Christmas Is Coming, the Goose Is Getting Fat

For this special day I am bringing forward a post I wrote back in 2004 about a Christmas dinner I cooked…

 “Not that I like Martha Stewart, nobody likes Martha Stewart, I don’t think even Martha Stewart likes Martha Stewart. Which actually makes me like her…” so says the main character in the first chapter of Elizabeth Berg’s novel Open House.

Some years ago I cleaned a dental office, which had eclectic assortment of magazines for the long-suffering patients to read. Martha Stewart’s Living magazine was among them. I always took a minute or two to thumb through the newest issue as I cleaned the waiting room, or even actually read the articles as I waited for the dentist to fix my teeth, as I was also his patient.

Not that I am Suzy Homemaker or care about decorating or crafts—I do not have the decorating or craft gene—which brings to mind a hilarious segment by Bill Geist on the Sunday Morning program in which he creates a “Martha Stewart Christmas Wreath" with beer cans and Cheese Whiz.

I do like to cook, however, and the magazine is so beautiful with its gorgeous photography and clean, crisp layouts. It’s a feast for the eyes. Her suggestion that one cook a goose for Christmas caught my interest. She gave very detailed instructions about the stuffing and how important it was to save the goose fat.

So I decided to stuff a goose and cook it for Christmas dinner. The goose was expensive -- very expensive -- and not much bigger than one of the Muscovy ducks we used to raise.

Muscovy drake. Photo credit: Gerard Hogervorst, April 8, 2005.

The stuffing required expensive things like dried apricots and a bundle of fresh sage. By the time I got the thing assembled and in the oven, the kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off. I cleaned up that mess.

At the appointed time, I removed the goose from the oven and siphoned off more than 2 cups of fat. Almost immediately, I spilled it all over the floor.

Little Dog (see the photo to the right), always lurked in the kitchen when I was cooking because good things to eat would magically appear on the floor. So, naturally, he was right there and began lapping up this grease as I frantically tried to get it up without smearing it everywhere.

Finally, we sat down to eat the goose. It was terrible. Tough and stringy. The dressing was nasty. It was the worst dinner I had ever made.

Things got even better. Little Dog got very sick from eating the fat and threw up, and then had an attack of pancreatitis, and I had to take him to the vet the next day. That was not cheap either.

 So it was a disaster all the way around.

Thanks Martha, but I’ll stick to turkey.

Actually, turkey is too expensive right now so this year we are having ham, which was kindly given to us after the church dinner last week.

Merry Christmas!

Heavy Lifting

 A couple of days ago I took the truck to the feed (sorry, farm supply) store in town to pick up 50 pounds of sunflower seeds. The price has doubled since before the pandemic, and I periodically debate whether I am going to continue to spend money on feeding birds with the cost of everything else so high. But watching the birds is one of my great pleasures, and so I decide to keep buying the sunflower seeds.

When I walk in the main building, I see pallets near the counter with various types of 50-pound sacks of feed, including the sunflower seeds. Yay!!! That means I will not have to drive back to the warehouse and try to back up reasonably close to the loading dock, and avoid hitting the fork lift and the wall of straw, and any farmer in his flat bed or farm truck who might also be there picking up feed. I do not do well backing up in any event and I can’t see well in the truck because of the camper shell.

So I pay for the sunflower seed (and the price is still double), and the middle-aged woman behind the counter walks over to the pallet, picks up the 50-pound sack of sunflower seeds, throws it over her shoulder, and carries it out to the truck.

I am full of admiration and amazement at her strength. It has been a very long time since I have been able to pick up a 50-pound feed sack. These days I have been cautioned not to lift anything very heavy because of the osteoporosis that has made my back so fragile.

I have had to be creative in figuring out how to do things that I used to depend on Richard to do since he was hurt a year ago and is limited in what he can do. To get the feed sack out of the back of the truck and into the basement, I put a trash can under the tailgate, slide the sack off the tailgate and into the trash can, and then position the hand truck under the trash can and wheel it into basement. The sunflower seed can stay in the trash can, which has a tight-fitting lid.

Necessity is often the mother of invention.

Adventures With Wildlife

I meant to post this back on December 6, but got sidetracked. It was still fairly warm when this event occurred.

I have had some interesting experiences with critters in the basement—toads, salamanders, 

  and a giant spider—

 The board that the spider is touching is 4 inches.

And in the house—snakes, 

 

chipmunks, opossums, and the giant spider from the basement (I guess it decided it wanted to see how the other half lived).

 For a number years, a bat roosted every day during the summer in the stairwell leading from the garage to Richard’s office, and

 occasionally on the smoke alarm in front of the door. 

Today, however, was a first. I was in the middle of washing dishes, and suddenly, there was a five-lined skink swimming in the soap suds. I didn’t have time to take a picture of it, but this is the type of lizard.

 

I have no idea how it ended up in my dishwater.

I let it go outside near the “crack” between the porch and the house where the other reptiles go for the winter. 

Never a dull moment.  But I guess that is what makes life interesting.

“Lizards—you can catch them with your hands, yet they find their way into kings’ palaces” (and humble Ozark houses) (Prov 30:28).