Bellsmom I think the wild rice will be fantastic with the goose. Here is one of Teresa recipes that I followed: Heat oven to 350 degrees. You will need a covered casserole or pot (a 2 quart size is good). I use a glass casserole. Place in casserole: 1 cup raw rice (rinse thoroughly first) 2.5 cups of boiling water or stock Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Test rice for doneness. Cook another 15 minutes if you want more tender. Use excess water in wild rice soup. Note: I cook the rice in water for 30 minutes and it was perfect like that. When serving I added fresh sauteed mushrooms to put on top. Everyone liked it. I love the smell of the freshly cooked wild rice. Silvia

Might be easier if we list the next course to be posted. :) OK, so we need a veggie. How about the Cauliflower dish Trudy posted from Food and Wine? Roasted Cauliflower with Green Olives and Pine Nuts ACTIVE TIME: 10 MIN TOTAL TIME: 40 MIN SERVES: 4 Roasting cauliflower caramelizes the florets, making them supersweet. Tossed with crunchy pine nuts and salty olives and capers, this dish is perfect with roasted chicken or steamed fish. Ingredients 1 pound cauliflower, cut into 1-inch florets 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil Salt and freshly ground pepper 2 tablespoons pine nuts 1/3 cup chopped pitted green olives 1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley 1 tablespoon drained capers Directions 1. Preheat the oven to 425°. In a shallow 1 1/2-quart baking dish, toss the cauliflower with the oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, or until the cauliflower is lightly browned in spots. Add the pine nuts, olives, parsley and capers, toss and roast for about 10 minutes longer, until the pine nuts are lightly toasted. Serve warm or at room temperature. Source: Food and Wine (posted by Trudy on CF) Next vegetable, please?

Here's my favorite (foolproof) way of cooking duck. Bear in mind there isn't much meat on a duck; one duck will feed two hungry adults. If you're making it just as a side for people to have a taste, then it might serve 4 to six. The only ducks I’ve ever seen in a market are frozen Long Island ducklings. (Technically, that’s a White Pekin duck, same variety as the one in the AFLAC commercials.) The following recipe is for that sort of duck, not for a wild duck. Purists will insist that you cook the duck breast and the duck legs separately, cooking the legs medium well and the breast rosy-pink rare. This recipe from The Joy of Cooking is simpler than that, and will produce juicy breast meat with crispy skin. Ducks have an enormous amount of fat under the skin. This recipe allows most of that fat to escape. Don’t discard the fat! Store it in a clean jar in the freezer. It’s great for making roux and frying potatoes. --The hardest part of this recipe is waiting for the duck to thaw. Take it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge, still in its plastic wrapper, about 3 or 4 days prior to cooking. If it’s still frozen, put it in a pot in the sink and run cold water over it for a while. Not much meat on a duck; one duck feeds two adults. You can cook as many ducks as your pocketbook allows and freeze the cooked ducks in individual Ziplock plastic bags, to be nuked as you need them later.. I’ll often cook a few ducks at Christmas and have it available for people to sample, in addition to a turkey or other bird. Duck is sweet and rich. It’s most definitely a splurge, but a worthwhile one. This takes about 4 hours to cook, but you’re not doing anything most of the time--it’s a very easy recipe, and the results are spectacular. Crispy Roast Duck 1 duckling, 4 ½ to 5 ½ lbs, thawed Salt Preheat the oven to 250˚ and place an oven rack in the center of the oven. Remove the duck from its plastic wrapper and rinse under cold water, then pat dry with paper towels. Rub a little salt in the cavity, and sprinkle a little on the skin. Remove any excessive fat from around the opening and the neck. With a sharp paring knife or a skewer, make 20 or 30 small incisions in the skin into the fat. Hold the knife parallel to the skin so you penetrate the skin into the fatty layer, but you don’t want to penetrate the flesh. If you have a v-rack for a roasting pan, place the rack in the pan and place the duck, breast side down, on the rack. (But if you don’t have a v-rack, don’t worry. Just place the duck breast side down in the pan.) Place the pan in the oven and roast for 3 hours. Yes, three hours. Every hour check the duck and prick the skin a little more to let more fat escape. After three hours, drain the fat out of the pan (don’t discard it--it’s great to cook with) and turn the oven up to 350˚, and turn the duck breast side up. Roast for another 45 minutes. Remove to a platter and let the duck sit for 10 minutes before carving. You can make a gravy out of the juices and bits in the pan if you want. If you don’t have a v-rack, you can cook the duck without one but the skin won’t be as crispy. It’ll still taste great, though. Serve with whatever wine you like; the meat is hearty enough to stand up to a full bodied red like a Pinot Noir or Cabernet, but if you prefer a lighter red like a Zinfandel or a good white, go for it.

Thank-you, Rita! It's very kind of you to go to all that trouble! I was just comparing to when I make a turkey it's 20-22 lb. and when I make a chicken it's 3.75-4.25 lb., because that's what I buy. So I thought maybe you knew offhand how big your geese were. The recipe itself sounds simple, as you said, and also delicious. Thank-you very much for everything. I agree with the watching, but it also goes in retrospection. When I ask my mother how to make some old favorite, I've done the watching, know pretty much what the ingredients were, and just need a few details on proportion. The famous Auntie S's blintz "recipe" for the pancakes (which are about 3-4 times thicker than crêpes) has the important step of "you know it's the right consistency when you're using a rotary crank egg beater in a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup and the crank feels like X, and when you lift it out of the batter it flows off of it like Y. Definitely had to be there. :) But blintzes are for a whole different holiday! Back to your regularly scheduled Christmas dinner!