SLB

I guess I was assuming that un-rendered fat would operate more like meat than like fat: while rancidity is a potential, there are in addition a whole host of other problematic potentials, too. It's comforting to hear folks affirming the idea that it might be just fine.

I don't know if this query is absurdly, stupidly basic; but I am embarrassed about the lapse which is reflected in my having to ask. How long can I keep un-rendered beef fat (suet) in the refrigerator. It was previously frozen, but I did not have room to put it into my freezer with the actual beef. I haven't gotten around to dealing with the rendering, and it's been exactly two weeks. Toss???

I am loving everything about this thread. As a child, the thing I ordered in restaurants whenever we went to restaurants -- (which wasn't often, this was the 70s, weren't restaurants strictly for "occasions"??? Maybe they were really diners we were going to, I don't know) -- anyway, the thing I always got was "hamburger steak". I kind of remember being very concerned/intrigued/committed-to-figuring-out whether the "salisbury steak" at school was the same thing. I thought the potential for confusion was a Big Problem. Possibly even an engineering problem (my dad was an engineer, I thought it meant "smart"). My main other-mother was from Lafayette. Which she pronounced, "LAAAA-feeyette". "La" like a baby's "waaah"; "fy" quick-almost-swallowed, "yette" kinda spit out. They moved around the country (she married a man who was what used to be called "an IBM-er") -- and were living near where I went to college, during my college years. Which are important years to have an other-mother. Anyway, after retirement, they settled back home. She remains one of the top two cooks in my life, ever. When I lived in Alabama I would hightail it to Lafayette whenever possible. For the love, but even more for the food. Honestly? Her meals probably kept me from succombing altogether to depression when I was in college. I think I need some Louisiana eatin', urgently. On topic -- I have a lot of people in my professional life who have a whole lot of needs that present in a frame of straight insanity. One expert psychologist I was escorting on a work trip needed a hotel room that had not been cleaned because she had a "very fragile liver" that could not handle so much as a whiff of residual industrial cleaner. Why yes, she drank with dinner. Yes. Plenty.

Weinoo, what is that yellow scoop to the left? It looks thick for mustard.

I am about to dive into a scary-looking tongue that came with my meat, sometime before too long. I was really glad to find this thread, with the very delicious looking pictures. Also? I miss @HungryChris

Mustards is my favorite of the greens. I am very pro-pork, myself; but I find mustards sauteed in olive oil with onions, garlic, and s&p to be just wonderful. ETA: I know that's not really a recipe . . . .

This sounds like the HC mushroom wonder, which I now make every fall. Hmm . . . .

So, asparagus season. In candor, I have not stumbled on a pickled asparagus recipe that I LOVE (although there are plenty that I like ok). But I do eat a lot of pickles every whichaway, so I figured I may as well keep trying.

This. I find it downright wacky.

With an acknowledgment that this may be a separate thread -- what are you doing with alla that appleseauce? Do you eat a pint a week, straight?

This is really not true. Even the folks who published the original lone study have retreated from this. It's more like 2%. The total number of ruminants belching methane while roaming the earth has not changed all that much in the last 200 years, although the demographic shift from wild ones subject to political removal (namely, bison) to cows is significant. What has changed, of course, is the human-community's use of fossil fuels. When you compare it to the environmental impact of shipping fruits and vegetables to rich markets, the climate case against cows tends to fade. ETA: not to mention, it avoids the whole late-20th-century problem of so many human eaters thinking that eating "beef" means eating "steaks". Is whole-animal eating an environmental problem in a world where so many people insist on air-conditioning? Sorry if I'm coming across like a jerk. I think the marketing/messaging around environmentally impactful decisions is often un-scientific. People eating less beef and more year-round vine-ripened tomatoes . . . sigh. I find it very frustrating.

I am in something of a rut, which is weird because my freezer has just re-filled with pork, beef & lamb coming soon, spring veg, etc. So I poked my head in here for its reliable boost. It did not fail. Shelby, I somehow missed that you and Ronnie had been living this way for so long! I *really* wish I could read the blogs from those first years, girl. Anyway. Carry on, Shelby and all. Over here -- I found some cream cheese in the freezer, along with pimientos. I'm making me some [freezer-burnt] pimiento cheese.

Plain-sugar, upper right; Chili-sugar, upper-left; Sugar-sour, bottom.

Thank you!

