Oh Brave and Faithful Plant

 

In late spring the baby basil plants were mostly sold, leaving only leggy and fragile ones. On the way home, the healthiest plant fell over and the stem broke. One shoot remained in that pot and two, undersized, in the other. The survivors all went into one planter because I expected to lose one.

 

I'm a good transplanter. No one else will ever know that except you and I. It is love. I love my basil annuals. Told them so and blessed them. Brought them indoors on cool nights. Moved them twice daily into the strongest summer light when the trees leafed out and cast shadows. A creature (squirrel?) always upsets and paws through the pot, but only once per season, usually soon after planting, as if to dash my hopes and grieve me. The basil always survives this. Looked up Saint Basil. Looked up Basil as a baby name. Breathed deeply. Scissored the leaves for cooking. Picked the flowering heads off so they'd keep leafing.

Today when frost is only days away I filled the chopper with garlic, olive oil, pine nuts and lemon, for pesto-making, and boiled clean a jar that held the store-bought pesto I buy when I must settle for less. (I've tried freezing, drying, and microwaving my basil harvest. Nothing but pesto works.) I thanked my plant for its beauty and fortitude as I picked off every leaf and the room filled with its sacred fragrance. This year I told it, "You are one of the great joys of my life."

Do You Know Reddy Kilowatt?

One Girl Scout field trip was to the electric utility company's Home Ec demonstration kitchen with electric stoves, which we had never seen, and we practiced cooking on them, back when they WANTED people to use up electrical energy.

The electric company 's mascot was a figure made of lighting bolts with a bulbous head, a light-bulb nose and electric-socket ears, named Reddy Kilowatt, and it gave out Reddy-themed potholders and lapel pins, and electric bills had his picture on them, but after the energy shortage of 1973-74 -- the winter that, to save energy, we walked to school in the mornings with the stars still overhead -- saw him rarely, and now Reddy Kilowatt items are collectible. My sister and bro-in-law in Wisconsin collected two nostalgic Reddy potholders for me. Flummoxed because they had no tabs to hang them, I left them in a drawer for years before realizing they contained magnets for sticking them on the fridge. I now use them frequently. Here they are assisting me, saying "Be modern, cook electrically," on the propane stove with a pan of lavender shortbread.

Although Reddy looks to me now as if he suffers from terrible arthritis, I am fond of him. He was designed in the 1920s, to be consumer-friendly when farmers hemmed and hawed about buying electricity because they'd gotten along for 10,000 years without it. As I moved around the country I met people who had never heard of Reddy Kilowatt, and at times felt very alone, the way you feel when no one around you shares your archaic memories.

Then one day I had at the Divine Cabin a guest, born in Missouri in 1947. He saw my potholders and said, "Oh, Reddy Kilowatt," and I almost threw myself at his feet and begged him to marry me.

Making Kale Chips in the Microwave

Crisp and ready to salt and eat.

This is an easy way to eat your kale. Wash the kale, tear it into bite-sized pieces and let it dry thoroughly, as thoroughly as you'd dry lettuce. Then toss the leaves with a small spoonful of olive oil until each leaf is oiled and shines. Now arrange them on a plate, with some space between each leaf. Then microwave on High for three minutes. Only 3 minutes, that's right! They will shrink but are now finished and crisp. Salt them to your taste.

Oiled and plated for cooking.

After microwaving.

What Makes America Great

I with my Turkish nose stuck on a half-Polish, half-Serbian face spend hours at the Global Foods supermarket fascinated, listening to a dozen different languages and feeling privileged to have access to all the great foods of the world—through all the people who’ve come to this country bringing their food specialties along.

Counterclockwise, starting from the eggplants: Indian eggplants (grown in Honduras); Matcha green tea (Japan); Longlife Tofu (locally manufactured in Granite City, Illinois); Wasa wholegrain rye crackers (Denmark); stuffed grape leaves (Greece), dried plums (USA), blueberries (product of Argentina); fire-roasted whole peppers (no origin given); avocado (Mexico); vacuum-sealed tofu (California); fresh bell peppers (Mexico); sour cherry jam (Poland); fresh ginger (USA), black tea (China) in the “Prince of Wales” blend (Britain), organic “chicken of the woods” mushroom, also called maitake (USA), bean-thread noodles (China); bananas (Honduras). Already in the fridge: feta cheese (Bulgaria). Back row: pears and tangerines, USA. Hand-painted demitasse cup (Portugal) for espresso (Rwanda). Lemon, and a butternut squash, USA. The owners of the Global Market are Thai.

