Queen Carpenter Ant (Camponotus herculeanus) post wing-drop. 11x12 inches, acrylic, watercolour pencil and charcoal on wood.

5 weeks until my Solo Gallery show. EEEEEEEEE!!

Plus, it’s Get The Garden Going Season. EEEEEEE!!

I just finished watching The Kill Floor video, along the lines of my own recent education and at first I tried to write down some quotes from the butcher, but decided it was all too good, and am just posting the video itself.

From this post:

Episode 27 – The Kill Floor from Kevin Kossowan on Vimeo.

The ‘hard’ parts are near the very end.

Eating meat has become so simple in our culture. Too simple.

I’ve seen Fresh The Movie, I’ve seen Food, Inc. I’ve read Omnivores Dilemma. I’ve watched this beautiful (yes, beautiful) video showing how to butcher a pig. I have access to local, happy, healthy, natural meats (not to mention insanely delicious).

Meat requires another animal’s death -and that is something that far too many people take for granted, including me. I understand, appreciate and respect that each roast or pack of bacon that I unwrap is the flesh of another animal (‘another,’ yes, humans are animals). I don’t try to protect my children from the reality, either. Chicken is from chicken, beef is from cattle, pork and bacon (practically its own food group in here) are from pigs. Living, breathing, eating, shitting, feeling animals. And that it is so very important to me, and to J, that we respect it. Acknowledge it. Be grateful for it.

I’ve always wanted to go hunting. I first learned to handle and use firearms in Sea Cadets. I found I was a good shot. While living with my mom & step dad on an acreage for a few months after I graduated high school, John let me practice with his 22, I even went ‘hunting’ and successfully shot a grouse. Not a huge feat, but I’d killed an animal that we could eat. I don’t think we ever did, I have a vague recollection of it being lost somewhere in the freezer. Then, while working in Forestry, I was again trained to use firearms and used a 12-gauge shotgun for several months (a great story, if you haven’t already heard it). But when I say I wanted to hunt, most people that I was genuinely appealing to though I was being facetious. I wanted to know how to obtain meat in as simple, as natural a manner possible.

I do still want to go hunting for game. In case you’re wondering about me, I find no thrill in the killing. It’s not some kind of rabid blood lust that I have -I have a strong penchant for DIY when it comes to food. I like doing, making things from scratch. I like learning technique. I like knowing what goes into what I eat. So many times I’ve said to myself, “Why the hell should I buy that when I can do it myself?” I like projects!

Planning for my own urban chicken flock and looking for more urban gardening ideas, I purchased Essential Urban Farmer and read the whole section on raising chickens and through the ‘processing’ section, too, mostly out of curiosity.

When a commenter on an Urban Chicken Group page announced that she had a young rooster who’d started crowing and needed to be removed (roosters in the city make for grumpy neighbours -hell, roosters in my own flock’d make me grumpy, too), I half-joking suggested she turn him into soup. The woman said she couldn’t do that, he’d been too much of a pet for her. I said something along the lines of, “I’ll take him off your hands -but be warned that he’s destined for food.” A part of me was kind of hoping she’d say NO and keep looking for a farm to take him, but she agreed. We set up the hand-over and I came home with a beautiful 4 month old cockerel in a small box lined with pine shavings. Wondering what J was going to think of me, other than that I was nuts.

I won’t go through all of the details, but I did it. We wound up getting FOUR meals out of the 1 bird (roast, leftover meat in fajitas, 2 night’s worth of soup). The instructions in the book are excellent, the meat was surprisingly tender. The soup stock I made from the bones was amazing, so thick with gelatin and so incredibly flavorful. We’d had farm chickens for roasting from J’s Baba years ago, but they were never this.. nice. It could be breed, range-space, diet, or the 24 hour brine rest that make the difference, I don’t know. It could just as easily be that I wasn’t as experienced a cook back then. But, Sparky was amazing. I had been somewhat concerned that my ‘experiment’ in self-sustenance would wind up with a shrug and a drive to the supermarket for a rotisserie chicken. It certainly didn’t.

SO, a few days ago when I was offered a rooster who was apparently being an asshole and a duck.. I wound up being handed a medium-sized dog kennel containing a rooster and THREE ducks. As of writing this, they are all soaking in a 10% brine solution. Well, the food-friendly parts are.

