Christmas List

My grandparents built their home in the 1930's on about 40 acres of land. They had a wooden stove that they used up until the 1970's when they finally replaced it with an electric stove. My grandmother baked her own bread and buns in that wooden stove. And on top of that wooden stove she made rendered fat out of beef and pork fat and we ate the cooked fat, otherwise known as cracklings. She also cooked thick slices of bacon, back then bacon was cured with the skin of the pig still on, in a cast iron pan. I remember eating those thick slices of bacon with a few short hairs of the pig still on the rind. Anyways, she used to keep the bacon drippings in a tin can.

She used to take forkfuls of this creamy off white substance, whether it was rendered fat or bacon drippings and spread it, rather thickly, onto a thick slice of her homemade bread. She would then eat her rendered fat and bread with a strong cup of tea. She enjoyed it so much I asked to try it. It was sweet. Sweet because I found out she mixed the fat with a little brown sugar. I remember her cutting up my slice of bread with rendered fat into strips that she called soldiers and she also served me with a cup of tea that had plenty of sugar and cream. Most grandmothers spoil their grandchildren with sweets but my grandmother spoiled me with render fat and bacon drippings and let me tell you there is nothing like bacon drippings with brown sugar on a slice of homemade bread.

What I am hoping to find under the Christmas tree this year is Jennifer McLagan's cookbook, Fat and

Amazon

Fergus, Henderson's cookbook, The Complete Nose to Tail. 

Amazon

Inside of these cookbooks are recipes that will make anyone who was raised on fat and slabs of cured bacon with the rind, reminiscent of their grandparents and the good old days. Besides that fat is good for you. You need animal fat so that you can digest your food properly, it makes you feel satisfied and you don't gain weight by eating animal fats. Animal fats are making a comeback and its about time.