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Old 09-01-2006, 08:33 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
madgardener
 
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Default OT - bacon fat and birds


"Rusty Hinge 2" wrote in message
k...
The message
from "madgardener" contains these words:

I do the same with stuff the butcher throws my way - it may look
ghastly, dry and shrivelled, but I get the stuff a a vastly reduced
price, or often, gratis.


nowday's I can't afford meat unless it's reduced.......you'd never
think the
price would be as high with as many cows as I see grazing around
here...........


If I need some and can't afford it, or the butcher is closed, I take the
rifle and plug something. Round here there's an abundance of rabbits,
hares, small deer (which I don't shoot, honest, hofficer) pigeons etc
which I could take for the pot.


well, around here, we have deer, squirrel, rabbit, wild turkey (all shot in
season, by the way.......) and in actuality, the abundance and carnage of
the deer over here is horrendous. Especially when I think of all that good
meat lying on the sides of the road as road kill that could give good
protein to starving families. There's no preditors except for the few of us
who knows venison is better for us than cow,pig and chicken (because of all
the added stuff in our meats now.....I don't like the idea of eating
steroids, or hormones or antibiotics that will give me more problems up the
road). As badly as the overpopulation of deer is now, I'm surprised they
haven't allowed more time on hunting season. Given some common sense, you
can hunt all year round, just be aware of parasites and such in the meat at
warmer times is all. That always was a ponder to me, why could we slaughter
cattle and pigs and such year round, and it was safe. But we were advised
not to do the same with rabbit and deer?? I know there is something about
rabbit at a certain time, but I can't recall what it is....(brain fart)

Also, I could get to the coast and (maybe) catch some decent fish.


around here, our fish in the local spots are so far edible and safe. Were I
to live in Michigan near the Great Lakes I'd have no chance of eating what
I'd caught, despite the ease and availability of the fish. It's all been
determined that the heavy metals in the fish are totally unacceptable for
human consumption. that's just wrong......(I mean, it's just not right or
fair to those of us who would love to just catch and eat fish whenever we
had the chance, but it will eventually kill us or make us ill).

Here in Tennessee, so far the fish have mostly been safe to eat. I adore
catfish, bluegill or brim, trout, and crawfish. I'm wondering though, where
the crawfish farms are at that supply the bulk of them. I'm more concerned
since Katrina tore the shit outa the Gulf coast and Louisiana, where the
fish and crawfish farms are at would now have major contamination from the
various toxic wastes that were dumped into the waters and soils.

TANGIENT ALERT!!!

On that same note, remembering how they described the waters as "toxic
gumbo" and people who were IN that water saying it burnt and caused leisions
later on, on the news the other night, a local New Orleans resident in an
outlying region near the 9th Ward where the massive amount of destruction
and flooding occured was being interviewed about how they're tearing down
ALL the buildings and homes and how he worried that the local poor wouldn't
be able to return or afford to live there again, I noticed behind him (they
were talking to him outside his home where he was trying to clean up,
something he said a lot of families weren't able to do yet, as they didn't
have a way back to their homes to get their remaining belongings) GREEN
SPROUTING GRASSES AND WEEDS.................it reminded me that despite what
horrors that men seem to wreck, nature bounces back in spite of us.

It also reminded me just how much the Gulf coast area provides to the rest
of the country, especially my part. When Katrina hit, our gasoline and
petroleum supplies were reduced to frightening levels. I don't think some
people have a clue what life would be like if we had to ration and conserve
for real. My parents raised me to live as if a Depression could hit again
and life would be less accomodating. (I learned to horde and stock certain
supplies necessairy for just daily existance). That doesn't seem like much,
but when everything the bulk of the population depends on is brought in by
tractor trailer trucks, and they require diesel to run those trucks, and the
price skyrockets to absurd prices, it has a domino effect, or maybe I should
say a Sunami effect as it goes UP the chains and affects us. Two weeks
after the hurricane hit, prices on food and supplies that I KNEW were on the
shelves three weeks before, were changed to higher ones.

tangient button pushed repeatedly until I shut
up......................gbseg
snipped banter

effects at all..........

I'm told that certain constituents have been boiled-out or chemically
changed, so that bits which are swallowed can't be digested.

ahhh, well that makes sense. But whatever the dogs don't chew up and swallow
and isn't pooped out, I find later on. My one pup, Sméagol adores real
bones (and raw hide knots) and will only leave a sliver that he just can't
seem to gnaw anymore. And since my across the driveway neighbors used to
have cattle long ago, he finds old cow bones out in the pastures and
hillside of their property which is about 29 acres, and brings them back. I
always feel like he's doing Forensic research..........g I realize that
dogs came from scavengers, but I have to wonder what he's benefiting from
these old, ancient bones. And worries me that he'll come across one of the
casually discarded carcasses of a cat my neighbor neglects to bury (he has
too many inbred and unfixed cats, whereas all of my pets are neutered and
have current shots and such) and bring it back as well. Dogs do so love
stinky things.

quick attempt NOT to tangient here either......................
snippppp snipppp dogs chicken bones


Our bull terrier (of fond memory) used to acquire - or steal - chicken
carcases from somewhere or other, and they never did her any harm,
AFAIK.


nice to know there's someone else who knows there are just some rumors that
are distorted. And before someone flames me......I also know that a small
dog wouldn't be able to handle some bird bones. As well as some larger dogs
might be harmed by certain bones of chickens and poultry. I know it's how
they break and sliver and can puncture the intestines. I also would think
that animals have a digestive ability to process more than we give them
credit for, and what they don't process, they
expell...................(kinda like those bits of clothing, and buttons in
Doberman Pincer poop LOL)
remarks about ethnic foods

No need to apologise, the ones I've tried, i like too. Unlike many, I
like grits.