I expect I make it sound easy and I’ve had very kind comments about how brave I am, pride in me, admiration for my strength and it’s all very flattering and while I do take pride in having taken this extra, large step toward conscious omnivory, it’s TERRIFYING. When the birds are enclosed and I know that I Have A Job To Do, I’m anxious, I’m distracted, I’m procrastinatory (yes, I’m making that a word), my hands tremble. I finally reach a point where I know I’m ready (as much I can be) and I just need to go do it. My hand shake the whole time. My heart is thumping. I am so worried that the animal is going to be afraid, hurt, stressed. I have read and re-read as much as I can about methods and what is purported to be the most humane (and why) and I am confident that my methods are the best I can offer (and that these methods are over and above the humane levels of either predation by coyotes or life in a factory chicken operation).

Still, I’m a sentimental, sensitive, over-thinking meathead. But I do it. Yesterday, J helped me and I am so grateful. Not only because of a different approach that I believe is slightly (yet even) more humane that I wasn’t sure I could do (physical strength-wise), but because there is something indescribable about having a friend, a partner share these moments. It’s the feeling of support, that he doesn’t actually think I’m crazy or that it’s another irrational project. It’s the contribution of his experiences. It’s having someone to show my shaking hands to see how much this really does affect me.

And it really does affect me, on so many levels, which I’ll try to articulate. But first I have to say that I believe this …sorrow in taking another animals life, this respect for it’s feelings and fear for ITS fear.. this emotional response to something so basic as sustenance, nourishment is a gift.

If I felt nothing? THAT would be a tragedy.

And that, THAT, is what our Western Civilized Food System is. A motherfucking tragedy. To see the rows of rotisserie chickens and try to determine which one is plumpest and the best value for our dollar, instead of picturing or at the very least sparing a single neural firing’s worth of energy considering how those birds (YES THEY ARE BIRDS) got there. To decide that it’s a good thing for a drive-thru cheeseburger to cost less than a pound of fresh produce, instead of questioning the logic of putting that crap (SO MUCH CRAP) into our bodies, our children’s bodies. To feel, think, respect NOTHING of the value of food. OF OURSELVES. Because yes, you ARE what you eat. On a very fundamental, physical level.

The choices we make as consumers make a difference. You may say that you don’t have options where you live. Why is that? Because we were fed the idea that choice is overrated, here, let’s make the choices for you, eat this crap in a box shipped around the globe instead of supporting local Farmer Joe -and we ate what we were fed. The result?

Is the similarity not obvious? Some neon signs and fake plants slapped into plastic pots to draw attention away from the fact that we’re being herded, confined, steered away from exercise and effort and being fed crap we have no earthly business eating? And, beyond that, dealing with the health consequences of it all?

Food must be more important that that. It *IS* more important than that. Make the choice to try, at the very least. When the cashier at the supermarket asks you if you found everything you were looking for, THAT is your chance to express your choice. Say, “No! Not nearly enough organic produce.” “No, I want tomato sauce in cans free from BPA.” “No, I would like to see local meats.” “No, I want to see GMO labeling.” YOU are the one holding the debit, credit card, cash. Make them earn it.

Or when a crazy opportunity presents itself to you, earn it yourself. Plant a garden to start, it’ll open up your mind and your heart and your whole body will with thank you for it.

And, lastly the title of this post comes from this:

True Grit

This is the gravel I collected from the 3 ducks’ gizzards. Some of it washed away as I cleaned it out but I tried to keep as much as I could. At first it was just a curiosity to me, an interesting tidbit of bird anatomy, but then (sentimental me) I attached more to it. It’s a step in the food chain. It’s the birds’ instinctive knowledge that it needs some stony grit in its gizzard to help it properly digest its food -to sustain itself. Just as its my instinctive knowledge that I am an omnivore and I require an animals death to accomplish that. It’s a natural process. It’s complicated. It should be complicated. It’s a complicated process, being a living creature, ultimately turning the sun’s energy and the earth’s chemistry into everything that we are.

