Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Moon of Making Fat

Late May moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

Happy New Moon! The moon is new tonight and we are entering the moon cycle known as the Moon of Making Fat, or the Fatness Moon by the Lakota (Sioux) people. The name caught my eye because I am always on the "Fat is Good despite everything you've been told" bandwagon. And also because one of my most recent culinary adventures was making lard.

A rancher at the farmers market where I work called me over one day and asked me if I didn't want to take off his hands a heavy bag full of frozen pork fat. He also wanted to know whether I would like an even heavier pack of frozen pork skins so that I could make my own pork rinds. The crazy thing was that I wanted both -- but just couldn't lug around almost 15 pounds of pork fat with me all day: on the bus, into work, on the bus again, on the subway, and then for the 15 minute walk from the subway back home. We compromised. I took only the fat. I must admit I still felt a bit like some sort of criminal, or at least a weirdo, as I lugged around my heavy load. What would people think of me, I wondered, if they knew I was carrying around six pounds of pork fat?! I looked like an innocent, average, urban working girl -- dressed in black with my laptop in my backpack and my purse slung over my shoulder -- but little did they know what was in the other bag!

Such is the reputation of lard these days. There are few foods that provoke such a reaction of revulsion, fear, or disapproval as lard.

For those of you who might be wondering what, exactly, lard is and what it has to do with pork fat, here's the basics... Lard is rendered pork fat. Meaning: when I got home I put that defrosting pork fat in the fridge. Then I spent a day or two looking for some clear directions on how to render it, which I finally found in one of my collections of pasted recipes. I pulled the fat out of the fridge and starting warming up a cast iron pan on the stove. As I cut the pork fat into small pieces, I added them to the pan, along with some water. I also preheated the oven to a low heat. I kept cutting and adding to the pan until the pan was full of squares of white fat, then stuck the pan in the oven and kept an eye on it as the fat slowly rendered over the course of a couple of hours. Eventually, what I had in that pan was a lot of liquid fat, with a small proportion of pieces left floating in it, which I strained out. I poured the fat in jars (that 5+ pounds of pork fat rendered out about 2.5 quarts of liquid) and put it in the fridge to harden. I froze the remaining fat pieces and have found them to be a wonderful training tool with our dog. He'll jump spirals in the air for just a little nugget.

The fat in the jars is lard: once prized and hoarded; now despised and avoided. An environmental artist and I were talking about fat and lard a few years ago, and he said that he thought you could probably divide the world into those who loved lard and those who hated it. He might be right. So I am a bit of an anomaly: a lard-lover in a culture of lard-haters. But what does it all mean?

Before the 20th Century, most cultures and most communities on earth valued fat. Fat was precious, and those animals and plants that yielded it were precious as well. Fat was used as food, and also for lighting, and for religious ceremony -- such as anointing with oil.

Indigenous people of all continents valued the fat from the wild game or seafoods or nuts that they hunted. The bison was sacred to the Plains Indians such as the Lakota who hunted it, and the fat was rendered and used in staples such as variations of 'pemmican' -- dried pounded meat mixed with rendered fat. For the Inuit, seal oil and other fats were a critical part of life -- both a staple food and a source of light.

In northern Europe, lard from pigs, tallow from sheep and cows, schmaltz from chickens, duck fat and goose fat were all highly prized. Throughout Europe, cream and sour cream were precious, wonderful things, as well as the butter churned from the cream. Skimmed milk -- milk stripped of most of its fat -- was not eaten but rather fed to the hogs. In India, ghee (clarified butter) is ceremonial and medicinal, and the cows it comes from are held sacred.

In the Mediterranean countries, olives and olive oil are treasured. In West Africa, 'groundnuts' (peanuts) form an important staple food, and are cooked in many stews. In the Himalayas, Yaks and yak butter are the honored fats. Each region has a traditional fat: mustard seed oil, sesame oil, walnut oil, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, karite oil, the list goes on and on.

But sometime during the 20th Century, here in America, someone decided that fat was bad, and that fat was what was giving us heart disease.

Even though there was ample evidence of cultures such as that in Southern France, where a generous amount of saturated, animal fats were eaten and heart disease rates were very low. The 'experts' didn't know how to explain this, so they called it the French Paradox. The Inuit people had for many centuries eaten a diet extremely high in saturated fat (in some cased constituting 90% of total calories), with no incidence of heart disease and extremely good health. Let's call that the Eskimo paradox. No one, I suppose, wondered if maybe the rise in heart disease in our country, which corresponded statistically to a decrease in our intake of saturated, traditional fats, might have something to do with the things we WERE eating much more of: white sugar, white flour, processed foods, preservatives, hydrogenated vegetable fats...

In any event, the tide is turning. Many people are starting to realize that old-fashioned, traditional fats are good for you. The popularity of the Atkins diet is forcing the issue in the media. People are finally catching on to the fact that 'trans fats' -- chemically manipulated, factory-fabricated fats -- are the real bad guys in the world of fats. Olive oil is almost thoroughly recuperated. Butter has made a comeback. Expeller-pressed, unrefined oils from nuts and seeds are regaining lost ground in the arena of public opinion. Cream is making small steps back into our kitchens, as is coconut oil. But animal fats such as schmaltz, tallow, duck fat, goose fat, and the much-vilified lard are still regarded with tremendous suspicion.