Happy Thanksgiving, when native people shared their food with recent immigrants and their kids because they were just plain decent.

Can of Beans Herb Harvest Salad

My sage bush out in the yard never dies and deer don't eat it; and in a freakishly sunny spot next to the house, a rosemary bush year-round provides aromatic needles for my cooking. I had my own basil leaves, frozen, from last year, and parsley. And I had a can of beans and not much else, because I'd just come home from four days away. So I was overjoyed to find a recipe that used what I had on hand. It's really tasty if you're harvesting herbs:

I gladly share my sage with everyone.

Warm Cannellini Bean Herb Salad (serves 2)


1 can white cannellini beans (also called "white kidney beans")
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped, or put through a press
3 Tablespoons chopped Italian parsley
handful of basil leaves, chopped
1 teaspoon finely chopped rosemary leaves
4 large fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup oil-cured black olives

Drain and rinse the beans; dry them on a clean dish towel. In a large saute pan combine the olive oil, garlic, and herbs. Warm over very low heat for about 4 minutes or until the garlic and herbs release their aroma. Add the beans, salt and pepper to taste, and toss very gently. Over low heat, cook about 5 minutes until the beans are heated through and have absorbed some of the flavors of the olive oil. Off the heat, add lemon juice and toss very gently.

Place on serving platter and surround with the black olives. Serve immediately. (I like to serve it on lettuce.)

Red October

These gallon ice-cream buckets full of about six pounds of ripe Tommy Toes -- an Ozark heirloom cherry tomato variety -- simply appeared the other day on my porch, courtesy of my neighbor's son Patrick, who kept a garden during this difficult-to-garden summer. Patrick says he didn't even plant them; they were volunteer tomato plants, descending from a plant or two that I shared with him two or three years ago. Tommy Toes -- that's their name -- about one inch in diameter, are wonderfully balanced sweet and acid, and the plants withstand terrific Missouri summer heat and pouring rain, do not crack or get tobacco virus, keep their shape, and pump out fruit like mad all the way into the third week of October, and they'd still be growing except the other night we got very close to frost.

It was in a seed catalog that Demetrius and I found the Tommy Toes and liked that they were bred in our climate. A bonus: Wildlife don't raid and chew on Tommy Toes they way they did our Big Beefsteaks or Mister Stripeys or Mortgage Lifters, the varieties visible on the plate in the photo of me that appears to the left of this blog. What to do with six pounds of cherry tomatoes? I gave one pound away. Four pounds I cooked down into two quart containers of sauce I then froze. Some I roasted with olive oil and ate on pizza and pasta, some went into salads, and a few are still rolling around on the counter, getting snacked on. I threw a few into the meadow, hoping they'll volunteer for me next summer. There's nothing as tasty as a homegrown tomato -- in October.

Fruits of the Earth

Summer solstice, the fullness of the year, and the very best gifts of the season are its wild foods. You see the first crop of chanterelles, both yellow and cinnabar, from the rain-soaked Divine woods, used to fill a morning omelet, and the first few blackberries from the meadows and woods' edges, used to make berry scones. There's also fresh basil in a pot. Christmas CANNOT compare, not for one minute.

A Dutch Oven at Last

My brother-in-law, a garage-sale genius, happened upon boxes containing 5 brand-new 5-1/2 quart enameled cast-iron Dutch ovens manufactured in France by Le Creuset--among the world's most desirable cooking vessels, retailing today for more than $250 each. The owner asked $20 for each, my brother-in-law shelled out, and then asked on Facebook if anybody wanted one. I did! I did! I said next time I was up in Wisconsin I'd pick it up and pay.

My sister of took one of the five, blue to match her kitchen, and selected this sunny color for mine. When I saw it I was so delighted I wanted to roll on the floor, and packed it like a baby in blankets and towels for the ride back to Missouri. For three months I've done nothing but admire it,  and get up the nerve to use this item, coveted for years, almost purchased after our wedding except we chose instead a more practical stainless-steel kettle and never regretted it. But it was not an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven, the kind that outlives its happy owner, who becomes a cookin' fool for roasts, slow-baked beans, oven-cooked stews and all.

