We eat more meat than I'd like, but we have three sons and it fills them up so for now, I make meat.
Sometimes there's fat leftover from the meat. Sometimes the fat sits in the pan for a few days because no one washes a Godamn dish in this house but me (deep breaths). One day, as I was scraping the fat off, I thought suet.
Doesn't everyone?
Then I thought, if I make a suet ball, I can hang it near my home office window and watch pretty little birds all day, which will make me forget about how no one washes a Godamn dish in this house but me, and that will be good for everyone.
Falalalala.
I looked up how to make suet balls.
I miss the days when you'd Google a recipe and just get the recipe but no, nowadays people have to give you their life history and pictures of their cat and throw in every adjective possible to describe their dish/project — yummy! moist! succulent! tender! — so the fricken details are like 50 web pages in but praise be, I finally found a succinct suet recipe. Here is my interpretation:
Make bacon or hamburgers and let the fat harden. Or you can buy pre-made suet, which is lame.
Scrape fat into a container. Freeze fat.
Affix frozen fat to a hanger. You can buy one or use string.
Roll the frozen fat in peanut butter and/or bird seed.
Hang it to something outside.
Voila.
I like my suet ball — maybe it's more of a wad — because it's imperfect, like me. Awww. Self-love.
You certainly can get fancier. You can even add mealworms and dried flies to yours! Because I have three sons and spend my fair share of time washing dried urine from the sides of the toilet, I think my life has enough of a yuck factor for now, so I'm sticking with peanut butter and seeds but by all means, if your afternoon consists of talk shows and bubble baths, handling mealworms might be good your soul.
Not to judge or anything.
Sadly, my suet ball has been hanging outside for well over a week and I haven't seen one bird. I have, however, stopped our dog from climbing the tree to eat it, so it's not a total failure.
I have faith, too, that soon enough, some intrepid bird will get a whiff off that tasty — yummy! moist! succulent! tender! — ball of beef fat and swoop down and wow me with its delightful plumage.
And soon this
will be nothing but a faded memory.
Or, more likely, Chuck will read this post and attack the dishes, like he did the eggnog, and we will be carried off into the sunset by a flock of wood-warblers, blissfully entwined and smelling of cooked bacon and Dawn dish detergent.
Is it getting hot in here or what? Seriously, I should start writing ornithological erotica.
If you are hungry for more, you can learn about types of suet here. Now go make some bacon!