There are some good reasons for this. Many of us know that large-scale animal husbandry in this country doesn't deserve the dignity of that name. It stands to reason that the fat that comes from these animals would be damaged by the mistreatment the animals have received: drugs, confinement, inappropriate diets...

The rancher who offered me the pork fat to render that day is one whose practices I feel good about. The hogs are kept locally, less than an hour and a half away. They eat a diverse, pig-appropriate diet that includes lots of organic fruits and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste, overproduction from local organic farms. They have plenty of access to the outdoors. There are 50 acres that are home to 14 sows and 50 nannie goats. They aren't given hormones or antibiotics. This ranch (Prather Ranch) is not unique: hundreds of ranches around the country are reviving the meaning of the term "animal husbandry."

Still, many people who make a point of eating meat from animals raised following ethical principals still have yet to embrace eating the fat.

Witness all the free-range skinless chicken breasts for sale at natural groceries. I observed this phenomenon first hand when I had a tour of the kitchen of Chez Panisse about a year ago. Chez Panisse is famous for launching the renaissance in eating locally-grown, organic foods.

Their menu features meat from small-scale, local ranches that are leaders in setting the standards for humane animal husbandry. Behind the restaurant, there is a huge barrel filled with fat from all these free-range animals. What happens to it? It is sold for soap-making. (Yes, I too had flashbacks to the movie Fight Club). When I asked the chef who was giving us the tour about it, he said with a tinge of sadness that the vegetarian and low-fat interests of the customers meant that they couldn't use the fat. Aside from occasionally frying potatoes in duck fat to accompany a duck entree (a French culinary tradition), the restaurant mostly used imported (non-local) peanut oil for frying. I couldn't help but shake my head... All that precious fat, from all those precious animals, the most stable fat for frying in, completely local, completely free to the restaurant, squandered because of our fat-phobia.

For my part, I find myself with a freezer full of jars of animal fat: lots of schmaltz, but also pheasant fat, duck fat, tallow, and, of course, lard. And I'm not ashamed to have it, to cook with it, or to eat it. I actually believe that fats from healthy animals are a health food. Not only are they not bad for you, they are good for you. They contain nutrients. Lard, for example, is a rich source of Vitamin D, in a form that is accessible to our bodies (unlike the Vitamin D used to 'fortify' much of our processed milk). This is a nutrient many of us are deficient in (that's why they add it to milk.) For those of you who still believe saturated animal fats are inherently bad for you, I highly recommend the article, "The Skinny on Fats," which you can read at westonaprice.org. Maybe, after reading it, you'll start to see fats in much the same way our ancestors did: a precious, sacred food; a medicinal healing food; and a delicious messenger of flavor. Not a thing to be ashamed of.

Nor were the Lakota ashamed to call this moon the Moon of Making Fat. Because of course, fat was never a bad thing until it was decided VERY RECENTLY that it was. But what was the Moon of Making Fat all about?

Did it mean that this was the time that the Lakota rendered fat? I'm not sure. In all my research on the web, I was unable to find out exactly what the name means. Perhaps this is further evidence of fat-phobia. But my guess is that this was the time of year that the wild bison were making fat on their bodies. The spring rains and the early summer sun would mean lots of wild grasses growing on the prairies for the bison to eat, enabling them to put on weight. The Lakota were, perhaps, waiting for them to 'make fat' before beginning to hunt. My research suggested that next month (the next moon cycle) was the time of hunting bison, and so that would likely be the time of rendering, tanning hides, drying meat, and any other processing that communities would do with their prey.

So, for the next moon cycle, my slogan is: MAKE FAT NOT WAR! Move beyond the oppression of fat-phobia. Embrace the wisdom of thousands of years. When the summer's first (local, organic) corn arrives, roll it generously in a stick of butter (from free-range cows) and eat it with gusto.

A shameless recipe follows.

Freedom (from fat-phobia) Fries

• Potatoes (preferably a starchy variety such as russet, from a local, organic farm)
• Fat such as lard, tallow, schmaltz, duck or goose fat from humanely raised, free-range animals
• Sea salt

Cut potatoes into 'fries', by cutting them into 1/3" thick slices, then into 1/3" thick sticks. If possible, cover with water and place in refrigerator overnight. Drain water off, and dry 'sticks' off on towels.

Melt generous amount of fat over high heat in cast iron (or other good) pan. Watch it carefully, and when the liquid fat starts to move a little, try dipping the very end of a fry into the hot fat. If it starts to sizzle immediately, then add the fries to the fat. Don't crowd the pan. You may want to turn the heat down a little. Make sure not to let the fat smoke. Fry, turning with a spoon with holes in it (or a fork), until golden brown. Lift fries out of the fat and place on a brown paper bag, which will absorb the excess. Repeat until all fries are fried. Sprinkle salt over fries and eat with a friend, and without a speck of remorse.

Native American moon name sites:

• The Sioux Calendar
• Indian Moons, Days & Other Calendar Stuff
• Indian Moons Calendar
• The Lewis And Clark Rediscovery Project