Years ago I bought The Joy of Yoga and this passage struck me and I’ve never forgotten it:

Despite technology and culture, we are animals. Even as we destroy it, we are a part of Nature. Holding those tiny pebbles in my hand is a truth.

Disclaimer: In no way am I suggesting or implying that everyone do what I did. Nor am I going to feed my family exclusively this way. Thank goodness for Ravenwood, I have other access to ecological, ethical meats. It’s the idea, the knowledge, the respect for the process that I want to emphasize.

When I’d posted about it on Facebook there was quite an interesting range of comments, from, “Cool!” to, “WHY?!” So, here’s the Why:

I guess it started with some chatting with the lovely Belinda of Ninjapoodles about how vastly misunderstood fats are and how mis-educated we’ve become as a culture and primarily that fats from naturally raised animals is very good for you. (Linkage at the end.) By ‘naturally raised’ I mean meat animals that are pastured (NOT fed corn in feedlots), animals that are raised free from hormones and routine antibiotics. Even better are heritage breeds, which typically have greater climate tolerance and larger natural fat deposits.

Then I came across this: How To Render And Can Your Own Lard on Pinterest. Thanks to the awesome Taylors at Ravenwood Ranch, about 45 minutes from Red Deer, I knew I could potentially get my hands on some natural, heritage pork fat and try it myself.

So, I did. This is what Tamara handed me about a week before Christmas:

A Big Bag O Fat

10 pounds of fat from their happy Berkshire hogs, which are renown for their excellent meat and fat. That’s 10 pounds of what turned out to be Leaf Fat once the lengths were pulled out and unrolled a bit. (Leaf Fat is what is found deep inside the pigs’ body, surrounding the kidneys & other organs -NOT back fat. From everything I’ve read and heard about baking with fats, there is no better fat on the planet for flaky pie crusts and delicate flavour than leaf fat. And after my adventures, I know it to be 100% true!)

Lovely Sheets of Fatty Goodness

Which then took me about an hour to chop into chunks to help it render that much faster:

Choppity Chop

Apparently a food processor works well.. if you have a good food processor. I don’t. It wasn’t that terribly trying to do by hand, anyway, to me it was worth the end result, which was 10 lbs (give or take) of natural fat chunks in my big-ass stock pot:

Ready To Render

1 cup of water was added to help prevent scorching while the fat first started to heat and melt -it evaporates off over the time it takes to render. Which is a LONG time. As you can see in the photo, I had it on the stove and ready to heat at 1:30pm and by the time I needed to get to bed at around 11, it still wasn’t completely done so I turned off the heat and put it on a back burner (with a lid on). The next morning I slowly warmed it back up again and let it simmer another couple of hours. Done-ness is determined by the solids that are left, the cracklings. When they are wee and look like all of the fat has been coaxed out of them, it’s done.

A note about smell: yes, it does smell. Not BAD, but definitely porky. If you’re considering this, I assume you’re already OK with pork so it’s certainly tolerable. To me, the house smelled like a rich, fatty roast was baking.. all day and into the next. Personally, I did get pretty tired of the smell by the time I was done BUT not enough that I’m never doing it again. I will definitely make it again, I will just ensure I make it when I can have a couple of windows open, spring would be great.

Anyway, after all that rich, porky scented simmering, then filtering well through 2 layers of cotton cheesecloth and a wire sieve and pouring into pint jars, this is what I wound up with:

VERY close to 10 pints

LOOKIT ALL THAT FAT!! I used a bit of it to cook that night’s dinner but all in all, I wound up with nearly 10 whole pints of rendered lard from 10lbs of raw fat. Here’s another great shot:

Liquid Fatty Gold

And here’s how it looked after sitting out to cool overnight:

Lardtastic

NOTE about keeping it: In the original post I’d read about rendering and canning it, he claims that water processing it is enough to keep it from going ‘off’ in storage but other sources I’ve read insist that pressure-canning is the only way to be sure it’s safe, it is a meat product after all. As I understand it, the lipid content somehow protects any potential bacteria (including those that cause Botulism), hence the need for pressure-canning. I don’t have a pressure-canner so I keep the jars in the freezer. Simple enough.