To prepare, I took a delightful class in baking artisan bread in a Dutch oven. A large mirror hung over the classroom's workspace so all in the room could see what the instructor did, and we got samples. Today--now that it's baking season--there's bread. Yes, the pot is heavy. But it's not as if I have to carry it in a backpack. I love anything that is both practical and beautiful. If it's food-related, all to the better.

A Night in the Kitchen

You know how you clip recipes and buy ingredients and time flies and those new recipes don't happen despite your best intentions--I always do that, especially when experimenting with the meatless, wheatless, or otherwise far-out, trying to advance my repertoire and learn. Last night I quit everything else and caught up.

Starting with the martini glass and going clockwise: That's Coffee Jello from food.com, topped with tofu whipped cream from the cookbook How It All Vegan. It's as good as it looks and takes 15 minutes. Delicious for breakfast. Next is a plate with three Strawberry-Coconut cookies, wheat-free, gluten-free and Paleo. Replacing white flour is coconut flour and ground flaxseed; coconut oil replaces butter; add unsweetened shredded coconut and chopped strawberries. A single one of these dense rich cookies satisfies. The round pita-like thing is a "Wheatbelly" (faddish no-grains diet) flaxseed wrap. Make the batter with ground flaxseeds, oil, an egg, and a spoonful of water, pour batter into a greased glass pie plate, microwave for 2 minutes, and I call this a new way to eat my morning egg: about 250 calories.You can make several at once and fridge them. In the yellow bowl is part of the result of 45 minutes of quartering a stack of 30 corn tortillas (cost: $2 and some) and baking them as chips. I planned to make my own salsa but then found a can of readymade. To its right you see a spatula's worth of Chicken Enchiladas, my meaty "Chicken of the Woods" wild mushrooms replacing the chicken. Served to a gaunt, sallow, and very picky vegetarian who loved it but ate it at room temp rather than letting me nuke it. Original recipe from Farm Journal's Great Home Cooking in America (1976; buy the hardback), the first cookbook I ever owned. Thanks, Mom. In the fall I wow guests with its Concord Grape Pie (page 83). In the green cup, egg-drop soup with fresh ginger, shown before I stirred the egg in.

All are wheat-free. Except for the jello, all are white-sugar-free and vegetarian. I'm an omnivore but have friends with every sort of dietary need.

Welcome to the Cabin Fever Breakfast Bakery

Looking for New and Different, something really really Different, because otherwise I'd go nuts in this stubborn winter weather, I tried baked oatmeal. Add eggs and milk and sweetener, load it with nuts and dried fruit, sometimes chopped apple. Spread it in a loaf pan or divide it into "muffins" and bake. Eat hot or cold -- and this recipe has a twist: espresso powder gives a mocha touch. To eat: as a muffin, or place in bowl and pour milk over it.

Maple Espresso Baked Oatmeal (makes 12 "muffins")

2-1/2 cups rolled oats ("old fashioned" on label)
1 tablespoon espresso powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 ounces unsalted butter
2/3 cup real maple syrup
3 eggs
2/3 cups milk
1 cup nuts (pecans, walnuts)
3/4 cup dried fruit (raisins, cherries, craisins)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a heated pan until it browns slightly and smells nutty. Set this aside to cool. In large bowl, combine oats, baking powder, espresso powder and salt. In medium bowl combine maple syrup, eggs, milk and melted butter. Then add liquid ingredients to the big bowl, mix well and let it sit 10 minutes while you butter the loaf pan or prepare the muffin pan: Use liners, and grease them.

Then spoon 1/2 cup of mixture into each baking cup, or pour all into a loaf pan. Tamp mixture down. Bake "muffins" 30-35 minutes; loaf pans 50 minutes. Eat warm or cold. I like it chilled -- tastes like bread pudding -- but it's so much better for you, and the espresso wakes you up.

The Recipe Box Collection

 Housekeeper Debbie and I spent two days cleaning and winterizing the Divine Cabin, now 85 years old with cracks in the foundation big enough to stick my hand in, and to fix them I emptied my cobwebbiest closet of boxes packed during my move here 12 years ago, unsealed the boxes to see what to throw out, and found, carefully wrapped in Taste of Home Magazine pages from 2001, my cherished recipe-box collection, mostly of tin and manufactured between 1950 and the 1970s, many of them by Ohio Art Company of Bryan, Ohio, maker also of tin toys.

