Maggie's Farm

From our archives:

Christmas is a traditional feast day (but it was not for true puritan folk like Dutch Reform or Congregationalists, who did not historically care for Christmas), so you are expected to cook something tasty. We have done all of the things: turkey (again), goose, roast beef, crown roast of pork with apple stuffing (real good).

On the other hand, the southern Italians do a cool thing - they do the Christmas Eve fish dinner - because it is a vigilia di magro (fasting, Italian-style).That is darn good. Fried baccala, fried calamari, scungilli, clams, mussels, maybe lobster etc etc. I love the baccala, and those little fried minnows bagiggi - smelt - with lemon that you eat whole like french fries, and clams (if they aren't cooked), but hate those cold seafood salads - dolphin food. In Sicily, the tradition is seven fishes. Serious abstinence: cook a leg of lamb, and you burn in hell for eternity.

But back to Yankee Christmas dinner, and goose.

As regular readers know, we cook our Canada geese with the breast only, marinated and sauteed rare. We confit the legs and thighs.

Store-bought goose tends much smaller (maybe in Dickens' time they had bigger farm geese - if you can find a giant Christmas goose as big as Tiny Tim, great), and has lots more fat on it. In fact, it seems about 50% fat, which oozes out during cooking and fills the pan below. If you want to cook that traditional English bird, you need a few of them. I would say, one per 3-4 people, minimum, if you are using the supermarket birds. (Some might disagree with this.) One bird will not do it, as a turkey does, because once the fat melts off, there isn't much left except bones. The plus side of all of the fat is that they are self-basting.

This is a good approach. Overcooking a goose, at low heat, is not a bad idea. For a roast goose, you may really want the meat falling off the bone, unlike a nice rare breast of wild goose. Goose is, of course, a dark meat like duck (but more coarse in flavor, I think).

Make a tasty sauce out of the drippings, once you have removed the fat. Add a little red wine, maybe a handful of huckleberries or dried cranberries and a bit of sugar, and reduce/thicken.

What to serve with goose? Mainly braised and sauteed roots. Parsnip, carrot, potato, turnip. And how about a rutabaga puree? Or a celeriac (celery root) puree? Maybe a pile of braised, sauteed baby squash, too. Cranberry sauce? You bet.

I do not need any more lobsters in my life. I'll say that double for Caribbean and European Lobsters.

Anyway, lobstering is cool.

Adventure generally refers to voluntary engagement in new things, especially things small or large, that might be somewhat daunting. Anything beyond emotional or physical comfort. Heart rate maybe.

I'll invite your views at the end of this, and my thoughts are far from fully-formed. Mrs. BD is much to the right end of a spectrum than I am - she seeks new things and challenges more than I do. It was her idea to hike in the Atlas mountains with Arab guys, not mine.

I think of adventurousness as existing on a spectrum with adrenaline junkies on one end and stick-in-the-muds on the other. I suppose courage is some aspect to it, and curiosity another. Life danger might be a different topic - or maybe not. Is combat, or facing a charging Cape Buffalo with a rifle - adventure? Is taking a new job adventure? Probably.

I am probably on the middle of the spectrum. For some personal examples, travel alone feels aventurous, travel with Mrs. or others does not. When I was young, asking a girl to do something felt adventurous even though these things usually worked out ok due to my charm (?). My first day in the gym with a trainer felt adventurous. Riding a horse or hiking on cliff edges feels crazy to me. Bouldering is pleasure, not adventure for me, so it's complex. Taking our boat longer distances feels like adventure. 

A doctor once told me that the bravest person he ever knew was a severely agoraphobic woman who left her home to a supermarket.

I can think of many areas of adventurousness: creative, romantic, physical, intellectual, geographical, sexual, spiritual, etc. etc. Do "the kids these days" prefer virtual thrills? I dunno. Cheap thrills?

How do our readers view adventure? Let us know in comments.

I will do day hooks or daytime anchoring, but not overnight. At night, I feel comfortable with a slip, dock, or mooring. 

I know plenty of people who cruise with anchoring only. I admire that, but I can't sleep with that. We use Dockwa.

Anchor As If It Will Blow 50

Things Worth Remembering: ‘Endurance Comes Only from Enduring’. I was the last person in the U.S. to interview the great Czesław Miłosz, before he returned to Poland forever.

