A wet autumn harvest

Although it's been a rainy and cool fall so far, I have still been able to harvest fresh veggies each week. 

Earlier this week I harvested a bunch of kale and fresh sage. I've got the sage drying right now. With the kale, I wrapped about half of it in a towel and plastic bag for the fridge, should anyone wasn't some fresh greens when making their lunch. With the other half a made a sweet and tangy salad, finely chopped kale, chopped dried plums, and a dressing of jelly, thyme vinegar, oil, and salt. The salad was big enough for several days of lunches. Another day I harvested some of the late planted radishes, using both the roots and greens in salads.

This morning, I timed it to get outside between bouts of heavier showers.  When I could see there was only a tiny sprinkle coming down, I put on some boots and ventured out into the garden. Most years, I just sort of abandon what remains in the garden after the end of October. This year I am trying to use as much as I can from it. I missed out on the final batch of unripe figs and crabapples. Between the cooler temps and the squirrels, I lost the last of the crabapples and unripe figs. Perhaps missing out on those last bits has propelled me to be more diligent about getting outside for the veggies. 

Today I harvested a large bunch of parsley and a bucket of Brussel sprout leaves. They were plentiful and most needed picking. I had no idea how I would use these two greens, but once inside again, I put them to good use for our meals. I used my food processor to throw together a quick batch of hummus using up the parsley and cooked the Brussel sprout leaves in tonight's dinner. I made what we call "beans and greens." This is a simple dish of cooked black-eyed peas, chopped fresh greens of any kind (kale or chard are our usuals), onions, garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, cooking oil, kielbasa (if we have some), and water to make it just a little bit saucy. Tonight I also added 2 small, wrinkly garden tomatoes from summer's end of season harvest. "Beans and greens" are served over rice. It sounds basic and plain, but it's really pretty good. Tomorrow I'll harvest the biggest turnips for oven-roasting as part of dinner.

The garden is really winding down for the year. I am left with turnips, kale, Brussel sprout leaves, a few Brussel sprouts, one celery plant, a few green onions, parsley, and other herbs. I am reaching the point where if we anticipated a heavy snow or period of prolonged freezing temps, I would be mostly satisfied with losing the remaining garden veggies. But that's not likely to happen for another couple of weeks. So it looks like I'll be dodging raindrops for a bit longer as I continue to use up the last of the garden.

Just working at squeezing all of the value out of our foods.

Have a great weekend, friends!

Rendering the Fat From Last Night's Beef Short Ribs

I made beef short ribs for dinner last night. While we like them, they are terribly fatty. 

rendered and saved beef fat from last night's cooking, will add more today

I hate to waste all of that fat, though, especially with the high price of other cooking fats right now. So I saved as much of the beef fat as I could.

I browned the meat slowly in the early afternoon, rendering as much of the fat as I could before the meat developed too thick of a crust from browning. I poured off that fat to freeze. After simmering the meat with onions, garlic, and herbs for a few hours, I poured off all of the liquid and allowed the fat to rise. I scooped that fat off and into a container, too. 

For yesterday's dinner I pulled the meat apart and shredded it most of it, made a gravy with the skimmed liquid. I had a whole rib and the fattier parts of the other ribs remaining to use in a pot of soup for tonights dinner. Before cooking the soup I rendered the fatty pieces once more, pouring off that fat to save. Then I simmered the remaining pieces in liquid to soften it all up for the soup. After that liquid cooled I skimmed off more fat. My total skimmed and rendered fat for this day was 2 plus custard cups.

This afternoon, my daughter is pulled the remaining meat and fat apart (the bones were discarded last night after shredding meat) to make a beef and vegetable soup for us. While she separated meat from fat, I chopped fat and rendered that further. There was an additional custard cup of rendered fat from today's cooking, giving me over 3 custard cups of beef fat in total.

From about a three pound package of short ribs, I have about 1 3/4 cups of usable cooking fat now stored in the freezer. I use this saved fat when sautéing veggies or lean meats, when oven-frying potato wedges or making hash browns, in bean dishes, and melted then added to drop biscuit dough. In a pinch, rendered meat fat can be clarified (remove the meat flavor) and used in baking. I haven't done that in about 20 years. But it's there as an option, if need be.

My husband especially likes to cook with meat fat. He enjoys the meaty flavor it adds to simple dishes. We surprisingly go through almost all of the rendered fat that I save. When any meat fat has been sitting in the freezer for too long, I then use it as an aid in starting charcoal briquets for barbecuing. It all gets used one way or another.

As for the health impact of using rendered meat fat, I'm of the everything-in-moderation camp. I figure if we balance our use of meat fat with vegetable/olive oil, coconut oil, and butter, we won't overdo any one source of fat and will still reap the benefits of each type.

It's a running joke in our household that I plan on using rendered beef fat to make Christmas gifts -- some man and dog-pleasing chapstick (needs to stay refrigerated) and hand cream for the ladies. I suppose I could make mandles (beef-scented candles) for the men on my list. Oh the possibilities are endless . . .