aujourd'hui!

Today I woke up to terrible news! Well, first let me provide you some backstory, then I'll get back to the drama...

One of the original gang at work is retiring. Normally, this is no big deal, but he is basically the last person you would expect to even know who Lady Gaga is - I'm not going to tell you how old he is, but he's old enough to be retiring! 

I made him a surprise Mother Monster cake for his retirement luncheon yesterday (to top off a 12-hour work day)...

Jules let me know this morning that overnight the cake had decided to give up on life, so I went in to redo the beast and this time around, I applied more common sense so that the cake wouldn't implode. 

After the cake cutting and lunch with Jules, I headed back home where I baked more French Yogurt Cakes - this time with blackberries. Let me tell you, these cakes are amazing with berries. The blueberries were great, the blackberries turned out great and I can't wait to try it with raspberries!

I also took the time to prepare some quail for dinner tomorrow. In staying with the French themed Bon Appetit issue, I decided the French like quail, so I'm going to try it. I had never made quail before, but how hard could it be? I made some stuffing out of garlic, celery, onion, sage, rice, lemon juice, and goat cheese... and then decided that I needed to try de-boning them too. WHAT WAS I THINKING?

These birds are TEENY TINY little things. Two are considered one serving. The only hands equipped to de-bone them are certainly tinier than mine, but I guess there's a lot you can accomplish with a good bit of determination...

This may look a little (okay... more than a little) gross, but to me, it's the most beautiful thing I've seen all day. I deboned those little things by hand and look, even the little tenderloins are kind of in tact!

Stuffed, tied, and lovingly tucked into the Dutch Oven, I'll be roasting them for dinner tomorrow. Hopefully all that hard work was worth something. 

Of course, ever-the-backwards-thinker, I looked up how to debone a quail only after I had spent all that time doing it, and this guy debones two in about three minutes. :|

He's right about the bones being like needles... they're so tiny and get really sharp if you break them at the wrong point. I've sustained a fair number of injuries during today's little quail adventure, so if you're going to try it, be careful!

Fingers crossed for dinner turning out tomorrow... :|