If bought at yard sales or on eBay a box might yet be crammed with some homemaker's recipe cards, newspaper clippings and notes, telling an intimate story of her household and her kitchen, heart of the home. And the heart of the kitchen is--it must be--the recipe box! I have made some of their recipes, such as Orange Chiffon Pie. Many recipes, reflecting their era, require canned soups. My mother owned the same box as the red one pictured, and I laid out for you a sample of the unknown former owner's recipes: a clipping on how to make Arthur Treacher-style fish and chips; a handwritten recipe for 24-Hr. Salad, on its reverse a handwritten recipe for "Chicken Cha Cha," a dish credited to Della Reese, the singer; and a note saying "Calgon & water - mix to remove wallpaper." Just visible inside the box: "Potato Chip Cookies."

My brain's pleasure center lights up seeing their colors and imagining their stories, and I welcome the recipe boxes (the only items I have ever actively collected) back wholeheartedly into my daily life.

The Agritourism Experience

I confess I cheated on y'all and took my first overseas trip, to Poland, specifically rural south Poland (Carpathian and Tatra Mountains) with a group doing "agritourism," and now I know what that means. Our group of 12 visited Polish villages and learned about their foodways, and the cooks gave us lessons in their kitchens, so now I can fold a cabbage roll properly, and make pelmenyi, little Polish tortellinis stuffed with meat (pictured) and served in borscht. I brought back a jar of rose-petal jam. Once back in the U.S., I combed the big city for piernikis (gingerbread cookies filled with plum jam and dunked in chocolate) and Polish lemon vodka. We saw the clean and beautiful Polish countryside with farms and trout streams and pastures unmarred by chemical spraying, and we visited craftspeople and open-air markets and it was harvest time with so many purple plums, fruit, cucumbers for pickling, dried flowers and fresh sheep's milk cheeses and breads; and we hiked two of Poland's great national parks, set aside for posterity because they know when they've got a good thing going. That's the difference between most Poles and most Americans.
     Part of our agri-tour was arranged and hosted by polandculinaryvacations.com.

A Piece of Cake

The 3-2-1 Cake recipe makes one serving of cake in one minute. Mom sent me this modern folk recipe and I tried it and sent it on to my friend Marsha. She expressed disbelief, so I made and served her a 3-2-1 cake. That convinced her!

1. Take a box of angel food cake mix and a box of any other cake mix of your choice, pour both into a ziploc bag and shake well. One of the two mixes absolutely must be angel food, because of the egg whites.

(Here's the 3-2-1 part:)

2. Put 3 Tablespoons of this dry mixture in a ramekin or flat-bottomed custard dish.

3. Add 2 Tablespoons of water and mix until smooth.

4. Microwave for 1 minute. Now it's ready to eat! No pans to wash either!

Put the ziploc bag away until the next time you want cake. My  3-2-1 cake (pictured) is a lemon cake mix, mixed with the angelfood. You can see the fluffy texture. I chose lemon because it's versatile. Sliced fresh peaches topped this one because that is just who I am, but one could eat it plain or put ice cream, berries, sauce or whatever. Sometimes I stir lemon zest into it; I bet I could put some poppy seeds in it. Try it and then experiment and fine-tune for your microwave. I found that my 3-2-1 cake is really best nuked for 50 seconds rather than 60.

Grilling Flat Iron Steak

During

Oh buy the steak, said the little devil perched on my shoulder. The angel opposite said, It costs nine dollars! You've never grilled steak in your life! What a waste if you mess up! The devil won this argument and I took home a "flat iron steak" -- never heard of it before; it looked kind of like the flank steak I'd wanted. Surprised to learn that flat iron steak is a new and fashionable cut from the shoulder. Cut vertically, that muscle made gristly top blade steaks. Cut horizontally, it makes flat-iron steak, the second-most-tender beef cut after the tenderloin. More fascinating info about the invention of the flat iron steak here on a butcher's blog. And either I'd grill the boneless 1.1-pound steak that afternoon or be too intimidated and waste what I'd spent on the Lodge cast-iron grill. My reluctance might seem odd, but in my middle 50s I have never grilled anything except corn and a hamburger and that was last week. Steak is a big step up.

