Sunday: pre-charcuterie and Joe's special

Yesterday we did some preparation with Jon and Cati for a planned charcuterie meal for next weekend. We made a batch each of rillettes and pate de compagne, and started the cure for some duck confit. For all this we followed recipes from Cati's book Charcuterie. No real report so far on how these things turned out, since they aren't done yet, but preliminary indications are that the rillettes and pate taste pretty good. :-)

For dinner I made a pan of Joe's Special using dino kale Cati brought from her garden and Cati made a batch of braised veggies (baby artichokes, carrots, onion, asparagus, bacon) and a big salad. It's hard to go too wrong with either Joe's Special or the braised veggies, and we didn't.