Posted on Thursday, Jan 24
I love a cooking project like the roast goose pictured below.
Get to know the butchers at Roche Bros. who do the special ordering for me.
And they get to know me.
It’s nice to be recognized when I go there to pick it up.

And I love sharing the anticipation with my guests.

And I really like tweaking the recipe.
This time I am going to emphasize the slow-roast and minimize the hot oven.
One hour per pound in the slow roast.

I put the goose into the oven at 9.00pm and it cooks while I sleep.
I take it out at 7.00am and serve it at 6.00pm.

Two recipe tweaks for next time: cook it for fifty-seven minutes per pound instead of sixty, and time it to come out of the over about an hour before the guest arrive.
It’ll be moister.

And did I love eating it with my guests?
You said it, baby.

And I love that they loved it, too.
Or that they lie convincingly.

And tasting the wine they brought to accompany the wine was a hoot,
as was the Japanese whiskey tasting another guest brought for us to enjoy before the dinner.
We had fun!

Roast goose for dinner?
It’s not one and out.
It’s an event.

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Tagging Today
Thursday, January 24, 2019
My 287th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
Time is 12.01am.
On Thursday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 52* with rain.
The next few days are perfectly acceptable winter days.
And winter is flying by.

Dinner is  Cassoulet, a meat and bean casserole.

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Question of the Day:
What is Winter?

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Love your notes.
Contact me at existentialautotrip@hotmail.com

Here are two from Colleen, a writer, teacher, enthusiast, one from the post that told the Mike Ponzo story of winning $5,000 and having to borrow $3000 to share his winnings with all the people who felt they had a right to a piece.

Hi Dom,

That was a sweet story--something I'd picture on the big screen.

Good thing he had a friend with deep pockets and a ready laugh like you.

Stay Warm! Get reading for the big snow.

Cheers,

Colleen:)

Web Meister Responds: Thanks, Colleen.

And a second:

Hi Dom,

Thanks for the stories! I loved them:) You are a fountain of nostalgia and cerebral artifacts!! It's like you are the "made for television" version of what growing up in the North End was like for we regular folk.

Also, I always forget you don't get my newsletter and forgot to send you a note that if you ever want to read the book I was submitting chapter by chapter about Lucy I have posted it on an online platform for young adults called Swoon Reads. Also, since you have a young daughter and may know some other "young adults" or older ones who might enjoy it and want to offer me feedback on how to improve it, feel free to forward this link to anybody you know who want to give it a read. Here's the link to my blog entry that includes the poem (that you helped me discover was a poem and not prose) that opens it and serves as a preface along with a link to the full text on the Swoon Reads site:

http://www.theroomtowrite.org/blog/lucyboundinlyricsinthenewyear 

PS: I changed the title to Lucy Bound in Lyrics and it's submitted under my maiden name "Kavanagh":)

Cheers,

Colleen:) 

Web Meister Responds: I’ve been honored to have read some early chapters of Colleen’s work and they were enthralling. Colleen is insightful and her verbal illustrations of the tensions between mother and daughter and of issues she has with today’s mores have her readers responding, “Wow! I never thought of it like that.”
Well worth the visit.

Short Takes: Kitchen action
Made a roast goose for a group about a week ago.
Cooked for ten hours on a slow-roast.
Bony beast.
Second from left is me cutting it up.
Second from right are the usable pieces and the far right shows those pieces close together and up close.
Delicious and I learned something, too.
It’ll show up in a recipe soon.

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Answer to Question of the Day:
What is Winter?

Different cultures define different dates as the start of winter, and some use a definition based on weather.
When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it is summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa. In many regions, winter is associated with snow and freezing temperatures.

The moment of winter solstice is when the sun's elevation with respect to the North or South Pole is at its most negative value (that is, the sun is at its farthest below the horizon as measured from the pole). The day on which this occurs has the shortest day and the longest night, with day length increasing and night length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice.

The earliest sunset and latest sunrise dates outside the polar regions differ from the date of the winter solstice, however, and these depend on latitude, due to the variation in the solar day throughout the year caused by the Earth's elliptical orbit.

The tilt of the Earth's axis relative to its orbital plane plays a large role in the formation of weather.
The Earth is tilted at an angle of 23.44° to the plane of its orbit, causing different latitudes to directly face the Sun as the Earth moves through its orbit.
This variation brings about seasons.

When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere faces the Sun more directly and thus experiences warmer temperatures than the Northern Hemisphere.
Conversely, winter in the Southern Hemisphere occurs when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted more toward the Sun.
From the perspective of an observer on the Earth, the winter Sun has a lower maximum altitude in the sky than the summer Sun.

During winter in either hemisphere, the lower altitude of the Sun causes the sunlight to hit that hemisphere at an oblique angle.
In regions experiencing winter, the same amount of solar radiation is spread out over a larger area. This effect is compounded by the larger distance that the light must travel through the atmosphere, allowing the atmosphere to dissipate more heat.
Compared with these effects, the changes in the distance of the earth from the sun are negligible.

The manifestation of the meteorological winter (freezing temperatures) in the northerly snow–prone parallels is highly variable depending on elevation, position versus marine winds and the amount of precipitation.
A case in point is Canada, a country normally associated with tough winters.
Winnipeg on the Great Plains at a relative distance from large bodies of water has a January high of −11.3 °C (11.7 °F) and a low of −21.4 °C (−6.5 °F).[2]
In comparison, Vancouver on the coast with a marine influence from moderating Pacific winds has a January low of 1.4 °C (34.5 °F) with days well above freezing at 6.9 °C (44.4 °F).[3]
Both areas are on the 49th parallel north and in the same western half of the continent.

A similar effect, although with less extreme differentials, is found in Europe where in spite of the northerly latitude of the islands, the British Isles has not a single non-mountain weather station with a below-freezing mean temperature.

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Good morning on this Thursday, January 24
We talked about the many-layered fun having a dinner party can be.
We mentioned that winter is flying by.
We read a piece from Colleen and an update from her on her blog.
And we learned a definition of winter.

Time to go.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Love

Dom