[Dumb] question about candied citrus. I am dealing with all of the collected citrus peel in my freezer, finally. There is too much of it. People, I don't even eat all that much fruit, so I don't know what is happening here. But anyway, where was I. So -- the OLD-timey recipes have you candying the prepped peel in heavy syrup for several hours, followed by the final sugar-roll and whatever you're gonna do. The NEWfangled recipes have you candying the prepped peel for, like, 10 minutes. I assume that the former is a true preserve with a durable shelf-life, while the latter might . . . mold or something, after awhile; is this correct?

You're a good egg, liuzhou. Even with that thin membrane. 😊

Got it. I'll probably study the terrain for long past the time this pork will be in my freezer . . . . There are three different pork-based meatballs that are already in my regular rotation. One is from Marcella Hazan, it's tiny and gets fried, and then baked into a bech-pasta situation. Mine have never been as tiny as Ms. Hazan prescribed, I just lose my mind with that; but, still small enough to successfully fry. I also make a Mexican pork-beef meatball from Diana Kennedy for "albondiga" soup; this is possibly similar to what @Darienne mentioned upthread. And also a pork-forward meatball, which is ultimately flattened to thinner than a pancake for shallow-frying, called a "pachola'. I think this is also from Diana Kennedy, but I don't remember.

As I said, Chinese food is one of the cuisines that I eat almost exclusively out. Or did, anyway. I am hearing a clear direction for my 2021 cooking, I guess I better find me a good starter book.

That is some consolation, it really is. Thank you.

I eat a lot of eggs, them being a tasty and relatively cheap protein (I eat a lot of protein). But I struggle with one aspect of eggs -- the chalaza, that . . . thing that connects the yolk to the egg-white. I cannotCannotCANNOT tolerate having that thing in my mouth, it induces gagging or worse. I have never heard anyone make this complaint before, so I assume it really doesn't bother people. Which is so hard for me to understand. They are a LOT less thick and nasty in older grocery-store eggs than in farm-fresh eggs, so maybe that's why it's not a problem for the masses. They can be removed, but it is a pain in the butt. I hate it when I hate something that other people are fine to eat.

BACKONTOPIC!! I already have two meatloaves made up and back in the freezer, they are pork-heavy because I was running out of beef. And I realized, belatedly, that most of these pork-cube recipes in the Time Life Books can be converted to ground-pork, handily. Duh. . . . .

OFFTOPIC!!! Those stuffed bitter melon pieces reminded me of my one of my veryvery favorite dishes that I used to get in NYC's Chinatown, exactly once a month because I had business in the area exactly once a month. I believe it is Malay: curry-tasting soup with vegetables stuffed with fish cake. One of them was bitter melon stuffed with fish cake. Another one of them, the one I saved for last every.single.time, was tofu-skin stuffed with fish cake. I don't know what this was called, at one resto, it sounded like "Curry-Mee". Jesus. I have to get out of this pandemic life. I need tofu-skin-stuffed-fish-cake, for serious.

Chinese (or Chinese-style) food is one of the cuisines I never do at home. And, in fact, it's the food that I've been CRAVING from a restaurant since the pandemic has ended my life of going to restaurants. Maybe it's time. I certainly get irritable when it's eggplant season here and they're so cheap I can't help but to buy them, and then five weeks later I would give my kingdom for something that wasn't eggplant. So, eggplant and ground pork, on deck for late summer . . . . At a minimum, I can dive into this stuffed vegetable world. Particularly where I can stuff and then freeze. Thank you.

What are you doing with it? **Besides making sausage, I mean. My cookbooks and collected recipes seem to involve, exclusively: sausage and stuffing for other vegetables (cabbage, peppers. . .). I have a large array of meatballs I like, maybe I'll sub out the pork for beef. I'm nervous about that -- I once had a Nigel Slater pork ball forced on me that was an abomination, I don't know what went wrong there, because I certainly do like the meat. But I was kind of put off of the "pork ball" concept. I'm looking for ideas.

I made a Mexican meatball soup last night, which was nearly ruined due to too many chilis in it. Not ruined forever -- it can be fixed, but it couldn't be fixed in time to actually eat last night. But besides that, having dealt with all of the random bones in my freezer, I am now fully stocked, to wit: chicken stock; beef stock; smoked pork hock stock; smoked pork neckbone stock; and unsmoked pork bone stock. I've never made that last, but a whole lot of bones came with the side of pig I picked up last week. It reduced into a truly ghastly color, but tastes fine. So, I guess it's good that I'm one of these people who eats soup all summer, cause there's gonna be plenty of it up in here.