After

Online (source of all knowledge) instructions said to grill the meat for 16 minutes for medium rare. I didn't marinate or rub it with salt and pepper, just brought it out raw on a plate, laid it on the hot grill and watched and waited to flip it at the 8-minute point. Surprise again; turned over, it looked awesome. Finished grilling and tented the (clean) plate with foil for10 minutes so the meat could finish cooking and redistribute its juices, becoming easier to slice. Then I sliced, to throw some steak strips into a salad. It came out magazine-perfect and so tender and delicious I turned ecstatic cartwheels and wished you were here to share. There was no fat or waste to speak of. Feels good to be building a new skill and I can hardly wait to serve this to friends. There's a marinade that's supposed to make it spectacular.

Scared to Grill? Who, Me? Nahhh....

Grilling is counterintuitive: You don't put the food on while there's fire? You wait until the flames go out? I finally accepted this as a reality and chose this year to acquire grilling skills. I have had $10 tabletop grills whose bellies burnt through on the first use; no good. Can't lift the propane tanks for gas grills. My best previous experience was with a cast-iron hibachi, so the next step up was the Lodge Cast Iron Portable (sort of; it weighs 35 pounds) Grill. Followed the step-by-step "be a grilly girl" article in the latest issue of Taste of Home Healthy Cooking magazine: Get self-lighting coals. Pile them in a pyramid. Don't skimp. Light. Light. Light, darn it! Why won't they *#***@* light? (Tuck a sheet of newspaper underneath those coals, girlfriend!) Oil the grill so food won't stick. Go away for 45 minutes and return with food packaged in aluminum foil. Grilling seems to require lots of foil.

The magazine's recipe was for grilled corn with olive oil and garlic. In a cookbook I found the recipe for grilled potatoes with onions in a packet (not shown; they were cooking in the coals). Online were instructions to shape the beef patties with a small hole in their centers. This way you can ascertain when they are cooked through. To keep fat from dripping and flaming fat from charring the meat, cook in a disposable aluminum pan until the last few minutes; then move them directly onto the grill to get that smoky taste and grill marks. The corn is that "butter and sugar" bicolor cultivar so popular and good they almost don't sell anything else around here anymore.

While waiting for the food to grill, sit down, enjoy the beautiful Missouri spring day and perhaps a beer. I didn't have one because I now get plastered and loop-legged after a single bottle.

The result was not bad for a novice. Practice makes perfect. I see so many great grilling recipes and don't want to miss out. (P.S. The following week I grilled a flatiron steak, my first grilled steak, and wrote about it.)

My First Layer Cake Sucks

 

Read about Nikola Tesla's Radiant Energy Capture device, U.S. Patent. No. 685968, and on YouTube saw small ones that work. Just about to go out to Radio Shack for capacitors to build my own Tesla device to generate free electrical power, I decided it was high time I baked a layer cake with my new cake pans, and picked a yella cake recipe out of Betty Crocker's old-old cookbook. You know the one: The ring-binder with all the salt, fat, and sugar that makes everything taste like Mom's.

Step 1. Made the layers all right and even used cake flour. It's true that the eggbeater wouldn't work in the batter and I didn't have a mixer so I used an electric hand blender, very unusual, but after baking, the layers seemed okay.

Step 2: Whipped the icing out of powdered sugar and lemon. Easy, and it looked divine! Daydreamed about the people I'd call to come have some cake and coffee.

Step 3: In fact I should have made a heck of a lot more Frosting, with butter and cream, and not one cup of the much thinner Icing. Until now I did not know the difference. A thick coat of frosting would have hid what I politely call the cake's "irregularities."

Step 4: Tried to tart up the poor cake by putting pineapple rings on it like my Aunt Elsie did. I laughed and laughed.The layering does not look so bad. But the cake was not tender (did I overbeat?) and the icing too sweet and the whole thing not worth eating, even by a sweet fiend. Final Score: Cake 1, Divine 0. Ah, home cooking. I should have built the Tesla device.

A Polish Meal

I'm half Polish. My mom's parents came from Poland about 1906. They met and got married in Chicago in 1912, and 100 years later, about four times a year I get the jones for Polish food, in particular cabbage, sausage, potatoes, mushrooms and home-baked white bread. When I make this meal it brings tears to my eyes. I didn't even know my grandparents; they bought a farm, had seven children, and died early.

