There's a chill in the air- soon it will be suet time

There's a chill in the air and before we know it winter will be upon us. What's your favorite suet recipe?

Here's mine from another thread in another forum here-

Here are links to other recipes from that thread I originally posted my recipe in-

http://www.gardenartisans.com/suet-recipes.html

http://birding.about.com/library/weekly/aa031300a.htm

http://www.havahart.com/bird/_old_bird/suet.htm

http://www.sialis.org/suet.htm

http://www.ehow.com/how_10858_make-suet-bird.html

A chill in the air? That's what we usually get sometime between November and February... I miss real winters. They don't need to be long ones, they just should exist! Still in the 90s here, as it's been since March.

Send some this way, Equil! And thanks for the recipe, and the fruit cake solution!

See, and to think nobody ever quite seems to know exactly what to do with Auntie Irene's notorious fruit cake. Another elderly aunt of mine (she had a sense of humor) used to crochet and embroider and sew cute bizarre slip ons for those rock hard fruit cakes that were gifted to all of us so that we could really use them as door stops. Some of her slip ons were holiday themed and some were just down right ridiculous with pink flamingos stuck to them but they were always good for a deep belly laugh because everyone other than Auntie Irene always knew it was last year's fruit cake propping the door open. They now serve a higher purpose over here since I began making suet.

My suet cake recipe is like my goulash recipe, whatever I have on hand gets added. I always start with suet, cornmeal, oatmeal and peanut butter, but then I'll check the cabinets and see what's there. Currants, raisins, dates, unsalted nuts and seeds, the heels of bread loaves, leftover corn, cashew butter. I pour it in a Pyrex dish and cut to fit cages. Anything left over I smear on tree bark. I've tried the mesh bags, but my squirrels chew right through them.

I get a fruitcake every year from an aunt in Newfoundland. I always make myself eat a little bit, hoping it will be somehow lighter, or hoping she added rum to it--no such luck. It's always the same. Great suggestion to add the fruits and nuts to the suet cakes!

Jeepers! Am I the only lazy one who buys their suet?? I should put some out since I don't believe the HOSP will eat it. At least in my upside down one. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm NOT feeding the dang HOSP!!

Equil raining again here. So much for painting the front porch. Now I need to wait 5 or so days for it to dry before I can get back to it. How frustrating. Tues. supposed to be in the low 50's here.

Suet recipes do seem to end up like goulash recipes don't they. I've smeared suet between the bark of Oaks before. Thought I was the only ding dong doing that but I guess I'm not. The woodpeckers always manage to find the left over suet.

I'll save one of Auntie Irene's fruitcakes for you Terry. I'm sure one of my SILs will be more than willing to part with one for a worthy cause. I'll mail it off to you, I'm sure it will survive being bounced around no problem so you can experiment making your own suet. Wouldn't want you feeling left out.

Yup, starting to rain here too. That's three weekends in a row it rained with me having to work on Saturdays. We did make a dent in the remaining plants that need to go in the ground and if there is no rain next weekend on both Saturday and Sunday, we should be able to get every last plant in the ground. We gave up on finishing the landscape islands this year with those last three weekends of rain. If I can just get these remaining plants in the ground, I'll have some time to start soups and suet before the holidays hit and just after that it's time to start winter sowing which is extremely time consuming.

Oh yes! Do send me Auntie Irene's fruitcake. I need to bookmark the recipes. You people have more in your cupboards, I swear.

Speaking of winter sowing, I got some redbud seed pods yesterday. How do I go about getting them to sprout. Do they need cold, soak in water, nothing?

Dry the seeds out and stick them in a baby food jar in your frig. This coming November/December, take them out nick them with a fingernail file to scarfiy them. You could also boil them for a few minutes I suppose or dip them in sulfuric acid for a half hour. Soak for 24 hours then place seed on damp medium of top soil/rinsed sand in food storage container with vented lid and tuck in your refrigerator in vegetable crisper until next March/April. Take out and direct sow into the area you want them or place in individual pots to germinate and set on your front porch. Keep medium damp not moist while it is in your frig. Or, you could plant your seeds into individual vented containers and set them out up against the side of your house this November and let Ma Nature take over. I use the double tray method which you have seen.