I’ve been using it here and there, a bit melted in a hot pan to sear meats, a bit melted and poured over breaded chicken before it goes into the oven and, yes, for baking. It was quite surprising to me how much difference it truly does make to baked products. A cookie recipe I’ve been using for years that calls for shortening, which I’d been using, came out a little saggier BUT crispier around the edges and …. it’s hard to explain.. crispier inside while still being soft. I know, just trust me, it was awesome. And pie crust? OH MY. Easily, by far, thoroughly, beautifully flaky as hell. And DELICIOUS. WOW. No, sorry, no photos, it’s already digested.

Another note: When I open a jar, I can still smell a porky sort of smell (as it did when rendering but obviously on a much smaller scale). When I first opened a jar to do some baking a few days after I had finished the rendering, I was a bit concerned. As far as I understood, it shouldn’t smell or taste porky. But I gave it the benefit of the doubt and still used it for the cookies I’d planned. I tasted the raw cookie dough before baking: yup, still tasted semi-porky. I was then worried I’d wind up with porky chocolate chip cookies but had to go the full process to really know so into the oven they went. While baking, I didn’t notice any porky smell nor when I bit into a done and cooled cookie did I detect any hint of pork flavour. The pie I made last week was a pecan pie and of all of us who had some (5 people) nobody could detect any pork flavour. Verdict: the scent/flavour cooks out! YAY!

Next time, however, for the sake of trying to get it as ‘clean’ as I can, I will wash the lard. Washing it just means boiling it in clean water after rendering and filtering to help remove any extra residue that may be in the fat. Belinda says it should do the trick, but, really, it’s not a HUGE deal since it still bakes up very nicely.

I’d love to hear anyone else’s stories or experiences with lard. I highly recommend it. One final point though: make sure you use fats from naturally raised animals, it’s important because the fat quality really does matter. Ravenwood delivers regularly to Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary. You can find their contact into on their website (see above).

LAST NOTE: Store-lard is NOT good lard! It’s hydrogenated to enable shelf-stability. It’s likely from feedlot animals, too. Nasty stuff, that.

OK, linkage!

• A long, but thorough article on saturated fats (pardon the noisy ad at the top, just pause it): Proven Health Benefits of Saturated Fats
• A long, but good (though sometimes dry)(but laden with science) talk by Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories: Big Fat Lies
• A good article about fat, cholesterol, fatty-acids, trans-fats and the importance of grass-fed: Confused About Fat? Choose Grassfed!
• From Toronto Life mag: Praise the Lard
• I have this book ordered & due any day now, which Belinda heartily recommended: Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient

================================
UPDATE!
MacLean’s Magazine here in Canada ran an article just yesterday, titled Leaf lard makes the flakiest pies! Cool! The article references Jennifer McLagan’s blog (she’s the author of Fat, which hasn’t arrived yet.. grumble grumble. Here are her instructions for rendering in the oven. I couldn’t pull that off with 10 lbs at a time but I think I may try in smaller batches. I did read that heating the fat too high and not draining it off as it melts can lead to a darker colour and a stronger flavour -this could be what happened to me. I’m still happy with my first attempt, but I will keep it lower, in smaller batches, and drain it off regularly next time. I will also try peeling the fat away from the membrane instead of chopping it all up.

Am I being too vague? Sorry, I just need to go to bed but feel compelled to share something but am trying to not be up too late, either.

1. I have a solo art exhibit at the Marjorie Wood Art Gallery from June 20-July 27th. I will be presenting a collection of insect portraits. (I KNOW!)

2. I’ve been commissioned to do an illustration of a HUMAN BRAIN for a textbook on addictions (tobacco)!! (I KNOW!!)

3. I made lard! (Trust me, it’s way cooler than it sounds!)

4. I slaughtered and butchered a chicken (we’re eating it tomorrow). (I KNOW!!!)

5. I’m trying to come up with a program that I can deliver to a bunch of gifted teenagers which combines art & science in a fun morning at school.

6. I may be trading entomological know-how in lecture form (and a happy back-up resource) in exchange for participating in a pilot SPIN Farming Apprenticeship program.

And, perhaps the biggest thing, and the thing that is making ALL of this feel possible and right and good and DO-ABLE is that, for the first time in YEARS I’m getting a full night’s sleep. EVERY STINKING NIGHT. (I KNOW!!!)

