Do you have any Betty Crocker in you?

Well, I'm male and I don't have much of a sweet tooth.

I haven't gotten around to making much in the ways of cakes and pies yet -- I'm mostly focused on breads right now. The only cake I make is a ginger cake, which is pretty much pure ginger moist love and not all about being sweet.

If you want something to be more savory, though, just add rhubarb! Mmm, rhubarb...

The extent of my sweets baking is cookies, pies, and cobblers, maybe the occasional carrot cake. I like baking things that are forgiving of amounts and stomping and opening of ovens. I bake more since I acquired a husband a few years back. Most of the time, I'd rather have seconds on the pasta than eat dessert. But I do love fresh fruit baked very simply. I also have a pretty extensive Christmas baked goods repertoire.

I'm probably 57% Betty Crocker. I bake things in wildly erratic spurts: cookies, brownies, cakes, pies, cobblers and bettys, even exotics like baklava. For one of our May birthday celebrations (3 family birthdays in the course of 1 week), I made everyone's favorite cakes: white with lemon, boston cream pie, carrot with cream cheese. In the last 10 days, I baked the Artpark Brownies from Ruth Riechl's Comfort Me with Apples, the shortbread from Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, and some coconut chocolate chip cookies out of desperation because the bakery hadn't made any for a month.

I also bake breads and rolls once winter comes in.

We've done (or tried to do) the low carb thing for the past year. It's been incredibly painful.

Okay, maybe I'm more than 57% because this morning I'm still glowing over the really excellent pie crust I made last night for the left-over beef stew pot-pies. Lard just rules the baked goods kingdom!

Man, lard just rules. Use it to oven-fry potatoes, too, trust me.

I have next to no Betty Crocker in me. I bake pies, but with premade pie crusts. I'm no good at pastry, or the chemistry end of cooking (most of confectionery, much of baking), and my hand doesn't work well enough to use a rolling pin anymore even if I had space to do so.

Tep, I was waiting for Thanksgiving so I could have goosefat to roast potatoes in - I'll try the lard sooner than that! My sympathy on hand problems - I had a year of injuries three years ago (crushed my left hand and just as that recovered 6 months later seriously burned my right) - there are few worse things to deal with on a day to day basis. I use a rolling pin that is just a big dowel, so I can put my forearms more into it. The space thing though - no work around for that - I dream of a huge ass kitchen with a 4 foot square marble slab to work on.

What I need is my mother's kitchen, which is wonderful and airy and spacious and has two sets of large windows that crank open, one of them overlooking the garden -- and since she lives with someone who considers spaghetti too ethnic for him, and she's nearing retirement age, she rarely cooks anything that takes more than a couple minutes.

(Except pies, which she is incredible at, especially her homemade crusts. So maybe it balances out.)

I've never had goosefat in anything except pates, because goose is just so damn expensive -- but man, I save every drop of duck fat, because that stuff is just gold. And I imagine it's pretty similar.

Off topic, but: there's a hot dog place in Chicago called *ahem* Hot Doug's that makes french fries with goose fat on Fridays and Saturdays. All this, and it's run by a punk vegetarian. Tastes like heaven, for sure.

ahem, I may or may not work for her ;o)

Tep,

I need to work out how I can do it, but if it's possible (and I'm not sure that American regulations allow for it) I am so going to send you goose fat after Christmas.

!!

Is goose fat that different, or do you just want me to see for yourself?

If there's anything you need in Indiana, I'm more than happy to trade :)

Er, see for MYself, I mean.

It's a bit more... meaty than duck fat (by which I mean full-bodied, not tasting of meat. Ehh - maybe I should choose my words better.)

It's a more rounded taste, while at the same time the high notes that exist in it are more pronounced than they are in duck fat.

Let me look into shipping foodstuffs and see how I can export it. I seem to recall the USA has quite restrictive legislation on the issue.

Yeah, it's getting tighter all the time, it's ridiculous. No one's ever even quite sure why we have some of the food import legislation we have! It just sort of shows up.

The other side of the question, then, is: is it worth it for me to get goose the next time I find it available? It's roughly two and a half times the cost of duck, generally -- I'm estimating that because of course the goose is bigger, but I don't know if it's the same proportion of meat-per-pound or not.

