Cooking Goose

On Saturday morning, while I was still sound asleep in bed, the phone rang. The parent of one of our students left a message, wondering if his glasses had been fixed yet (Apparently Kyle is the glasses fixing expert in town). When Kyle called him back a little bit later he said that one of his daughters would be over in a little bit and would be bringing a bird along with her.

Getting off the phone, Kyle remarked, “You know, I used to just give my teachers a mug at the end of the year to show that I appreciated them.”

The night before, at graduation, the same parent came up to us and thanked us profusely for helping his oldest daughter graduate and his younger daughters have a successful year in school. It sure feels nice to be appreciated.

After the birds were dropped off I was then in a quandary, “Well, what in the world do I do with a goose and a duck?”

First, I cleared out a large space in the fridge for the garbage bag that held both the birds. Then, I pulled out my Cooking Alaskan cookbook and perused the section on game birds. I was very nervous about picking a good recipe because the last two times I have made game birds the results have been disasterous. In fall, Kyle caught a crane and I then attempted to make crane soup by boiling it in a pot with rice for a few hours. At dinner time I dished out a foul smelling mush. When we gave the leftover (unedible) crane soup to Thunder he kept us up for a whole night needing to go outside (need I say more?). Subsequent to that incident, I attempted to cook a duck that Kyle shot. Needless to say, this was another unsuccessful attempt. As you can imagine, I was quite anxious about cooking up the goose. After flipping through the cookbook anxiously I finally settled on a recipe that roasted the goose with an apple and bread crumb stuffing inside.

After I stuffed the bird, I sewed up the body cavity, and stuck it in the oven. Two hours later I returned from my run to find a succulent smelling kitchen. I tested the bird with a meat thermometer, 170 degrees, all was well. I then pulled it out of the oven and tried a tiny slice of it. “Wow!” I exclaimed to Kyle, “It’s actually really really good!”

Finally, I was successful at cooking a bird! Wahoo!