Petalpatsy

My father (and brother) was a squirrel and dove hunter, and fisherman. I grew up eating game, and white meat chicken from Kroger still makes me sad. Fast forward 45 years to my father a stroked, toothless diabetic, and me deciding to go on Atkins to avoid diabetes. I made crispy roast duck when they showed up at my Kroger for the holidays, actually a couple because they taste like dove (sorry to the sensitive souls.) I saved all the fat to fried onions in for my Thanksgiving cornbread stuffing. It was rich all right, with too many onions because heck, I had all that duck fat, and a little too much salt that I tried to kind of balance out with extra sage and thyme. That stuffing made people blink a couple of times on the first bite. I've never been a good cook, but my father loved it. I mean really loved it. I sent all the leftovers with Mom and he asked for it every day until it was all gone.

I'm thinking he had lost some of his sense of taste, and the strong flavors and fierce richness made it *seem* like the way food tasted to him when he was 20. And if you decide to try this, you can do two at once, you can save the legs and thighs of the ducks to rub down with salt, garlic, and rosemary for a couple of days, while the rest roasts crispy and use all that fat to make a duck confit that will really blow people away. You just get a like a shallow Corningware dish and slow roast the legs and thighs while they are covered in all that duck fat. The meat practically melts.

It's expensive and it takes a long time, but like they say, Christmas comes but once a year.

Oh, another sneaky holiday thing is to puree either broccoli or asparagus with cream. You spread overly wet but not soupy creamed potatoes out in pan, yeah, in my family it's another Corningware baking dish. Make little shallow little ditches across the potatoes and then make stripes of green vegetable puree in the ditches. Then drag a butter knife through it crossways to drag the green through it. It almost looks like a bargello quilt and it's pretty to set on the table. If you mess up, just swirl it all around. People who ordinarily won't eat green vegetables will eat this and love it.