Is my excitement coming across?! I feel like I can do anything.

And I just might.

Anyway, I’m excessively sentimental right now. What was supposed to be an epic weekend turned into a spiral of grief as our beautiful, incredibly gentle, genuine old-soul dog, Raini succumbed to whatever it was that caused her to have seizures. I cannot help second guess my own decisions, though I try hard to accept that it’s unlikely we really could have done anything different.

I’m grieving hard and I know it’s a part of the process of letting go, it’s just hard to come to terms with her youth (approx 3 years old), her energy and how… just incredible her personality was. She was the perfect dog for us. Quiet, sensitive and totally had a sense of humour.

You're a good girl, Roo.

(That is a scream of awesomeness yet also a scream of OMG I Have So Much To Do*!)

*Which I bring upon myself. I went into the Grade 2 classrooms this week to help wind up their Bugs unit with some tips on seeing the beauty in insects as well as how to draw (somewhat) anatomically-correct bugs for their final project: making a pinned bug collection! I’ll pop back in next week to see how they’re going.

Theya has decided to wear her Toothless (the dragon from How To Tame Your Dragon movie, I made it for her last year) costume again for Trick Or Treating but has requested a witch dress for the school dance (tonight) because the Toothless one is pretty darn warm (designed for the cold weather we usually can count on this time of year). Thanks to some fortunate, mad sewing skills I was able to whip one up in under an hour while Lochren napped this afternoon -that includes finding the fabric in the laundry pile (always pre-shrink!), digging the pattern out from under another pile of fabric (raglan sleeves rock my world), cutting the fabric and sewing it -including some witchy lacey detail.

Now why did I just make Theya’s dress now, instead of having it done days ago? Because I’ve been spending my time working on THIS:

Geekery + Creativity = Happy Chair

.. LOCHREN’S COSTUME! I can’t wait till it’s done, it’s gonna ROCK.

Please, watch it. Especially if, like me, you are a chronic doodler.

Note what she says at 4:20, because that’s exactly what I was doing as I was listening. I want all teachers, everywhere, to see/hear/doodle this. I’m certainly going to share it with the ones that I know.

The Village Frock, click image to go to original post.

At the time I didn’t have any money to spend on patterns and now that I’ve been reconsidering, the pattern is out of print and, after contacting the site, I found out there are no plans to reprint or otherwise publish it. I was seriously bummed.

Then it got my wheels turning, I had my heart set on it. I have a pretty good grasp of sewing and how it all works and comes together. So I gave it a go last week, using some vintage-pattern quilting cotton from the thrift store and a pair of linen pants that went through the dryer too many times and are now too short for me -and making a small one for Theya because, hey, it potentially means less fabric wastage if I fail miserably.

I think I did alright, actually.

My first attempt at duplicating the pattern.

It’s a bit big on her but that’s always a good thing with kids, it’ll last longer. Theya loves it and wore it to school today. I’m pretty pumped about making a few more (and the next one will be my size).

I really, really suck at pattern-making. I alter the shit out of things as I go along and also make up stuff at the last moment, which sometimes fails and sometimes works but I don’t necessarily remember which. I need to take notes, I think. And photos. In any case, it really was pretty intuitive and, assuming you know the basics of sewing, I’ll tell you what I did (with some links to examples just in case).

