Prep time: 30 mins + marination time
Cook time: 30 mins
Ready in: 1 hr

Serves: 2 Adults

Ingredients:

2 Cans of  Wu-Chang brand Mun Chai Ya (a chunky seitan mock duck meat)
1 bundle of shen choy (Chinese red spinach)
3 cups Minute Brown rice
1 Bundle of asparagus
1/2 A plum – finely chopped
1 cup Olive oil
1 cup Vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp Sriracha  hot sauce
1 container of Dynasty plum sauce
1/4 cup of Agave nectar or honey
2 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1 tsp Lemon juice

Optional ingredients:
1tbsp Butter
1 tsp Vegetarian oyster sauce

Suggested pairing: Lychee wine

Directions:
1.) Open & drain the cans of mock duck, with the duck still in the can rinse the “meat” about 3 times with fresh water, then drain. Separate the large & medium pieces of mock duck. You can keep the small pieces for another meal or toss them. Fill a large bowel with some water or olive oil. I used water so the ingredients above don’t include the quantity for olive oil you may use here. Mix in a heavy amount of Old Bay with a few drops of lemon juice, place the mock duck in & let it marinate for a bit – I’d recommend 2 – 4 hrs.

2.) Thoroughly wash the shen choy, break off the leaves & pile onto a plate or in a large bowl.

3.) Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F

4.) Heat a medium size pan on the stove at a medium-high heat. Pour in some vegetable oil, as well as butter if you’d like. Once the oil is hot place the mock duck into the pan. Lightly sprinkle with some more Old Bay seasoning & fry (flipping between both sides) until in begins to brown, then remove from the stove.

5.) In a cup or small bowel mix about 1/2 cup of olive oil & a few dashes of Old Bay seasoning.  Place the mock duck onto a non-stick or greased baking sheet. Using either a basting brush or a spoon, lightly cover the duck in the seasoned oil, then place in the oven for about 6 minutes.

6.) Next we are going to create the glaze, which you’ll need to test both for consistency & taste as you go. Using another small shallow pan heat up the temperature on your stove about 1/2 way. Pour in the Dynasty plum sauce, then mix in about 1 1/2 tsp Sriracha  hot sauce. Slowly mix in about 1/4 cup of agave nectar or 1/2 cup of honey. You want the consistency of this to be thick enough that when you pour it out of a spoon it coats the front & back of the spoon still. Once you have the right consistency, & you are happy with the taste, turn the temperature to low. Continue to stir this as you are cooking.

7.) To make the shen choy heat up a very large pan at about medium heat, & pour in a small amount of olive oil, as well as adding a bit of butter if you’d like. I also put some vegetarian oyster sauce & soy sauce into mine. Once the pan in hot toss in the shen choy & let the steam bring the mass of it down a little bit before sautéing.

8.) The 6 minutes on the duck should be about up, so pull it out & flip the meat, then coat the new top side in the olive oil with Old Bay seasoning, & return to the oven for another 6 minutes.

9.) Stir the shen choy around a little bit, keep doing this through the recipe. Turn the heat down to about low-medium & add a few drops of lemon juice.

10.) In a medium pot bring 2 1/2 cups of water to a boil. Mix in 3 cups of Minute brown rice. Wait for the rice to begin boiling, then reduce heat to low, cover the pot & let the rice simmer for 5 minutes.

11.) Pull out the duck, flip the pieces, then liberally coat with with plum glaze using a basting brush or spoon, & place back in the oven for another 4-5 minutes.

12.) Heat another small pan on medium heat with some olive oil, & butter if desired. Wash off the asparagus, then bend the end of each individual stalk until it breaks off. Place the asparagus into the pan & roll it around a bit to coat the stalks with the oil.

13.) Pull out the duck from the oven, flip the pieces, & coat the new top side with the plum glaze, & return to the oven for an additional 5 minutes.

14.) Place the asparagus on a baking sheet, brush them with olive oil, & place in the oven for about 3-5 minutes until they show signs of a lightly roasted color.

15.) Remove the rice from heat, stir it, & let it stand 5 minutes.

16.) Mix the chopped plum pieces into the plum sauce, & turn up the heat to medium-low.

17.) When the 5 minutes on the duck & asparagus are up, pull them from the oven, then mix the rice again.

18.) On a plate place 2-3 large scoops of rice & flatten out a bit. Then layer on the shey choy, followed by 2-3 pieces of duck. Coat the duck with a generous amount of the plum sauce, & place 3-5 pieces of asparagus in a small bundle over the small mountain of food.

I woke up this morning to a rather odd text from a close friend which read:

“Hey did you hear about the weekend at bernie’s trio in your neck of the woods?”