I may have missed someone mentioning this above but I was always told to only use unsalted peanut butter when making suet (people often mention purchasing unsalted nuts but don't realize that the commonly available peanut butter also has a pretty high salt content).

I really have NO set recipe. I start with some lard and peanut butter... chunky kind. Then I add some birdseed, and plow through my pantry for tidbits of any nuts and seeds left over, or grains. I usually end up adding some millet, some oats, some barley... whatever I come across. Then I cool it in sizes for the wire cages but this year since I have moved I will have to buy more. The mix always disappears! (andf sometimes the cages!)

My jar is the cheap stuff and it was an unsalted generic. I don't think I knew to go for unsalted until you mentioned it but I just did it by force of habit. I don't care for high salt anything and do look at labels. Really glad you mentioned it.

Ya, the squirrels drag my wire baskets off too. I found one this summer way out in the woods. You'd think they'd quit after they got to the suet but they do take the whole basket if they can.

Well, Lilypon, you had me rushing to the peanut butter jar. My 100% natural peanut butter doesn't have sodium either. Good reminder!

Anyone have any tips on rendering the suet? I dice it up and cook it over medium heat and it takes quite a while. I strain out the cracklings but always wondered if that was really necessary. Is that what you all do?

Nope, I don't bother.

Kinda figured ya'll might get the no salt variety but thought it should prolly be mentioned just in case. Thank you for the recipe (it's been awhile since I last made some)

Strain out cracklings? I think I'll stick to buying mine......

Lard/suet - can you use bacon grease? Probably a really stupid question....

Thanks for asking, MQN ! I was wondering the same thing. What is "suet" and as important I think - what is NOT suet ? Also would someone tell me why birds and squirrels would eat animal fats when they (the birds and squirrels) are not carnivores?

MQN, not a stupid question at all. I've been tempted, but I'm afraid it has way too much sodium.

suet = animal fat that is rendered

Sure, why not try bacon grease. It's all animal fat which is chalk full of calories birds need during the winter months. I've never used bacon grease but that's only because we don't do bacon over here. I don't know anyone who has used pork fat but I'd try it if there was ever any around here which there isn't. I might try some turkey bacon grease. What the heck. Worse case scenario is that the birds turn their beaks up at our offerings and then we could all go back to regular old beef lard.

You can buy lard (manteca) pretty cheap in the grocery stores.

I shop at a place called Woodman's. I buy it bulk but the butchers know what I'm buying it for so if they have any fat from roasts or steak laying around, they toss it in for free for me. FREEEEEEEEE! I love free.

I was told by a Wildlife Biologist once - not to put nuts and seeds in the suet for birds because the birds who eat suet - are not normally nut and seed eaters? Has anyone else heard this? Should I ignore this comment?

Sometimes its hard to find suet without nuts and seeds in it?

As for fruit cake, send them to me. My husband loves fruit cake. I actually made one for him last year. I tried a peice and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be...

I normally don't put out alot of bird food until after a few frosts. (There is plenty of food in my yard without the feeders) But I recently read that birds go into a feeding frenzy before they migrate to build up as much reserves as they can before the trip. So this year I started filling my feeders before labor day.

If you are in a position to do so, please ask the wildlife biologist to elaborate. What he she said makes sense, yet on the other hand I see numerous species at my suet feeders. I know from time to time I have tossed walnut and pecan bits in my suet too. I never paid attention to which species were eating what.

I'd be most curious.

I have plenty of food here for migrating birds too so I haven't begun to fill my feeders. I was planning on waiting until we've had a few hard frosts myself. Thought being to encourage the species that migrate to kepp moving south. I've read something or other about not discouraging them from continuing to migrating by artificially feeding them. Because of West NIles, I have been putting out food for the Blue Jays. They got hit hard.

I'd be most curious about this too.

I'm thinking this should be a whole new thread. Anyone want to do the honors of starting one so we can keep all the information together?

Back when I had something other than HOSP to feed, I used suet that had nuts and seeds in it. I got a lot of woodpeckers eating the suet. They love nuts.

I think I should be seeing the guy who made the seed free suet comment at a meeting in a few weeks, If I remember I will ask him some more questions about this.

