The Goose is Getting Fat

I have a wild hair up my arse about creating a traditional, Victorian English Christmas dinner this year.

The cornerstone of this fantasy dinner should be a goose; however, I have found that finding a goose ain't that easy. I can get one online for around $105 plus shipping, and Terri found a frozen one at Target for $50. This seems like a big investment for something I'm not sure will even taste good.

My mom suggested that I find a hunter. She cooked goose one year and the bird was able to grace our table courtesy of her boyfriend at the time who had shot it himself.

Considering my friends and acquaintances, I quickly deduced that I was unlikely to find a hunter to provide my holiday goose.

Then a Christmas miracle happened.

I was working on a project with another consultant at work, and she informed me that her husband was gone for a week. When I asked her why, she said that he was hunting geese in Montana.

"Really?" I asked. "Geese?"

"Yes, do you want one?" she answered.

As I eagerly confirmed that I did, indeed, want one, it slowly dawned on me that if her husband was to deliver a goose to me I would have to deal with it: feathers, innards, head.

Was I that committed to my idea of a traditional, Victorian feast? Did I have the stomach for it? Part of me instantly felt certain that I could--and WOULD--do it. I would be amazingly, mind-bogglingly, genuinely triumphant in my quest to take an actual animal and turn it into something served beautifully on a festive platter.

Then I thought about it some more.

I started determining who I knew that could do the dastardly deed for me and return the bird to me looking more like food and less like wildlife. I made plans to ask for a second goose from the husband so that I could use it to barter my way out of de-feathering the thing myself. I began calculating how I could come up with the money I previously eschewed spending on the gamble of a goose in order to pay someone to de-goosify the goose.

Even without me doing the hard work, this goose quest was turning out to be quite a pain in my stubborn, determined arse. In the bright light of freshly-hunted bird reality I don't know what I'll do if I actually get a dead bird delivered to me. But I'm pretty sure it will be memorable--and, hopefully, tasty.