Grits are best eaten with butter, salt and a little black pepper. They are,
after all just ground up corn endosperm and embryo of a baby corn plant.
The shells of the seed are soaked off (I won't tell you what all is involved
in making hominy corn, and then of course, hominy is dried and ground up to
make grits, you might not eat it anymore GBSEG). Mama liked to sometimes
have some with a little brown sugar or a spoonful of molasses (or treakle as
you might call it). I like mine more like a vegetable that it is.

I just wish I could find yellow grits! It's always from white corn.......I
wonder why? I bet yellow grits would be really good.

hmmmmm peas pudding. That sounds yummy. And Squire was just asking me
about split pea soup.........now where is that smoked ham hock????
gbseg


When I was an anklebiter we often had boiled bacon, and a shovel of peas
were tied up in a cloth, and cooked with the bacon. Neither the bacon
nor the stock lasted long enough to go off: any stock left over was
incorporated into Mother's Dustbin Soup.


roflmao.............over here I make something I call "garbage can" which is
all the veggies and possible meats thrown into a pot and making a stew or
soup. Turns out it more reflected what "Stone soup" is based on than
anything else. We can combine quite a number of vegetables together with
certain meats and it tastes fine......... the best lesson I ever got was
from an Iranian woman I worked for, whose husband had a deli. (they might
have been Iraqi, the name was Taschbaski or something of that general
mispelled nature, not Indian, though. I do remember that) Each morning I'd
get there really early to prepare the daily chicken salad, soups of the day
and meats and cheeses, and the vegetables for the small salad bar they
provided.

The two chickens were pressure cooked to make fresh sandwich spread, she'd
gather up the skins and bones and inedible parts into a cheesecloth and tie
them up and boil them with everything in a big soup pot. We were instructed
to throw in the shavings and left over pieces of deli meats, the broccoli,
cauliflower, split cherry tomato's, carrot shreds,green onions and wilted
spinach into the pot along with onions, garlic and sometimes cut up
potato's.

More often than not, it was just the deli meats and the broccoli and
cauliflower and such. The broccoli we prepared for the salad bar and the
cali. I was instructed to peel the outer stalks to the branching ends where
the flourettes were after severing the heads for seperating. The peeled
insides were then sliced up and cubed and cooked in the soup stock. same
with the cauliflower, although it was less tough. The peelings were put
into a cheesecloth as well and cooked for the flavor and then if it wasn't
dissolved from all that, she'd PROCESS it in a blender and thrown into the
soup for thickener!

the chicken bones were discarded.

I've been raised all my life to use everything including the squeel on a
pig or in food, my husband still after 28 years isn't used to me washing
potato's or carrots or anything else and using it without peeling it. (he
begs me to peel the potato's, but I insist after they're washed, that the
skins are good for us too, as long as they're not green)

I was able to teach her how I made potato salad. (Southern 'tater salad has
mustard in with the mayonaise and other ingredients) She taught me how to
make German potato salad, and we discovered one day that corn beef grindings
were great in German potato salad........just not too many of them. She
loved my Southern potato salad. I make it with more crunchies than what my
mother taught me. And this also used the radishes we had left over in the
salad bar. That was one of the salad bar veggies we weren't able to do much
with. (along with the lettice, and I showed her one day how we used to make
wilted lettice a long time ago, but she didn't like it much..)

I remember I took her some turnip greens to try that I'd made and she was
amazed at how well she liked the taste. It was hard to explain what it was,
so we went to the market where I found turnips, and since it was early fall,
the greens were starting to be available to us in bulk. I explained how to
fix them and season them, and she bought enough to make a dish of at their
home to try out on her husband and children. Since we use smoked pork to
season the turnip greens in, and it's high in iron from the leaves, she was
impressed that we were utilizing everything on the turnip.

I just don't happen to like cooked turnips. Never have found a way to like
them yet. Won't say I will refuse to eat them, I'll try them again if
someone tells me they have a great receipe for them....just remember they
were really bitter and kind of grayish in color once cooked.......do like
parsnips, though. and never tried rutabaga. I'd love to try all vegetables
just once to see what we have out there. Heck, until just a few years ago,
the only melons I knew about were watermelons, cantaloups and honeydew
melons. I never knew about Casaba and all the others...........I'm STILL
trying out different ones, only problem is the ones that are different
aren't ripe like they should be when first eaten. Kinda like mango's. I
adore them fresh. But to get one in perfect ripeness to enjoy to the
ultimate, is hard since I live where they're shipped, and not available
fresh during season. Were I to be somewhere warmer where they grow, I'd
never get a store mango again.......

The homemade soups of her's sold out immediately. Her chicken soup was gone
by 1 p.m., we actually had to increase the amount she was making it was so
tasty. And the leftover soup was usually gone just as quickly. I still
make soup that way whenever I can. I just don't have a supply of deli meats
to throw into the pot for flavorings. That was the key to the richness of
the soups she had us make.


--
Rusty
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