Yesterday, I briefly considered bezoomy’s insane suggestion to attempt a 10 bird roast. I even posted about in on Facebook only to discover that Gordon Ramsay attempted this feat a few years ago and the only oven big enough to take it was at the Savoy hotel. Apparently so much grease came out it flooded the place.

Don't get me wrong - I like a schmaltz bath as much as the next girl but it may just be smarter to let this one go through to the keeper.

For whatever reason, I’m increasingly drawn to a goose for my project debut. Mostly because I’ve never attempted one before (mental note: check if oven at home is big enough) but partly because I can feel my Jewish Magyar heritage crying out for it.

At the ripe age of 8 my mother, together with her brother and parents, fled their native Budapest under the monstrous cloud of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. They spent 9 unforgiving months shunted between temporary accommodation and Salzburg refugee camps before finally being granted formal refugee status and entry to Australia. In September 1957, after a six week boat journey from Germany to Melbourne via South Africa, my battered but immensely hopeful family set foot on Australian soil for the first time, eager to embrace their new home and start a new life.

Speaking not a skerrick of English between them and able to comprehend even less, my mother and uncle were bundled off to primary school. The late 1950s were a time where assimilation, rather than multiculturalism reined supreme and life for these shy, war-weary kids was all about doing their best to fit in to a country and culture they couldn’t understand.

On her first day of school my mother was seated next to a gregarious little girl named Margareta Clancy. Margareta was about as dinky-di Aussie as it gets - her father had built planes for Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (the Clancy Skybaby still hangs in Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum) and her great grandfather was THE Clancy from Banjo Patterson’s Clancy of the Overflow. The story goes that Margareta had been an uncontrollable chatterbox and the teacher placed my mother next to her in the hope of bringing some quiet to the classroom.

As it turns out the plan backfired, well for the teacher anyway. As the end of term rolled around the girls had to be broken up – Margareta remained as chatty as ever and my once, quiet-as-a-mouse mother was now fluent in English. Despite their classroom separation their friendship grew and eventually my mother invited Margareta to the family home after school.

Forgive the blatant sentimentalism, but this was a momentous occasion. Margareta was my family’s first-ever Australian guest and so my grandmother didn’t want to disappoint. She wanted to turn on the hospitality, Hungarian style, and decided to serve goose liver. (Goose liver has long been considered a delicacy amongst the Magyars and today Hungary is the second largest producer and largest exporter of foie gras in the world.)

According to my mother the aroma of frying goose livers could be detected half way up the street. Once inside and introductions had been made, my grandmother seated the girls at a laid table, brimming with pride from ear to ear as she she seved goose livers from a sizzling pan. Margareta apparently gazed at her plate with curious trepidation but soon gingerly followed my mother’s lead, cutting off an edge of the liver and examining it before putting her fork in her mouth.

She immediately spat the liver straight back out on to the plate. Disgusted, she asked “what IS that?!”. My grandmother, now able to speak a little English responded, “goose liver”. Margareta instantly pushed her plate away, mock gagging. “Ewwww! We feed that to our cat!” So much for the big European welcome.

Despite Margareta’s protests the meal can’t have been that bad – she and my mother are still thick as thieves some 52 years later. Clearly, they've worked out how to negotiate their culinary differences.

I’m not sure that I’m quite up for frying livers but I think the goose may just be my debut bird of choice. It seems like a lovely way to start things off...

People have been cooking birds for a long time - if the rumours are to be believed, we’ve been enjoying wings, breasts and drumsticks somewhere in the vicinity of 250, 000 – 1.8 million years (yes, the enormous gap in scientific consensus struck me as odd too). Thanks to the delicious innovation of the Colonel, 90% of our bird consumption has probably taken place in the last 79 years. Although I reckon if the secret recipe had been around in the Cretaceous period he’d likely have found a way to batter and deep fry pterodactyls too. They probably tasted like chicken. (Doesn't everything?)

I digress.

There’s nothing paltry about poultry and the December Project is all about weird and wonderful ways to cook birds. If you have any recommendations, suggestions or insane ideas (the more nuts, the better), send ‘em my way – I’m open to all of it! In the meantime, the next few days are all about research. Stay tuned.

There are drunken conversations that go nowhere and there are drunken conversations that spawn the devil. I have a feeling that The Projects may just lean towards the latter.

The idea to conduct month-long "projects" was born out of my fleeting but intense fascination with, well, almost everything. Blessed with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader, the attention span of a gnat and the liver of Winston Churchill (really, I have it in a jar on my mantle piece), it's rare that any one subject holds my interest for more than 30 days. It can make me wholly insufferable or highly entertaining - it all depends on how many glasses of wine into the second bottle you are.

My long-suffering, good humoured friends are too often the sounding board for my passionate potification and half-baked ideas. By now they're thankfully quite accepting of my wild gesticulation, crazy-eyed laughter and wringing of hands as I make plan after un-acted-upon plan, safe in the knowledge that I lack the kind of inertia required to wreak true havok on humanity. And last night was no exception. Well, almost.

Last night, a certain something was in the ether. A certain something finally pushed this unabashed non-Completer Finisher over the edge of rumination and into the realms of action. And that certain something, ladies and gentleman, was a roast chicken.

The roast chicken in question was rather delicious (even if I do say so myself) - its succulent flesh inspiring a conversation about the myriad of ways to prepare a myrad of birds. We talked about goose, duck, pheasant, pigeon, spatchcock, bachelor beer can chicken, turducken and the possibility of poaching duck legs in milk. And I grew excited.

What if I spent the month of December experimenting with poultry? I could refine my recipes during the week and do a different bird every Sunday of the month! (Russell Brand eat your heart out). I would photograph the experience, share my recipes, make videos for YouTube, invite suggestions and commentary from anyone who wanted to provide them. Wow. Great. Sounds like a gas, but what would happen when I predictably grew bored?

I knew I was thinking too narrowly. I knew that potential was festering in it somewhere. I knew I could take my poor concentration and lack of commitment and actually turn it into something other than dinner party conversation. But what?

Perhaps I could turn my fallabilities into strengths. Perhaps I could embrace each new interest and focus on it for a month, no longer.

It was perfect.

One project a month, twelve projects in a year.

And that, my good friends is how a roast chicken inspired The Projects. Welcome to my insanity.