• First, take a good look at the frock (here). Print it off, too. Notice that it’s made with raglan sleeves, a gathered yoke & sleeves, and some trim for the top & sleeve hems.
• Then I worked with this wonderful, wonderful pattern. SOOO easy. This is what I used to make Theya’s First Day Of School Dress and her Crazy Fancy Night Dress.
• I cut the cotton print out with a lower neckline (I shortened the sleeves and front & back by about an inch -from the top), to make room for the yoke.
• I sewed the sleeves and front & back together and trimmed the top to make it a nice smooth curve all the way around. (Inside of sleeves and sides were not sewn shut yet.)
• I measured the TOTAL width of what I had at that point -around the neck/yoke area. I THINK I had about 16″ (so 32″ all around). I cut the legs of the linen pants into curved strips (so they’d curve evenly when gathered) and once they were strung together, it was about 22″ across (44″ around). I did the same with the sleeves, but I don’t remember the dimensions.
• Then I sewed them into ruffles (basic idea/tutorial is here) and made sure the finished gathered sections were the same width as the neck of the tunic and the sleeves.
• The sleeves were a cinch to assemble. I added the ruffle section, then used a narrow strip of cotton to the hem for a neat finish and tie it all together. Once both sides were done, I closed up the sides of the dress (sew along the inside of the sleeves and down the sides of the tunic, per the raglan dress pattern).
• The top was trickier. I considered using my new best friend (FOE) around the yoke so I wouldn’t need buttons but that seemed like cheating and I didn’t have a length of FOE that would match, anyway. So, I cut a slit in the existing tunic on the right side (chose arbitrarily), then sewed the linen, gathered yoke around and finished the hem with a length of scrap linen (didn’t want the cotton trim there, dunno why, just didn’t).
• Oh yeah, you can see in this photo that there is an extra, ungathered section of linen RIGHT in the middle of the front of the yoke. That is an example of me screwing up. It’s not terribly obvious, I might embroider something there, if it bugs me enough, or I may just leave it. Once I had it sewn around most of the way I realized I had mis-measured and it was going to be short an inch or so, so I just added a section BUT didn’t make it long enough to gather well at all, so… whatever. I did like the way it curved around neatly and evenly, so yes, definitely cut the strips in a curve for the yoke section (the ruffled for the sleeves were cut from straight rectangle strips).
• It was starting to look pretty darn awesome, but I still had to add the trim around the slit and the button loops. In the original photo (from SCJ), it looks SO neat, but I wasn’t sure how she pulled it off and I was tired but wanted it done so I just did a simple strip of linen around the front edge, flipped it around and sewed it down (rolled hem) on the inside then made rolled hem strips for the button loops & tacked them to the back side.
• The buttons are from the linen pants (they had the rolled-up-capri option so there were a lot of extra buttons on the legs) -hence the perfect match. Once it was put together, I sort of didn’t like the colour combination. It honestly made me think, “CLOWN” but not enough for me to toss it. I cut one of the pockets off the ass of the pants and cut what was more of a dress down into a shorter smock. Once it was hemmed and the pocket added, I liked it again. So I kept it.

She says it's VERY comfortable.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with it, but I think it would look better in a solid colour (and the whole thing the same fabric, or at least the same fabric but in different shades). I am tempted to try dying the whole thing crimson and seeing how it turns out, if the colours tie together better -but then the buttons may not match. It would look better if it fit Theya better, too, I think. I also think that the ruffles would look better if they were fuller, so I’d suggest outright doubling the circumference of the openings when measuring out the sections to be gathered. I was only going to use 4 or 5 buttons but the gaps looked funny so I went with as many as I could fit (7), maybe a section of fabric added to the right side of the slit that sat underneath the buttons would all for fewer buttons -without skin peeking through. The sleeves could be a wee less billowy, too.

So, in case you were wondering, there you have it. I am very keen to try making a jacket version of this, in some heavy-ish chenille jacquard I have, oh, just kicking around. Longish (body and sleeves extended) for me, with buttons all the way down the body -but spaced out more or it would make me crazy putting it on and taking it off. OH! And a huge, gorgeous hood. I’ll post photos if/when it happens. For sure.

YES, Theya has no hair!! She was so fed up with the ordeal of keeping her fine curls under control, she asked for, “a boy haircut.” Once I pointed out that we could probably donate her hair to make wigs for cancer patients (and I made her think about it for a week to be REALLY sure), she was sold. She loves it so much and gosh, I can’t blame her, that girl has the eyes (and face) for a pixie cut -she ROCKS it.

It helps that Theya and I decided that she needs a First Day Of School dress:

I’m thinking of Yule Card designs (*squeal* they’re gonna be GOOD this year) and making a dragonfly bed-spread. I’m thinking that, for once, the thought of having Cable TV is exciting, when I watch TV, my hands are free to make all sorts of terribly delightful things. I’ve hinted (or out-right blurted) some of my ideas on my Work Blog.

I feel so.. pumped. Even the thought of another 10 months of lunch (and snack, in Lochren’s case)-making can’t dampen my mood.