Holiday Greetings! (Getting More OT All the Time)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, Kat Macfarlane <katmac at ...> wrote:
>
> What on /earth/ does one do with a quart and a half of goose grease? 
> In-depth facials for the next twelve months? Alternative auto fuel?
> 

Wouldn't  know about facials, much of mine is obscured by beard, though
IIRC goose-grease used to be slapped on children's chests as a winter
protective. However,  culinary  uses:

http://www.goosefat.co.uk/gfis_03.html

It also happens to be one of the healthier fats,  low in  saturates.
Keeps, too. A year when refrigerated.

> Those honkers at the University of Washington were certainly no 
> fifteen-pounders! More like the USS Nimitz coming ashore with blood in 
> its eye! There's something about the S-curve of the neck and the 
> downward slant of the wings that makes a sensible person want to get out 
> of the vicinity real fast.
> 

Yeah, impressive, isn't it? Fluffing up like that. Strip off the feathers, though
and they shrink to an amazing degree.
They make damn good watch-dogs, and unlike Rottweilers it's acceptable
to eat them. Perfect.

> No, I'm not a country girl; city- and academia-bred all my life, though 
> the academic side of things at least does have its Culinary Moments 
> (there was the tongue with fur on in chromium-yellow caper sauce at 
> Columbia, and the aptly named Cheesy Garden Casserole at UW). I had the 
> good fortune to be a medical brat, and my father discovered cholesterol 
> in the early 1960s; 

Interesting. Does that make you the Kolesterol Kid?


> since my mother was a middle-western farm girl and 
> thought Crisco was a food group all by itself, it fell to me to develop 
> recipes that didn't involve saturated fat. I got pretty good at it if I 
> do say so <http://www.katnmac.com/VirtualCookbook.htm>, though I've gone 
> back to using butter instead of margarine in my old age to avoid trans 
> fats (it tastes better too), at least in baking. Everywhere else I use 
> olive oil (Mediterranean) or peanut oil (Oriental). (So that you won't 
> lie awake all night wondering: The peanut started out in Peru, and got 
> to China and India the same way hot peppers did, by way of enterprising 
> Spanish traders who carried the good stuff from their New World colonies 
> to interested connoisseurs everywhere else in the world. Think of them 
> kindly the next time you enjoy a good curry.

Oh, yes. The  exquisite delectation of a first-class Bombay bum-burner.
Lovely.

> The chocolate, of course, 
> they took back to Spain, not wanting to waste the /really/ good stuff on 
> ignorant heathens.)
> 

Chocolate. Good stuff. One of the main food groups, along with alcohol,
caffeine, nicotine and (according to Pratchett - knighted today in Honours 
List) - burned crispy bits.

> There now. Don't you feel better for having had a little history lesson 
> before goose?
> 

Always interested in this sort of stuff. If I can remember it it may give the
impression of Kneasy knowledgeability on some future occasion.

Not that I take much notice of healthy lifestyle propaganda. it's part of the
belief that some types have that someone out there is enjoying themselves,
and we must stop them immediately. See no merit in becoming a trophy
survivor in the Old Folk's Home with others deciding what I do, what I eat, etc.

I have no intention of finishing up as a perfectly healthy corpse.
What a waste. Hopefully, I'll arrive at the end with a bacon sandwich in one 
hand, a large gin in the other, a grin on the face and  "Whee! What a ride!"
And frankly, the 65 years clocked up so far have been pretty good, despite
constant appeals for me to behave myself.
Where's the fun in that?