Re-creating the Polish dinners of my kid-hood requires a trip to an international grocery that sells Polish sausages imported from Chicago. Only these--made in the home of America's largest Polish community--taste like they should. Don't give me Hillshire Farms; give me Bobka. Thank you. And keep your sauerkraut; I use fresh cabbage, boil it and add mustard sauce, put the mushrooms on the side, and that is my kapusta. When I picture a Polish table I imagine a snow-white tablecloth perfectly creased, because these people were far into linens and washing and ironing. My grandfolks was po' so there was no gorgeous Polish pottery to inherit. They left me nothing at all, at all, except this meal, which I love.

How About A Nice Plate of Hashbrowns?

Mine is a small household needing nothing but a knife and cutting board to fix vegetables, but when recipes like Zucchini Bread say "Shred 2 cups zucchini," I am less willing than before to take the time with a hand grater and to shred my knuckles, or to "chop finely" things like apples or mushrooms. (Life's too short.) Yet for the zucchini bread or potato pancakes or carrot-parsnip patties (them's good eatin'), nothing but shredding will do. Maybe you've noticed that cookbooks and recipes, more and more often, say "Put this in the food processor and process for one minute," and I started to think I should get one.

Food processors have always looked to me like nuclear power plants or what a chemical refinery might look like if made of high-impact plastic; slightly creepy. Went to all sorts of sites, read reviews, knowing this was a once-in-lifetime purchase. I didn't need the $200 11-cup processor but its bowl was less fragile than the same maker's $170 7-cup, and the other maker's 3-cup size leaked and for all of them people hated handwashing the parts and buying accessories. Others declared them all junk unless made in France. And where would I put the ungainly thing? I even got rid of my coffeemaker to get more counter space.

Then I found scores of rave reviews for this Black and Decker 2-cup chopper for $22. It has exactly three parts: the bowl, the whirling two-winged blade, and the 2-speed motor on top. So I ordered one. That first day I pulverized Parmesan and chopped carrots with it and then I baked an eggplant and made babaganoush in a twinkling, and now I make hashbrowns like I haven't in years. The chore of shredding gets done in no time and I can start cooking. I don't normally recommend material items, but if your needs are small and your hands are stiff or you're just too busy to chop up onions or the jalapenos for the salsa, this is the thing to get.

Divine Kitchen Secrets

1. Lay newspaper over counter before prepping food. Roll up and throw away after. Saves lots and lots of crumbing and wiping.

2. Keep potatoes from turning green by keeping them out of the cold.

3. Slip recipe cards or the recipe page into a transparent sheet protector, and clip to the fridge.

4. Make notes in cookbooks: date recipe was cooked, occasion, rating, substitutions made, reception, ideas for variations.

5. Buy rice from Thailand. This was a tip I got from a Chinese friend. Thai rice tastes so good it needs no butter or seasoning.

6. Breadcrumbs can take the place of parmesan.

7. Keep whole-wheat flour and grits in the fridge to prevent their turning rancid.

8. Dried beans kept too long dry up so fiercely they will never cook through.

9. Keep salt in a baggie rather than a cardboard container which will get wet & mushy & cake up your salt supply.

10. Favorite kitchen tool: immersion blender (or "stick" blender) which removes 90 percent of the need for a blender.

How to Render Raw Suet for Bird Feeding

Reeve keeps cattle and gave me 13 lbs. of suet, or the fat from around a cow's kidneys, raw. I froze it but knew I'd eventually have to "render" it, or cook it down to pure lard the way store-bought suet is. Never done this before. Put on an apron expecting grease as I cut room-temperature hunks into one-inch pieces and tore off the "silver skin" or membrane, but it was more like handling cooked chicken breast. Cooked first batch on low flame (45 minutes), second batch on medium flame (20 minutes) until I got a golden liquid, then scooped the "cracklins" out of it...the cracklins are edible but don't taste or smell good. I was afraid rendering beef fat would stink, the way they say sheep fat stinks, but it wasn't unpleasant. Poured the liquid into disposable pans and put it on the porch to cool, and within an hour it was perfectly white hardened clean LARD, aka beef tallow, which because it's purified will stay fresh for my bird friends even in summer. Cleanup was the greasy part, because when that stuff cools -- fast -- it's hard as flint. Will I do this again? Probably not; easier to buy. But I'm proud to have done it for my birds. Finished product at right.