2014-12-24: 'Twas the night before, wait no....

'twas the night of Christmas?
'twas the morning of the day where Christmas starts at the sunset?

pffft poetry and reality conflict yet again. Stupid Victorians. Everyone knows Christmas is when the sun sets on the 24th.

Of course we haven't had much sun recently. I will trust to the Poles to know when their sun sets.

"Looks Sharp, Is" My favourite ad campaign ever.

 

"So sharp it will cut your eyes if you look at it". hmmm. Probably I won't get a job in marketing.

I spent a decent bit of the afternoon sharpening knives in preparation for the slicing and dicing fest. Then spent some time teaching the 8 yr old niece how to cut safely (not with one of my mental knives because I am not totally useless around children). "Rest the knife against your knuckles, keep your fingers tucked in safely, always plan for where the knife could go" and so on.

Linguistic Skills: Polish

Polish has a single word for fingers and for toes: "Palec". Sort of like "phalanges" in English. Ewa once got the English words backwards and called her fingers her toes. As I am a great language parent (and handsome) I now only ever say "leg fingers" or "arm toes". This helps her learn.

It's called being supportive.

Rating: 7.8/10 (I am pretty great)

Obviously a child of such a young age needs more than just words to learn, physical examples are very good teaching aids, often more powerful than theory alone. I showed that a sharp knife cuts much cleaner when you slip and that makes it easier to disinfect before putting the sticky plasters on. Lesson Learned. Plus men can cry if they want to.

Celebrating victory over the Piscine Powers

Today is my big day. I am cooking the goose for tomorrows breakfast, I figure it is just a big duck and am approaching it that way:

• Prick skin like for a duck
• Brine for 12 hours
• Stuff with onion & apple roughly chopped
• Truss it
• Steam it for an hour on the stovetop
• Let it rest uncovered for a day in the outer room (I know this definitely makes crispy skin easy but the main reason is that during this period all the ovens will be in use for the real christmas food)
• Roast breast side down til it is starting to come up to temp (this will be an on the fly guesstimate with 145 as the target from memory for pinky meat)
• Flip it and roast breast side up for the final temp, if the legs and breast are way out of whack then separate the breast at this point and finish it in a pan
• Basting every 20 minutes or so during this last roast.
• Turn the grill up to a million in an attempt at crispy skin

Unfortunately Ewa's grandmother had geese so her mum always had goose at Christmas until communism kicked in. Since then she has never been able to afford it but now she can and she wants it again.

But, and this sucks for me, it is a nostalgic thing so she can't remember if it was pink or if it was with crispy skin. Of course this could work in my favour as even the worst goose will bring back the memories. This is why I am thinking that if I can keep it as one big bird to serve it will "taste" better for her even if it is not perfect.

Other Manly Responsibilities for the day are looking after the children, entertaining them and generally letting the womenfolk have the kitchen free of floor dwellers. This year the 8 yr old worked out Santa Claus doesn't exist. Fortunately this moment of learning had absolutely nothing to do with me.

Prog Rock CatchPhrases Build A Better Youth

Linguistic Skills: Polish

To make up for having only one word for toes and fingers Poles have many variations of their names. This is fun and appropriate. I just spent a few minutes working out which form of the brother in laws name was appropriate for the label on his present. We chose the one with too many z's in it. Well one of the ones with too many z's in it.

Pretty sure this idea was invented in the days before television when the long nights were boring.

Rating: 4/10 (and let's not even get into the fact they all have the same name as each other or use a completely different name when they want)