Write it on your hand so you don't forget. That's what I do, I can't lose my hand but the stickems I lose. Pathetic, I know.

joepyeweed, would you also see if anyone knows why birds that eat seeds and nuts would want to (and digestively be able to) eat animal fat? I know they do, but why? It seems to me to be like a horse deciding to eat a cow once a year.

Would birds like a vegetable lard like Crisco? What would be the nutritional differences, for birds, between Crisco and rendered animal fat?

Common birds that eat suet are insect eaters like woodpeckers.

But I can think of many other birds, like nuthatches, chickadees, bluebirds that eat both seeds and insects. Which is why I question the comment about not putting seeds in suet.

Okay yesterday, I went on a guided birding tour with Bert Princen, an avid international bird watcher, over the weekend.

I consider him a bird expert and asked him the question about the suet and seeds. He said there is NO concern over adding seed and nuts to suet. As the birds that eat suet will and can eat nuts and seeds and its no problem and the birds love it. (Which is what I thought, but I was surprised when I heard the wildlife biologist say something else... and perhaps I misunderstood the point, at the time.)

Any way, Bert went on to say that he doesn't use meat based suet. He uses crisco and just slaps a big wad of crisco on a tree and the woodpeckers love it .He prefers crisco because its vegetable based AND cheap. He doesn't start feeding the crisco until the end of October.

Our birding trip was great. We saw 58 different species of birds. Which isn't an awesome count, but the weather was cloudy, cool and windy. So for the weather conditions - it was pretty good. Interesting sightings included a Herrier, a Merlin, a snowy egret, two caspian terns, and an osprey. We also heard several sora, but could never see them. For migrations, we saw bazillion blue wing and green wing teal and a bazillion redwing blackbirds. I love the raptors... besides the raptors I mentioned previously, we also saw a few bald eagles, two broadwing hawks, a couple of kestrels and few red tail hawks.

Places that we went to view birds included Spring Lake, Lake Chataqua, Emiquon and Banner Marsh. The best part about the tour and I wish I had taken better notes is that Mr. Princen would point out areas and seasons where different types of birds could be seen at various times through the year. I am definitely going to start taking this route on my own or showing visitors when they come. I wrote down several other places that I want to visit - that we didn't visit yesterday because we were running out of time.

I use 1/3rd bacon fat, 1/3 crisco, 1/3 chunky peanut butter (plus flour, corn meal and whatever seeds I've got around). The bacon fat itself tends to be too soft if mixed 1/2 and 1/2 with peanut butter. Some bacon has a lot of salt in it. We also watch our sodium, so the bacon we get usually has less salt than normal, but I wonder, is that still too much? The birds love it, but now I wonder if I'm causing more harm than help?

terry, I'm with you. my favorite recipe is what's on sale at the store. just bought some oriole delight..it's got some fruit and stuff in it. actually, this is my first winter at this house feeding the birds and I'm hoping to draw in some that I haven't seen around.

gram ~a girl~

Finally! Someone who thinks like I do....lol! Ya know, I've got suet down in the freezer and I've suet holders/feeders out in the garage. Perhaps I should do what you're doing, put them up and see what else I can get besides the HOSP. This is our second winter in this old house.

I'm curious. what's HOSP? can't figure it out. whatever they are, you're sounding prety inHOSPitable to them.

HOSP= English House Sparrows
They are an introduced exotic invasive species that anhialites native cavity nesting birds such as Purple Martins, Bluebirds, Screech Owls, Wood Ducks, and Woodpeckers.
If you would like to read more-
www.sialis.org
Go to that link and you will be provided with a history to HOSPs.

Many birders and wildlife gardeners who want to encourage and promote native species of birds humanely destroy them and there are several topics regarding this available to you to read in our Garden Foes Forum.

You can do a search here for those threads by looking up their Latin name which is Passer domesticus.

Created two massive batches of suet today!

another image-

with sunflower seeds added-

Here's some of the finished product. They fit very nicely into those little square wire mesh suet hanger thingies-

I got tired of pouring into molds so tossed leftovers into 3 gallon ziplocks and once those harden up, I can hang the whole blog in left over onion or orange mesh bags-