LOL Carrie that is funny. Did you get him out or the hubby? Brandy I will send you some. Not just kidding. Squirrel girl I cant do it. My stomach says no. I cant even look at them. I watched the planet series on discovery last night. They had lizards on the desert program they were not bad to look at. Anyways wanted to share my suet recipe cheaper to make than buy it. My property is called woodpecker acres for a reason. the woodpeckers love this suet....Save your plastic containers you buy your suet in. Just wash them up. You will need approximately 6-8 containers. 1 Lb lard 1 small jar peanut butter get it at aldis cheaper 2 cups oatmeal 2 cups flour 2 cups corn meal Melt lard and peanut butter in microwave. Add rest of the ingrediants and mix away. Place mixture into suet containers and keep frozen. I place chunks of suet pieces outside. I have something coming in at night eating the suet. If I put the whole block out it would be gone the nest morning. So I break it into chumks last longer that way. You can add anything else you like nuts berrys so forth. This is not an exact recipe. I dont even measure anymore. Alittle of this and a little of that. they love it... Well gotta go dig more plants up. Barb

The sausage place was wonderful. The person who helped us was very knowledgable. No lard or pork belly available today. Bought 20 german bratwurst. Went to a nearby Wegmans that is more "international" than the Wegmans that I usually go to. After way too much time standing in Wegmans trying to make a decision.... I purchased Morrell Snow cap lard. It does say "with hydrogenated lard bht and bha added to help protect flavor". I'm going to try it with the idea of going back to the sausage place to get pure lard when they have it available. For this weekend, If the crullers don't come out with the Morrel lard I will use crisco. I will try them again with pure lard when I get it. Many of you make rendering lard look easy but I need to make sure I don't run out of time with hosting two parties this weekend. Thank you all for the help! On a side note, I dropped off my grandmothers cookbook at a binding repair shop. The cover is completely off. They are going to put on a new cover trying to make it look as much as the original as possible. Kinda of sad to replace the original cover but its the only way to make the book usable.

The problem with coconut oil is that coconut is a common allergen (I'm allergic, for one :) ). That probably doesn't matter if you're topping with coconut cream. :) There are all kinds of coconut products that are being used as vegan substitutes to great success, but for entertaining, I'm always looking for the items with the fewest known sensitivities. Which is why I'm going to definitely look for the Sectrum shortening Cloud Swift mentioned. I've never seen that. The Crisco has soybean oil, which is another problem for some people. It also has hydrogenated oils, whereas the spectrum is organic and pure palm oil. They say it makes flaky pie crusts. They also have a non-dairy butter flavored one on their site that they say is good in cookies. I wonder about that because vegetable shortening in general isn't great in cookies. I'm definitely going to try this. Like Cloud Swift, I don't like baking with parve margarine. Apparently it used to be better. When I wanted to make a parve version of my mother's challah recipe, Healthy Choice had come out with a zero trans fat shortening, which worked great and I used it for cakes, pies, etc. Then I went to find a new can and it had disappeared but Crisco had started selling the same thing. The timing led me to believe that they might have bought the product from Healthy Choice, though that's speculation. It seems identical, however. Oh, I should say, with the addition of water as described for the substitution, be aware of your recipe and how it bakes. It makes for a lovely, moist crumb, but if you want something stiffer and drier you could skimp a bit on the water. But, as I said, I'm going to try the Spectrum, too. :)

Cindy, I never got those Lava Cakes right either, somehow I always overcooked them and so never got "lava flow", but my kids loved them, said they were like the best brownies they ever had. They'd eat them hot with ice cream and hot fudge, called it a "hot fudge brownie sundae". I still love Chase's red pepper soup, I first had it made by Chase herself when Elery and I went to Toronto and met Sharon and Clive and Woodie and Ken. Now I make it myself, but I never thought to just buy jarred peppers. Between that trip, The Michigan Run, Canning Camp, California Dreaming and just various visits, I've met something like 27 members, including several of those in Lars' pictures. I've enjoyed every single one of them. I'm sorry I never got pictures of Janet Englehardt before she passed away from cancer, although I did stay in touch with her husband, Larry, for some time. Several of us lived/still live in Michigan, including Lakemayor/Karen, wizardnm/Nancy, Sheshebop/Sherry, Bunnyman/Michael, Solsthumper/Sol, and a couple right next door in Chicago, including Peppi and Ilana. Annie