I like to roam around Waitrose (fancy super-market, a la Whole Foods for our American Readers) an hour before they close, which is when they mark down all the food. Early this week I picked up a few wild game birds, Mallard Ducks, with buckshot holes evident, for $25 dollars down to $7 (£14 > £4).

As the ducks were purchased, close to expiration, a few days ago, there was some discussion in the house about the safety of eating them, and I do admit they smelled like, well, a dead duck that had been shot a while ago, but you are supposed to leave game a few days to bring out the flavor, right? That’s what I claimed, anyway, figuring that we’d all find out at 3 am that morning if this had been a mistake (it wasn’t, we all slept like fat bloated babies that night).

Johann, our resident chef, was in charge of the meal and he made Canard (Duck) à l’Orange. Our job was to prep the oranges, and make the grilled veggies, while Johann did a beautiful job with the duck in my latest find, a Le Creuset Enameled Cast-Iron pot (Le Creuset is like crack among gourmands, they are amazing to cook/bake/broil/boil/fry in).

He then made potato wedges fried in duck fat! I didn’t know you could even by jars of duck fat, but back he came from Tesco with a jar of duck fat, and we made giant french fries / potato wedges, cooked to a crisp in the fat, seared under the direct heat of the grill. Omigod they were good. Top that off with a few bottles of ’05 and ’02 French wine, and you get an idea why a gym membership is needed just get into my jeans.

Sadly, Igor goes back to France soon, Johann a month later, and Magalie might move somewhere less expensive, leaving me Froggy-less, and wondering where I should move to. Still, it was an amazing year in the house.

I fly tomorrow to Germany to see relatives!

I spent yesterday and this morning at Bailey farm, a lovingly ramshackle collection of functional stone farm buildings and the central modern house, overlooking a pasture-and-woodland valley.

Last night I helped out in the vegetable garden, albeit briefly, and did a very good job of eating the cheese, roast duck, and apple-blackberry crumble that was served for dinner. The farm is owned by Mary and Tom, and Mary is Mary Quicke of Quicke’s Cheddar, and is one of the places foodies might consider a heavenly afterlife.

If you’ve ever gone to Whole Foods in America and purchased Borough Market Cheddar, it was made by either Mary or her employees labour. I was given a tour of the dairy this morning, and it was like being in those TV documentaries about how Cheese is made. Except I was really in it, wearing a blue hair-net and smock and shoe-covers, and smelling the curds and whey and tasting the cheese half-way through the process (when it was at squeaky-cheese stage). I saw the fields her own cattle graze, the pipes the milk flows through, the vats it is whatevered in (still not too sure about the exact mechanics) and then cut, pressed, washed, and cheddared (which is a noun and a verb).

We walked through the storage rooms where it is aged and dried in cheesecloth, which is called cheesecloth for a good reason. And then I bought a few kilos for my relatives who live nearby.

I returned to the farm-house to pick up my stuff and connect to the outside world through the internet, but as I sit here writing I feel once again in awe of the magnificent countryside. I’ve spent a lot of time hiking through France, but think I’ll have to return to the West Country (the South-west of England) for my next hike. It might lack the fearful chasms of the Alps, but it possesses a peaceful, simple splendor that’s hard to ignore.

Hanging out with Diana normally just involves a passing mention of cheese, or even her pulling out a couple parchment-paper wrapped treasures that I’m always happy to eat. But lately she’s gone further, and has been working in various parts of England making cheddar cheese. We met up for a 4 day vacation in the heart of Cheddar-country.

We stayed in Wells, the smallest city (meaning it has to have a Cathedral) in England, drove around the amazing countryside, and even hiked the rim of Cheddar Gorge. The gorge, just above the town of Cheddar, is so steep you forget you’re in England. You only get an idea of the vertical drop when you see the car in this picture, just visible by Diana’s knee.

After hiking Cheddar Gorge, and avoiding the painfully touristy caves and cheese shop (no real Cheddar available) we hit the other attraction Somerset is famous for – the cider.

American readers will be thinking of cloudy apple juice, but in England cider means the alcoholic fermented pressing of cider apples. And it’s often really, really good. I confess, English beer doesn’t do it for me. You drink enough Deschutes Brewery (Oregon) or Dog Fish Head (Maryland) and you don’t want any more bland, tacky English pints. But the cider in the UK blows away most of what we have in the states, and I should know, as a good friend is involved with a traditional cider maker in Oregon, Wandering Aengus Ciderworks.

So we hunted down what turned out to be an amazing, local cider maker. And I do mean local. His guests included some die-hard cider drinkers. Patrons simply show up, takes a glass, fill it up from one of two barrels (dry or sweet) and proceed to get drunk. Payment is at your discretion, and left with farmer Wilkins or somewhere on the table. It doesn’t get better than this.

Here’s farmer Wilkins filling up a barrel of cider. And yes, that’s a giant hose pumping cider.

And what do you do when you pump it? This is a man who, by his own reckoning, used to drink 20 pints a day of his own cider in his younger years, and is proud he ‘never got the shakes in the morning’. Well, you test it. Test it again, even if you just tested it. And then drink the rest.

An impressive man. And while I’m not sure he’s into facebook, it’s certainly into him. His Facebook fan club has over a thousand followers!

And so I went back again, but this time as a resident, and a hungry one. My usual ability to procure free food helped, and I ended up with several free venison sausages, and a bunch of bread for two quid. Not a bad night.

In the group-cooking that ensued over the holidays, someone made lasagna, and drained the beef fat into a bowl rather than just pour it down the drain. This is generally a good idea, unless you have an energetic 12 year old (emotionally speaking) wandering around your house.

One bad idea lead to another, and I ended up making a fat candle by plunging the wicks or birthday candles into the fat, and lighting them. It burned for about an hour until someone blew it out in disgust.

But, for future reference, when the world economy truly goes down the drain and you are sitting around in your cold, dark house, you know that you can light your house with the fat left over from cooking hamburgers/your neighbors cat/your neighbor.

If anyone would like to do this at home, the trick is to make sure the wicks go all the way to the bottom, and are preferably anchored to something. If the wick is too short, it has nothing to support itself in the liquid tallow, and just falls over, extinguishing itself. That’s what happened to the one on the right in the photo.