No, as a matter of fact I hadn’t!

I’ll fill all of you in on an interesting tidbit… I’m generally not a consumer of the news. From my experiences, including experience being in the news – the facts are often erroneously reported. The issue is that you have news reporters who put two & two together, which to them somehow equals five. Sounds like a certain family member of mine, doesn’t it? Not only that, but the gullible people are lead to actually believe that the answer is five as well. Then you have news stations like Fox News which appear to slant the news to the Republican side. They can say whatever they want, but the fact is that I’m not the only one who has noticed that the station is not neutral… just look at the “Fox News Channel Controversies” topic on Wikipedia! If you want to have a slant then fine, but at least be honest about it! Until then, they should expect people to continue to refer to them as “Faux News“. Regardless of what a spade wants to be called the player still has to play it as a spade.  For that matter I’ve given facts directly to columnists about myself, & later read something that was wrong! The point is, not only can we not believe everything we hear from friends, we also can’t believe everything in the news nor can you believe something just because it’s printed in a book. I’m sure most authors do the best they can to get their facts straight, but I would be lying if I said I never saws something printed that I knew for a fact wasn’t true. I’ll put it this way, I think most news reporters wouldn’t be good to take the courtroom oath of  “the truth, the whole truth, & nothing but the truth”.

At any rate, as the story goes a few local men from Denver are accused of taking a corpse out around the city for a night on the town, at the expense of the dead man. You can read the news report online via a story from the Associated Press. While it may not seem appropriate or moral, I do have to say something about this… particularly since they ended the night at Shotgun Willie’s which is managed by an industry associate & friend of mine. First, tons of things are illegal. At this point I’d not be surprised if someone came up with a “clean air tax” & anyone who wants to breath would have to pay it! Doesn’t it disgust you though that the government has so much say over what happens to our bodies, & yet “we the people” don’t? What happened to freedom?

I’ve always said that when I die I want a funeral pyre akin to the viking burials… that or just push me out into the water on a boat. Honestly I’d probably prefer both but that would be really difficult to actually achieve. Just put my body in a boat, set it aflame & push me out to sea! In most places neither of these are options easily accomplished though. You can’t just randomly push a full body out to sea or even drop it in the sea… no, heaven forbid that! Burials at sea of anyone but a sailor from a sunken ship require paperwork be submitted to the government. Nor it is legal to just burn the body on land without notice to the government, because bodies release so many PBT (Persistent, Bioaccumulative and Toxic) pollutants that the EPA seems to think its necessary to track everything being burned. So basically the minute someone dies expect that if you are in charge you’ll have to file paperwork, & the more unique circumstances they want their body disposed of – the more paperwork you will be filling out! I’m becoming more flexible about this though. I’d also be happy with a sky burial or a green burial. Just don’t pump me full of a bunch of fake chemicals to preserve me! I’d rather my body just be returned to nature where it can be useful & not take up space.

With that said, I’d also like to state that when I pass away (as long as its not of anything infectious) my friends have my full permission to take my body out for one last 24 hour “hoorah” – on me! That’ right, use my credit cards too… it’s not like the money is going to do me any good once I’m dead, & if you max out or over-charge the cards I won’t have to deal with the debt collectors anyhow! Just leave me enough for the open air burial pyre or whatever. Sure I’ll be dead… but I at least want my friends to have one last fabulous memory of our times together! Just don’t leave me in the car while all of you enjoy the night. Athena, I’m putting you in charge of getting us all a champagne room & funeral strippers à la Taiwan! Maybe even a ladyboy too? Actually, maybe we ought to put James in charge of that… he’ll know which one is best by then! Tempest, I’m leaving you in charge of collecting any money from customers with weird fetishes wanting to rub my dead feet… because I have no doubt it will happen! Just don’t let them eat my hair like that guy from Mexico wanted to do, & if they want to lick my hair check their breath first because I don’t want to go up in flames smelling like bad breath. Savannah, do me a favour & actually make arrangements for the burial… somehow once I’m gone I think you’d know what I’d want & be the responsible one to make sure I don’t get left at the strip club! LOL Avalon, if the girls over-run the credit card I’m leaving you in charge of telling the collector’s that they can feel free to try collecting money from my ashes… just don’t say what happened to the ashes. I’m sure you’ll love telling them to basically go **** themselves! Money just collects dust after you’re dead… so my friends may as well have fun with it. If someone could also keep Nikki awake for the whole event & out of trouble (Jaycee this has your name written all over it)… that would be good! Tell her she can scatter me along the beach, or you all can split up the ashes & turn me into diamonds… I just don’t want anyone getting a full string of diamonds (aka no diamond choker necklaces, tennis bracelets, etc.) & hawking me off at a pawnshop later. One diamond each ladies… we aren’t gold diggers here! Chanel, I’d leave you in charge of passing these out. If I’m lucky when I die my ashes would make enough diamonds for each of my friends to have one diamond, with no excess of diamonds left over.