The Marquis, whose aristocratic background seemed to give him total freedom of his unbridled Id, so to speak, had an ability to write.

We visited the ruins of his family's place in Provence.  

Theatre of Blood

Western civilization permits self-criticism.

This guy is so good, and knows everything. Most people don't.

Visiting tombs in the Valley of the Kings in January got me thinking about flashlights. Those carvers and painters could have used our sorts of big workmens' lighting, or at least standing floodlights. Candles and torches I guess.

It's sort of strange to me that those tomb carvings and paintings were done by lights of some sort.

I have a few random Home Depot flashlight, but also a cool Surefire but with the old bulb (which I cannot figure out how to replace).

Well, I got it fixed up despite being an ancient Surefire. Their customer service people went beyond.

One quote from the article:

"...  to call reductive materialism a “belief” is perhaps a bit misleading. Plenty of people—the biologist Richard Dawkins, the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, and the physicist Lawrence Krauss among them—piously recite its creed: I do not exist, life is meaningless, morality is an illusion.2 But do any of them really believe it?"

Kling: Small Machine Warfare, Revisited:

 In warfare, armies will be implementing robots with two capabilities. One capability is to infiltrate the enemy’s infrastructure. The other capability is to go off the grid for long periods, in order to be able to evade detection and be independent of GPS.

Statistically likely, right?

Would it have to be carbon-based, like ours? And why would it be like anything we imagine?

 Madhusudhan said that with hycean worlds, if they exist, "we are talking about microbial life, possibly like what we see in the Earth's oceans."

This guy gave it a try

Including Pharsee. James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. It's set during the French and Indian war, which was really a small part of of a much larger war.

The Great Books has a 30-min look at the first great American story.

The Prof likes the Daniel Day Lewis movie better than the book, despite its changes in the story.

You can watch it on Netflix.

Sneakers are good for walking. I have different sneakers for walking, easy hiking, tennis, gym, boat, etc.

For trekking sorts of things on rocks and slopes, I like my Meindls. Yes, they are heavy but they are tough as nails and do not slip on anything. Not yet, anyway, and I have tested them on wet shale slopes, bouldering, and things like that.

They were perfect for the hill hiking in the Outer Hebrides, but overkill for the hikes in Provence. Well, we kinda avoided the steeps in Provence of which there are plenty.

Yeah, leather boots need some maintenance if used heavily. Good for a lifetime though.

I think gear-oriented people tend to overdo it, while others underdo it. I wish I had had those Meindls during all of those bird-hunting trips in northern Maine. Lots of uphill, downhill, swamps, downed trees, rocks. Sometimes snow, sleet, and hail.

Autumn weather is the best hiking season.

Happy feet matter.

What are your favorite heavy hiking/trekking/hunting boots for cool or cold weather?

It's at Vox, commenting on Tik Tok so you might not bother checking it. The essay is directionally right, though because Everybody has flaws.

Unless you like going to a store for home goods and groceries, Google instacart to see how they can simplify your life.

One thing I am impressed by is the speedy delivery. They cover Costco too.

Yes, it can be done.

Lawns are sort of silly things, but good for kids. I like a Cape Cod lawn - which is no lawn. Sand, some wild grasses, some Black Pines and Scrub Oak. Zero maintenance. Well, we can't all have that. Deserts are easy too except for the golf courses.

OK, around here late September and early October is the time to overseed. Grasses like cool weather, and the new seed needs to be watered once or twice for at least two weeks unless it rains: How to overseed a lackluster lawn.

 As we've said before, lawns are artificial, gardens really. With irrigation they are almost hydroponic gardens which is why they need fertilizer, etc.

To make them less artificial, I like to have the mower mulch cut grass, and fallen leaves, into the grass unless there is a grass-suffocating leaf fall.

It must be nice not to have a lawn. Out in Wellfleet, you just have beach grasses and sand.

Of course, fancy places in Nantucket have irrigated, fertilized regular lawns. Totally fake and unnatural, but some people expect it.

I have around an acre of regular lawn. I'd prefer 50 acres of meadow, but it's what I have here. No choice but to keep it civilized.

We have posted many times about lawn care. I understand that a lawn is meant to imitate the sheep-mowed English estates.

Lawns are good for croquet and soccer. Plus they just look nice around a house in a temperate zone.

Today, just about getting your lawn power-seeded if it needs it. In September around here, it can work pretty well.

Powerseeding