A Duck's Oven

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Let’s face it: getting dinner on the table after a long, busy day is no simple task. A Duck’s Oven is here to help you make meal time the easiest and most exciting part of your day.

Beef/Game

SA Sunday: Royale Eatery

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I had quite the challenge for Fiance’s birthday a few weeks ago: find a restaurant in a town who’s food scene you don’t know, that he is guaranteed to love.

He’s usually game to try any new food, but left to his own devices he will always pick one of his favorites: pizza, burgers, or nachos. I decided to indulge this on his birthday.


We’ve had very little luck with pizza in Cape Town- it’s either really bad or on the lighter side, not the greasy, saucy, filling pizza we’re looking for. I’m sorry, Cape Town. You have a lot of good qualities, but pizza making isn’t one of them. There are still a few pizza places we need to try, though, so I could still be proven wrong. This ruled pizza out.

Most of the Mexican food places here are a little higher end and serve incredible creations like butternut quesadillas and octopus ceviche (I can’t WAIT to go to El Burro!), but not giant platters of cheesy nachos loaded with fillings like Fiance enjoys so much. So I decided not to go down that route.

This left burgers, which was great. We’ve had a lot of really good sandwiches in Cape Town. I did a lot of research and had several contenders, but I finally landed on Royale Eatery. This is their tagline:


“Royale is a restaurant. We serve burgers. Not just any burgers – burgers that make your soul tingle and your dreams come true.”

Ummm, yeah, this was definitely where we’d eat.

I made reservations for Friday night. They have a different area in their restaurant for reservations- upstairs, where there’s a very different feel and decor. And, you can’t order pizza if you’re seated up there! (There should maybe be a warning for this on their website) Luckily, we weren’t there for pizza. It’s a gorgeous restaurant. Here are a few photos from their website.

To drink, I got a Mango and Coconut Batida and Fiance got the house red.

They do incredible things with burgers. They use several different meats, like beef, wagyu beef, lamb, chicken, fish, ostrich, and chorizo. Here’s a snippet from their menu:

Fiance got the Cheddar Royale and added chorizo, and I finally settled on the Merino burger: a lamb patty topped with roasted red pepper pesto, coriander, and caramelized onions.

Royale Eatery also specializes in milkshakes, so we knew we had to end our meal with one. Fiance got to choose, it was his birthday, after all, and we got a chocolate peppermint shake. It was a chocolate shake with little delicious, crunchy peppermint balls all throughout.

Royale Eatery definitely held up to the reviews: it was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had and I’d believe they have the best in Cape Town!

Tips and Tricks: Stocking Your Freezer

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This is my freezer. My freezer is small. My freezer does a lot of work. It’s not just for fish sticks and chicken nuggets (in fact, you will find neither in there). It stores bread, berries, butter… but most importantly, it stores all the meat I could ever need.

I’ve talked many a time about the importance of a well-stocked freezer. Although it costs a bit upfront, it pays off in the long run, so if you are a college student just beg your mom to take you to Costco. When you tell her it’s not for pizza or frozen taquitos, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. Speaking of moms, mine gets all the credit for teaching me to buy in bulk. It’s saved me a lot of money and time, and it’s so nice to have ingredients I need on hand at all times. Thanks, Mom!

Here are the usual culprits, all from Costco: USDA Choice steak, 90/10 ground beef, and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. You’ll notice the “use by” dates on the meat were for about a month ago. Don’t be alarmed- I took most of the photos for this post during my last restocking session, about a month ago. Usually I have salmon in my freezer, too, but I get that for free from my dad so it wouldn’t really “count” in this post.

Since I originally took some of these photos I have discovered Costco’s bone in, skin on chicken thighs, so I’ll be including those, too. They come in gigantic packs like the chicken breasts. This is what they look like:

First, let’s figure out how much we’ve spent. When I say meals, I’m talking about meals for two people. Remember: ignore the use by dates as I took these photos a month ago. Alrighty?

