Verb: sap:

[desperance]

You know how, when you're on a deathmarch in the cooking stakes - Kitchinsanity, I call it - the wise advice is to wash up the dishes as you go?

Well, let me add to that: clear up your washed dishes, also as you go.

Otherwise, the drainer just gets more and more crowded and unstable, heaped higher and higher; and as you rummage for the particular tool that is underneath the lot, some things will fall and break, others will fall and need to be washed again. This-all is tedious.

I have:

broken down the ducks;
put up the confit;
roasted the carcases, rendered vast quantities of fat for the confit, possibly solved the problem of the scratchings, and set the residues to simmer for the stock;
baked one curious kind of spelt loaf (no kneading! no rising! just mix the flour and salt with dried yeast and water and slam it in the oven!) and am rising another, purely in the interests of scientific exploration.

I am: halfway through making the duckliver mousse: just waiting for the livers & shallots & marsala/brandy liquor to cool a little before the butter goes in.

I am: knackered already, and it's half-past four (half-past four! how did that happen?) and I have an age and an ocean to cover before dinner-time.

*drags weary self back to the fray*