[the_old_crowd] Re: Holiday Greetings! (Getting More OT All the Time)

[Kat Macfarlane]

Hey, doesn't goose grease make a fine tonic for beards? Make them all 
shiny and soft and oleaginous? And smelling sort of...goosy? Know any 
women who are turned on by goose? <VEG>

I wouldn't know about the healthy qualities of goose grease, since I'm 
not likely to come near it any time soon. I just don't think my 
itsy-bitsy toaster oven is up to cooking a goose (anybody's, even mine), 
especially if it sloughs off a quart and a half of grease! I'm more or 
less constrained to cook what can be cooked meatwise in a large frying 
pan or a Dutch oven.... So I think I'll stick to olive oil and peanut oil.

I never got close enough to the Lake Washington honkers to strip off the 
feathers (not that I remember that they fluffed up that much; low and 
sleek and evil). Must have had something to do with the S-curve of the 
neck and the downward slant of the wings. But I did have one bash me 
with his wing, and I can tell you there was no 15-pound weakling behind 
it. I think I'll leave Canada geese alone.

I have absolutely no desire to eat Rottweilers. Properly raised, they 
are very nice people. I just wish they wouldn't express their enthusiasm 
for me by drooling on my suede and velvet shoes.  :-P  I am not really a 
Big Dog person. (Hey, I'm a /cat/, O.K.)

You don't like curry? You don't like chili? You don't like *Szechuan? 
You don't like Thai? What do you transplanted Brits /eat/ besides geese? 
Bubble and Squeak? Black pudding? Spotty dick? Haven't you people heard 
about Globalization? (Sorry, I live on Planet Santa Cruz, which has 
every kind of restaurant in the world. My theory is that as people 
arrived in America, they started walking west, and if they didn't stop 
somewhere else, they eventually arrived at the Pacific Rim, stopped, and 
opened a restaurant.)

I also think you are somehow missing something here. Even in Britain 
(!), people are beginning to eat more adventurously. I am all in favor 
of a /moderate/ use of the fats you so glory in, and I do agree that I 
don't want to arrive at the rest home as a healthy soon-to-be imbecile. 
I have a bottle of pills which I will swallow on the night before they 
come to warehouse me. You eat what tastes good to you, I'll eat what 
tastes good to me (which will contain a reasonable dose of cholesterol), 
and we'll both be happy! I grew up in the Wild West, so enjoy a healthy 
whallop of chili peppers. (Did you know that capsiasin stimulates the 
flow of endorphins, so that after the initial burn,  you just feel 
better and /better/ and /BETTER/**?) Ask any chili-head, isn't the bum 
burn worth it? (Never had one myself, and I've been eating 
capsiasin-rich foods for years, but you never know....) I'm sure it's 
only a matter of time before the FDA decides that people are driving 
with capsiasin in their bloodstreams, **stopping at traffic lights, 
hugging their children, and generally acting like happy people, **and 
That Isn't Allowed!

I am All In Favor of Chocolate!!! Try those cookies 
<http://www.katnmac.com/chocchocchip.htm>, and I'll bet they'll fit 
right into one of your major food groups.

Purrs,

--Gatta
*
Barry Arrowsmith wrote:
>
> --- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com 
> <mailto:the_old_crowd%40yahoogroups.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 
> <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 
> <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?
>
>  



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