Six 2-packs of chicken thighs (12 total, at least 6 meals):

Six 2-packs of chicken breasts (12 total, at least 6 meals):

About six GIANT USDA Choice steaks (about 4 meals):

Six pounds of ground beef (at least 6 meals):

So, I spent $8.50 + $21.32 + $27.45 + $18.48 = $72.75 for the meat for about 22 meals for two or 44 meals for one. So, about $3.31 per two person meal or $1.65 per one person meal. Not too shabby if you ask me! Like I said, it pays off in the long run because it would cost you a lot more per each item at the grocery store and it saves you time when you have everything you need readily in your freezer. 
Now for a tutorial on making all this meat freezer-friendly. For this, you’ll need freezer-safe, gallon-sized Ziploc bags, sandwich Ziploc bags, and saran wrap.
The chicken is easy because it divides up into little two packs just by ripping the perforated edges. See? No supplies needed here.
For the ground beef, I divide it into six 1-pound portions. My life would be made much easier if I had a kitchen scale, but I don’t, so I eyeball it. It seems to work out just fine. Once you have the beef divided, stuff one pound of beef into a sandwich bag. Make sure you get as much air out as possible before sealing.
To protect the ground beef from freezer burn, put all of the bags of beef into a freezer-safe, gallon-sized Ziploc bag.
For the steak, we’ll need the saran wrap.
Costco puts out some gigantic freaking steaks, so I cut the big ones in half to make them go a little further. Don’t tell my dad. Then, I wrap two dinner-sized steaks up in the saran wrap so they’re easy to pull from the freezer for Boyfriend and I for dinner.
Then, just like the beef, transfer the steaks to a gallon-sized Ziploc to protect from freezer burn.
Now everything is ready for the freezer! Storing them can be tricky- your freezer will become a game of tetris. But it’s worth it!
A few other essentials to my freezer that you can see here: back up Dave’s Killer Bread, shredded cheese separated into bags that last about a week (yes, you can freeze shredded cheese!), frozen berries for smoothies every morning, flattened bags of homemade chicken broth, and butter, which you can’t see here because it’s in the freezer door.
Someday, I’ll have two gigantic stand-alone freezers and I’ll fill them with even more findings from Costco. Until then, I will continue to become a master at freezer-tetris. This freezer, when properly stocked, is truly the key to not having pizza or a grilled cheese for dinner every night.
So now that you’re freezer is stocked, wondering how to defrost it? Head over here!

My Apologies

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I’m oh so very sorry. I’ve been the worst blogger EVER lately. I think I’ve mentioned a few times that when I started this blog, I forgot to consider how difficult it would be to blog consistently AND be a college student AND be a research assistant AND be a girlfriend. Especially during the dreaded dead week. If you’re not a college student, dead week is the week before finals. This week is when most final papers/last minute extra credit/random assignments that the professor forgot to assign earlier are all due. Not too mention we’re cramming for our finals the next week. It’s hard. I’ve had 4 final papers, 2 “formal discussion”, and 5 busy work assignments so far. And I still have 4 finals to prepare for.

Many students cope by sleeping in the cafe on campus:

Usually, I would cook compulsively to cope, but I actually don’t have the time.

Three more terms, three more terms, three more terms…

In fact, right now I should be finishing my last final paper. I kind of am. This is what my computer is like right now:

Whew. Anyways, food related things. I don’t usually cook during these busy periods, unless I have a break down, so my dinners haven’t been anything too blog worthy. I thought I’d share them with you anyways.

A trip home means a bag full of frozen meat goodness, which happened to be venison this time around. So our quick-and-easy-but-still-awesome dinner on Sunday was venison nachos.

Same as regular nachos, but with ground venison instead of beef. They were awesome, and much leaner. But does that really matter when they’re covered in cheese? I pretend it does…

Monday, we had Papa Murphy’s pizza. Monday was really hard, okay?! And pizza’s awesome.

Yesterday, I insisted on my comfort food and cooked a little. We had sirloin steak and mashed potatoes. It rocked my world. I cooked stove top for the first time in my life in a little bit of melted butter, and it was perfect. It smelled far too good to waste time taking a picture before shoving it down my throat. I love steak. As I’ve said, I blame my parents.

Today, we had Chipotle for dinner. I think we’re addicted to that place. But! I did make a good lunch. We had grilled cheeses, but I put a nice twist on them by spreading some of the leftover chipotle-mayo mixture from our fish tacos inside the bread. It rocked. Have I mentioned we like spicy food?

Anyways, I’m going to be posting my cookie exchange recipe this weekend… and it’ll rock your world. Get ready. Hopefully I’ll have something before then!

Enjoy your week, and college students, don’t hurt yourselves. It’s almost over. If you survive, I’ll bake you some of my awesome cookie exchange cookies.