It's less versatile than duck, certainly - I've never tried to do anything apart from roasting, mainly because it's so bloody expensive (I pay around £25 for my Christmas goose, which I guess is about $60). I play with duck because you can quite often get it cheap(er) and on deals - the other week I could buy duckling for £2.99 ($7-8?).

In terms of what you get out of it - a 12lb or so bird fed 3 1/2 on Christmas day this year, with enough meat for 3 days of sandwiches for 4 if you were willing to pick the carcass clean (although one year, possibly this one now my Christmas plans have changed slightly, I intend to do something to make use of the carcass) and there are sizeable giblets, probably enough for a pie on their own. Out of that you'll get probably somewhere between 2 and 3 pints (when hot) of fat rendered. I'm beginning to come to the end of mine (and I give some away every year) from last Christmas just now, and I do roast potatoes quite often.

I'd argue it's a fattier bird than a duck, although by how much I don't know - at a guess, probably about 20% more fat by weight.

I doubt you can import the goosefat to the states since it's an animal product. I have to agree with Aldo on the comparison to duck fat - I brined and roasted a goose for the first time two years ago and the fat was so amazingly Good. A friend of mine who grew up in Minnesota was reminiscing about goose-grease sandwiches (it's that good).

There's a higher proportion of meat to bone on a goose than a duck, and they are put together funny (i.e. not at all like a chicken, more like a duck the way the legs hook in and the way the breastbone/rib cage is). I had a hell of a time carving it up, but it fed 6 people generously. And left me with close to 4 cups of fat/drippings. I'd say definitely worth it for a holiday meal, but maybe over the top for day to day fare.

Now, our problem is going to finding one on this side of the Cascade curtain....

This is, naturally, really making me want to cook a goose!

They were available when I lived in New Orleans -- maybe they're still part of enough families' holiday traditions (which is the reasoning I use to explain the availability of decent ham there and not here). Usually $35-ish, which at the time I was never able to justify even in a "this will be my only splurge of the month" kind of way -- I lived alone, so I'd be eating that goose for a month, love it or hate it.

I can't remember for sure if I've seen them here at Christmas or not, but I'm going to start checking, and the Farmer's Market has extended its season to include a "November Market" followed by a "Holiday Market," and I've been hoping that will mean some turkey farms bringing their wares in -- maybe I'll get really lucky and someone will have geese. If I'd thought about it, I would have frozen some gooseberries when they were available early in the summer.

Man, I was going to be doing Christmas in New Orleans, but my friends there are in China, so I'm going in February instead. I know I could talk them into letting me cook a goose for them.

Tep, I've been scouring my brain to remember the name of the high-end market chain in Indy - turns out there is even one in Bloomington - O'Malia's. http://omalias.crossmediaservices.com/omalias/store_finder_map_directions.asp?StoreID=2396265

They look like they might even have decent pork. Anyway, they'd be a good bet for ordering you a goose.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to have non-injected pork, but I haven't actually asked at the counter there like I did at Kroger (where they told me flat out my only chance would be at a farm), so I should. They know what they're doing there.

Would they order a goose, you think? I'll ask them when I ask about the pork, that's a good idea.

(O'Malia's bought out the previous place there, Mr D's, a couple weeks after I moved in -- which is fine in most respects, except that Mr D's carried hickory syrup, which I'd never heard of before and only bought a tiny bottle of, not realizing they were about to be bought out. Ah well.)

You know, I could check Indy, too. They have a bigger farmer's market there, an all-organic one, and we've been talking about making a Saturday morning trip up there the next time I get a reasonable-sized check. Man, goose and farmer's market (and they have a Buffalo Wild Wings...)

mmmm mmmmm mmmmmm - and if you can't find a goose in Indy, jump on I-65 North for 3 (more) hours and go to that Hot Doug's in Chicago for a taste of potatoes in goose fat!

We've been meaning to make a trip to Chicago, my girlfriend (who grew up in rural eastern Washington) is just nervous about driving in cities she doesn't know, and I don't drive. We've got tentative plans to finally get around to it in the spring, if I remember to buy Cubs tickets before they sell out this time.

And man, goose fat French fries will so be on the menu, although I don't know if I'll tell her that.

I got a goose!

"Goose" and "Betty Crocker" still don't really go together in my mind.

Yeah, this thread got all perverted. Take a simple yes or no question and all of a sudden it's nothing but goose grease and midwest geography!