i was born on a farm way out in the county 72 years ago We did all of our own butchering and canning and gardening ect. In the fall when we butchered a cow or pig or venison or even a sheep we trimmed all the excess fat from the meat. we put it all in a large metal pot over a fire in the yard and melted it down and it was called rendering. we ladled off all the liquid and poured it into the 5 gallon lined tin cans that syrup or coffee or other bulk foods came in. we would put fresh butcherd chickens or steaks or other fresh meat in the liquid and in no time it would harden around the meats. With no electricity or refrigeration the busckets would keep for months down in the root celler. We used the lard or suet for frying food or seasoning veggies or in pie crusts or pastrys. The hard pieces or stuff that did not melt good we fed to the ducks or chickens or geese or even the pigs and the dogs loved cornbread made with lard. The fats from all the different animals was called suet or lard and varied which was used for what or as needed. the suet was not always melted but was ground up to use also. the flakiest pie crusts and pasterys were from pork lard. the beef suet used a lot in meat pies. and the sheep and venison suet used to season stews and soup and all were mixed with elk or venison that was ground for hamburger because it was not so dry then. Bacon grease was always saved to season foods cooked on the stove especilly snap beans or green beans or dry beans.

Ann_t, I've considered it but it isn't worth it for us. The Costcos are not close to us and driving to areas I don't normally visit aren't worth my time/energy/gas. I enjoy cooking but not every day. Our budget is generous for going out and that's what I most enjoy. I LOVE chicken fried steak! But it is possibly the worst thing in the world for you, LOL. Restaurant versions are okay, but The Real Thing is dynamite. I wrote up my mother's method one day, when I was doing a restaurant review of a cafe that did a decent chicken-fried steak we liked. My younger friends and family have never had this recipe, so I included it in my email as a humorous touch. BTW, I do not claim this is an authentic Southern Recipe. This is just how my JapAm mother made it when we were growing up in Chicago, after she learned it from the Mississippi AfrAms in our neighborhood: *The Traditional (e.g., home-cooked) Chicken Fried Steak Yes, this is another thing my Japanese-American mother learned to make from Southerners (Mississippians transplanted to Chicago, hence our familys love of sweet cornbread and really good fried chicken from the legendary Harolds in Chicago [you can look up Harolds Chicken in Wiki]). It can be eaten for dinner or breakfast. Or lunch. Or....well, you get the idea. Like most Southern food, it goes best with biscuits. Real biscuits, the kind made with white lard and even whiter soft wheat flour, rolled and cut with a biscuit cutter (what do you mean, youve never seen a biscuit cutter?!?) and served hot out of the oven with lots of butterc. Definitely not the fake Pillsbury-in-a-can stuff. To the day she died (at age 84), my mothers idea of heaven would have included a hot biscuit dripping with butter. Start with decent-sized pieces of beef, well trimmed of fat. Bottom round is ideal. The mechanically tenderized "cube steak" is sheer laziness and has the wrong texture. Traditionally the pieces of bottom round meat are pounded thin with the edge of a heavy china plate (okay, my mother did use a traditional meat mallet instead). Never, under any circumstances, do you use a wet batter. Never, ever! The egg and the flour do not mix together promiscuously in a bowl; this is a worse heresy than a mechanically tenderized steak. As you are pounding the steak pieces thin, you sprinkle them generously with seasoned flour. The flour, up to a cup or more, is pounded into each steak. "Seasoned", BTW, means salt and pepper. Thats it, no garlic (powder) or onion (same). Just lots of the evil white Mortons. Heres where you get a split between the thin batter-fried and the thick batter-fired recipes. My mother was a thin batter advocate, so she fried the steak after pounding it with the flour. The opposing camp sets out a beaten egg and a pan of more seasoned flour. The steak is dipped in egg and then in flour again, making a thicker batter coating. Either way you do it, next you fry the bacon remember I said there was another whole level to this dish? The bacon doesnt actually appear anywhere else in the recipe, so you probably just nosh on the crispy strips which youve fished out of all that bacon-y, salty, greasy artery-clogging saturated rendered fat. If you happen to have rendered bacon fat on hand, why are you reading this recipe? You already know how to make this. While youre chewing and swallowing bacon, you fry the steaks really crisp in the bacon grease. This is where most restaurants fail. Its bad enough they use some kind of healthy polyunsaturated oil but to make things worse, they dont cook it long enough to really get it dark brown. Drain them on newspaper in a warm oven, while you toss leftover flour into the pan to soak up the bacon grease of course you dont drain any of the fat out, why would you do something so silly when thats where all the flavor is stirring and scraping for a few minutes to cook the flour. Then in goes the evaporated milk whole milk, not that ridiculous reduced fat stuff just enough to make a thick gravy that holds in nice clumps on the spoon. Not glue-y, just very thick. Some people make a thin gravy, but not in our house. Oh, and more pepper, too. Serve with two fried eggs. Or maybe three. Or better yet, eggs and biscuits so you can chase all that yummy gravy around the plate to sop up every bit. Real biscuits, the kind made with white lard and even whiter soft wheat flour, rolled and cut with a biscuit cutter (what do you mean, youve never seen a biscuit cutter?!?) and served hot out of the oven with lots of butter handy. After that, you go clear out an entire field of cotton, or chop down every tree in the forest, for the next eight hours straight (as youve already worked five hours before lunch). The discovery of statins to lower cholesterol is obviously Gods way of saying that every American has a right to copious quantities of salt, fat, and cream, three times a day. Also sugar, but that goes into the coffee, tea, and peach cobbler.

I don't eat steak much these days but I never buy sirloin to serve as steak I do buy it to make in a gravy with long slow cooking almost like a roast. For a good steak I go for a bone in ribeye, boneless ribeye, true porterhouse not tbone, or filet. I do not care for NY strip they are so hit and miss. I have found what they call chuck eye steaks in some stores and they are pretty decent they are from the same area as the ribeye but a lesser cut and not as expensive. I like to squeeze a lemon on the meat and let it set for a little while marinating in it, helps to tenderize it. The amount of marbling is really the key a steak with little or no marbling is not going to be as good or tender as one with it. Angus beef is one type that is known to have good marbling and is one of the reasons it is popular. Marbling improves flavor, tenderness, and keeps meat moist while cooking. Highest marbling = Prime beef. I don't pay the extra cost for something labeled Angus however. A lot of cattle has some Angus mixed in them. I look for good marbling and the feel and texture of the meat. Method of cooking makes a lot of difference!

Blue Onblue, that is amazing! Years ago, a stray cat came to us, wouldn't leave and became expectant. I knew when this would happen, my indoor cat had raised a ruckus so we noticed the event. The stray lived in the garage (hence, her name was Garage Cat or GC) and when I came home the day before the expected event, she had oil all over her back! Called the vet who said she must be bathed and to use Dawn Dishwashing soap or Murphy's Oil Soap. I had neither of those so used what I had (Palmolive and the like) but none of my stock would do more than slide off the oil slick! Husband made mad dash to grocery while I held her in the bathtub, used the Dawn and have never bought any other brand since. That was probably 35 years ago! She was small and so round and heavy that she could not fight. Came home the next day and four new kittens. Kept one and had to put down at 19 years old! Our Sugarbaby!