One Job Done

I finally rendered that long-waiting pork fat, and wound up with four pint jars full of snowy white lard.  It was a satisfying project, although a bit smelly.  My house started smelling like fried fat for a while--it's a distinctly good thing that I've been suffering from the 'flu this week, as I couldn't smell the worst of it.  It's not a rotten kind of smell, really, just strange and odd.  I'm sure in the olden days it was much more familiar to folks' noses.  It certainly didn't smell enough to turn me off from ever making lard again!  That white gold is well worth the effort, and slight stenchiness.  Plus, the chickens really liked the crispy cracklings, skimmed off the top.  The five stove top batches went pretty quickly, and yielded a whole lot of cracklings--perfect "junk food" for the girls, to supplement their feed during this cold spell.  Its worth the lingering scent of rendered fat hanging out in my kitchen.  (A scent that my dogs think brings them close to nirvana, if their blissed out faces pointed to the ceiling, snuffling and wuckling away, give any indication of canine thoughts.)

I have been doing a bit of research on the uses of lard, and aside from its obvious application to soap making (which could be a delightful project), I think I'm going to buy a copy of this book:

www.amazon.com

If the preview recipes are anything to go by, I may have to wear a bib to keep from drooling on the pages.