Past, sinful and duck

- A lovely man, a friend from fellow past corporate employment, comes for a long visit. We sit at the dining room table drinking coffee, catching up and going through my vegetarian recipes.

- Finding a Paula Deen recipe for "Mashed Potato Bake" to make for my dinner group party. It is sinful - containing, well...potatoes, sour cream, cream cheese, lots of butter (of course), Jack cheese and topped with those french fried onion rings. It turns out soooo good.

- The dinner included beef tenderloin cooked on the grill (yum), as well as duck from a nearby "authentic" Chinese restaurant. I tell the chef that the duck's head and neck he had put to the side reminded me of the scene in "A Christmas Story" in which the mother erupts into hysterical laughter when the waiter at a Chinese restaurant lopps off the duck's head and neck. I laugh along with her every time, as if I had never seen it before.