To end with, I’m not sure what I think of the Denver version of “Weekend At Bernies”… other than they could have done it better. I hope my friends can “live it up” when I’m gone though. Be sure it’s good enough to make a movie out of! 24 hour dead stripper road trip?

P.S. Athena, if you feel like treating yourself to that stripper from Florida that we met in New Orleans that “has morals”, go for it! Just make sure you make her work for every individual dollar of that $400! LOL

A lot of you probably already heard, but I am currently on a 3 week hiatus from work to heal from surgery. If you haven’t heard the story, or if you are just the type that loves pictures & details, keep reading. I’m trying to start using more photos to keep things interesting & break up my long paragraphs.

My close friend Nikki Sexton was in town visiting with a friend of her’s in Telluride, CO, & since it was the week of her birthday I drove down six hours to hang out with them for the week. The first few days were fine. Nikki got to see her first live chipmunk & her first live deer… the ones in the photo below. Oh, & that big white building in the background is the hotel I checked into, its called The Peaks.

Saturday night we took the gondola up to eat dinner at Allred’s restaurant & enjoyed a great meal, as well as some fun after. We also enjoyed a few glasses of cotton candy moscato. Who knew such a thing existed? It was sweet though so a second glass was in order! Afterwards Nikki’s friend went home & we roamed around the city. Nikki had been experiencing altitude sickness, so we hit the Bubble Lounge & O2 Bar (local oxygen bar).

The Mushroom Festival was going on so we had a good time & met some fun people. Unfortunately I still need to get 2257 info from Nikki so I can blog photos of us together. In the meantime this generic photo will have to do. If you are dying to see a photo of us together though I do have one from a post on Twitter.

After dancing the night away we left the lounge. I fell asleep at 11 p.m., & woke up violently sick at 1 a.m.. I was so sick the bed was shaking. I’d asked the chef to put some of the mushrooms they were featuring into my dinner, so at first I thought maybe I’d ended up with poisonous mushrooms. I finally fell back asleep at 4 a.m..

When I woke up Sunday morning at 7:30 a.m. I still felt extreme pain in the right side of my abdomen. I suspected  then that it was the appendix, & therefore didn’t take any pain-killers because I know that can make things worse. I went ahead & had breakfast with Nikki & her friend. When the pain had not lessened I ended up going to the emergency room, & told the front desk person I suspected it was my appendix. They ran me through a series of quick tests including a CAT scan, then loaded me onto an ambulance. Leave it to me to have something like this happen in a tiny mountain town 6 hours away from home where there are no surgeons! The ambulance transported me 1.5 hrs away to Montrose where I was rushed into surgery.

I’m slowly recovering. The first day was really the worse, I couldn’t laugh or cough without wanting to cry from the pain. Now I can at least laugh… although anything more than a giggle or two still hurts. The doctor gave me two prescriptions, one related to a medication that all of my siblings are allergic to, so I had never had before. I actually think I am allergic to it, I’ve been getting a rash & just generally itchy all over. That could be seasonal allergies, but I don’t usually get any sort of rash or itching in the throat/ear area from seasonal allergies… so I’m pretty sure it’s the medication. I’m going to keep taking it for now though unless it gets to the point that I just can’t handle it. I do have 3 incisions from the surgery, which I’m praying won’t scar!

For comparison see the before photo of Nikki & I (NSFW).
I’m on the left.

I did ask my ex (cosmetic plastic surgeon) about the scaring, & apparently I’m okay to start using the silicone sheets, so I just began using those today. I’ve been paranoid since the last surgery I had a few years ago made me go from having a perfectly round belly button to something that resembled the triangle nose of a Halloween pumpkin!

The good part about all of this is that I’ll finally have time to catch up on scheduling bookings, approving friends requests on the social media sites, update my website, etc. I hope you all are happy with that! Of course, a lot of that seems like work to me… so I am dousing my hate for it with sugary sweets.

Shopping, clothes & perfume would be better though! Yes, at this point I might have to be bribed to update my own site. I know… I’m getting bad. LOL I’m pre-planning my next shopping trip for when my swelling goes down… Neiman Marcus, Cache, & White House Black Market… hopefully I won’t miss all the good fall sales! If anyone feels like sending me gift cards to my P.O. Box I’d be eternally grateful! I’m not publicly posting the address, but if you are feeling generous I’m happy to give it out. Of course, what girl would turn down gift cards for shopping?