Lard

Digestible?  That's the best thing you can say about it?
You can swallow it and it will stay there? 

     I am old enough to remember the television commercials telling us to eat the new improve better than your grandmother's old creamery butter because this spread is cheap to make and we don't care if you die from it, just buy it!  buy it , Now!  Well, your great grandmother was right and you were all better off using pure fat than listening to television and radio stars touting the new oil and the later hated, trans fats.

I LOVE the English, for this ad, if no other reason!

     My grandmother caught a lot of lip from one of my mother's neighbors for making her beloved Welsh cookies because it called for the use of lard.  In the 1980s there was a lot of 'scientific evidence ' that lard was fattening and full of cholesterol.  

     Gram thought about it,  and she decided to try to adjust the recipe (for the sake of a lot of hogwash about cholesterol).  She tried half lard and half Crisco which made a cookie, but it cooked at too low a temperature and you had a choice, eat not quite cooked cookies or eat slightly burned cookies.  After a few years of that nonsense, Gram went to butter and lard.  It was nice but not the same and we just stopped sharing recipes with Mrs. T.  I make Welsh cookies with lard.  NOT going to raise my cholesterol, NOT a trans fat!  HA!  Welsh cookies that taste like they are supposed to taste.  HA!

     I read a very thorough and well written article at this site:http://coconutcreamcare.com/2012/06/30/a-brief-history-of-trans-fat/.  A brief history of trans fat puts the whole issue in perspective.  

     For centuries, humans used natural fats to cook and bake.  It wasn't until a well educated gentleman tried to produce a method of hardening oil.  He gave us a method for producing margarine.......because butter was  WHAT?  NOT spreadable?  Ummmm.  Sometimes science does what it foes because it can, but, no...BUT  as I have told my sons since they started doing interesting and dangerous stuff....."Just because you CAN do a thing, doesn't mean you SHOULD do a thing."  Go ahead, ask one of them.  I said it, and still do!  


     Apparently hydrogenating oil to make it look like butter and selling it was profitable enough not only to do it, but to change the eating habits of a nation for generations.  WE swallowed the hype and now that it is known that trans fats and hydrogenated oils are no good for us, even Crisco isn't Crisco from the 50's.  For a really quick review on why trans fats are bad for you, click here:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/why-are-trans-fats-bad/#axzz2ZX94B6UT

     WE ARE VINDICATED!  I so love Welsh cookies, if Gram had made them from newspapers, I would have eaten them!  

     I was in my refrigerator today checking the dates on things when I spotted the lard and thought how long I hid it in my fridge for fear some margarine and Crisco lover might see it and think I was poisoning my children.  Well, I don't have to hide it and the butter doesn't have to hide in that little camper in the door.  Butter is better than margarine, lard will serve you well.  As far as cholesterol and fat are concerned moderation in all things is always the  rule. 

      As a prepper, I have extra stored of all things.  I have purchased and used butter beads.  They are good and good in recipes without changing the recipes or instructions.  Lard lasts longer than you think.  Refrigerated, the longest I have ever kept lard was, (I hate confessing to family) two and a half years.  the flavor does not change, french fries still tasted good.  

     I found this suggestion for fresh rendered lard:  fresh from the pig, lard is hot.  Heat jars in an oven to 250 degrees, fill with lard (careful, it's hot).  Place the lids on jars and leave in oven to cool.   They also claim it can last up to two years, sealed.  

     I am going to get some lard this weekend, render it and jar it up.  Yup!  Jar it up.  I can imagine the past methods of canning in tin with lead solder, all the lead poisoning, the rust.  Jar!  

If we are still online in two years, I will be making french fries, probably sweet potato fries.  Check back in!