Random

I am crazy tired tonight. As a result, I’m not sure that I can put together much of a coherent post. And if I’m totally honest, I’m too lazy to get up and get my camera to upload the new photos I’ve taken over the past few days. So, here are a few random comments on some photos I enjoy.

Miss love to play with her Daddy. Seriously, he’s like an amusement park ride to her. He eats it up too.

Miss has learned to say, “What’s that?” She actually says something like, “Ta” and points and/or looks at something, but we know what she means. She does this a lot. I love her curiosity! Sometimes she does this more than once for the same object, as illustrated by the pictures below. Or else, and this is probably more likely, she’s asking about one thing and I’m telling her about something else, so she keeps asking until I get it right!

This past weekend my husband rendered lard. Seriously. He took pork fat, cut it into pieces, and cooked it over very low heat for the entire day on Saturday. The picture below is the result. Lots of liquid fat and some “cracklins” to boot (those things are actually yummy). Strain off the liquid and voila! Lard. Note: also in the photo my gorgeous copper saute pan that he got me for Christmas and the knife set he got me for Christmas several years ago. The man is no dummy. He took the fact that I love to cook and ran with it, and gets himself some pretty tasty eats from time to time too!
You may be wondering what one does with lard once it is rendered. I was. Well, you can use it for many purposes when cooking, and apparently using it for baking results in fantastic treats. But my hubby rendered this lard expressly for the purpose of making pork confit. In other words, he marinated the pork on the day he made the lard. The next day (Sunday) he cooked the pork submerged in the lard in the oven on very low heat all day. It’s a bummer I don’t have a photo of this, as he used my other gorgeous Christmas present for this, which is a copper dutch oven to match the saute pan! Anyway, cooking the meat this way not only makes some seriously delicious pork, it is also a preservation method and with the cooked pork stored in an airtight container in the lard in the fridge, it will keep for months. Who knew?? P.S. to eat it later we will extract it from the lard and saute it. Yum. And – BONUS – the lard can be used again. Thrifty.