearless players in our segment of the North Park Playwrights Festival, in a very bleary photo taken by my cell phone. You still have a chance to see this show (a total of seven 10-minute plays, running the gamut from slapstick comedy to heavy drama) tomorrow night at 8pm. Google North Park Vaudeville San Diego for the website and online ticket ordering.

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The glammed-up end of campus

A lot of Mesa's architecture is strictly utilitarian and even low-budget (portables that have become non-portable), but then there's this area of spiffy new architecture, with the library and art gallery (right next to the admin bldgs., interestingly enough).

Examiner.com Fall Cookbook -- over 300 pages of yum (including two of mine)

Examiner.com Fall Cookbook recipe index.

Yes, there are teeming hordes of people writing for Examiner.com, but when it comes to food and recipes, that's a strength! Witness this growing compendium of recipes from Food and Drink Examiners across the country (there should be over 300 of them, once the Examiner.com tech elves fully populate the index; there's already well over 150 right now). I already have one of mine in the index, and the other should be showing up by Monday. But you should check out all these other folks too--there are a lot of damn fine cooks in this bunch.

Chinese soy-sauce braised pork belly recipe on Examiner.com

Fall recipes: Chinese soy-sauce braised pork belly.

Pork belly is better known to Americans as the cut from which bacon is made, but in recent years fresh (i.e. uncured) pork belly has become all the rage among foodies. No surprise to Asians, who have been enjoying pork belly for literally centuries. While there's no way to pretend this is diet food, the long braising in this recipe renders out a lot of the fat and turns it, and the skin, into a wonderful mouth-feel experience. Enjoy in small portions with lots of rice to soak up all the wonderful juices. (Note: for those of you who remember some of my First UU Church Dining for Dollars Asian feast extravaganzas, this dish was one of the major hits.)