Holiday Cooking for the Birds
11/23/2011
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| This Thanksgiving, don't forget the birds! Photo: Susanne Nilsjo |
Thanksgiving is a time to share and give thanks. This holiday, why not share a few leftovers by putting together a simple recipe for your feathered friends?
In the process of Thanksgiving prep, you might notice a few feeder favorites make their way across your counter: corn, pecans, bread, cranberries, apples, and more. A great option for these leftovers is creating a suet feeder, a rich, protein-filled treat for birds in wintry months.
Suet is rendered animal fat—you can buy this in a bird food supply store or butcher shop. Some meat counters will even give you beef fat trimmings for free, just ask them to run it through a meat grinder.
Alternately, if you’ve ever wondered what to do with leftover cooking fats, suet can be a responsible way to reuse it. Throwing fats and oils down the sink or into the trash is not merely wasteful, grease sticks to your pipes and tossed fat will likely become methane in a landfill, upping your carbon footprint.
Here’s a basic recipe, with some variations below:
- 1. Render the fat: To create your own suet, you need to first render the fat so that it can form and hold a cake shape. This involves melting the fat over a moderate-low heat until it becomes liquid (there should be no meat traces left). Next, pour it over a cheesecloth or fine strainer. Repeat. Strain at least twice so you have pure, liquid fat.
- 2. Add-ins: Once you have hot, rendered suet, you can add the fixings. Consider cornmeal or flour, oats, chopped pecans, peanuts (unsalted), sunflower seeds, dried crumbled bread, dried chopped apples or berries, cracked corn, raisins or craisins. Recipes vary on proportions, so experiment a little! You could start with 1 cup fat: 1 cup flour: 1 cup other add-ins.
- 3. Choose a mold: Pour your mix into a mold. Be creative: Cupcake liners in muffin tins or empty egg cartons can make great molds, just pour in the suet and add a little twine or yarn so that when it hardens (which should happen at room temperature) you can hang it from a tree. Another simple feeder involves taking a small log and chip in a few nitches that you can pour suet into, and later nail your feeder to a tree. A ribbon-strung pinecone can also make a simple, elegant mold (just ask Martha Stewart), dip the cone in suet, roll in a few extra fixings and done.
- 4. Serving instructions: Freeze your suet in the mold for two hours, then set it outside for the birds!
Who to expect: Suet is sure to draw insect-lovers like wrens, warblers, and creepers. For those plagued by pecking it can offer woodpeckers a tasty alternative to cedar house siding.
Feeders sometimes draw squirrels, cats, or raccoons, so be careful where you place it and consider only putting out as much food as the birds will eat in a day or two. Be sure to read Audubon’s feeder tips article for ideas.
Working with fat: This is a perfect treat for cold winter months and can help bulk up migrating birds. However, once the thermometer passes fifty degrees you want to be careful. Fat goes rancid quickly and the foul-smelling mess isn’t good for birds. As with any feeder, be sure to inspect the suet for any signs of decay and don't leave it unmonitored for long.
Turkey trimmings? Suet shoud be hard at room temperature, which is why most people recommend beef or lamb fat, though some folks have made great feeders using bacon drippings. A good trick is to store grease from cooking these meats in a jar in your freezer so that it’s ready-to-go for suet making. Fat from turkeys, however, melts faster and can go rancid more quickly, so it’s safest to simply save it for the gravy.
If traditional suet sounds daunting, consider the vegetarian option. You can swap meat fat for vegetable shortening, or for a great all-year-option consider a sticky, sweet favorite of birds and humans alike: peanut butter.
Finally, your local Audubon chapter is a great resource for bird feeding tips, to highlight a few chapters with recipes online: Rio Brazos, TX, Presque Isle, PA, or Yakima Valley, WA.
Protect the birds, Preserve
Protect the birds, Preserve Widlife: LIMIT GROWTH
Petition to Define Limits to Economic and Population Growth in the Town of Chapel Hill, presented to Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and the Town Council of Chapel Hill, NC on November 21, 2011.
Steven Earl Salmony Opening Remarks ——- In Chapel Hill and around the world, it is all the same: many too many people can be found in too many places destroying the natural world for personal economic gain. Many human-induced pressures on Earth’s finite resources and its frangible ecology, that directly result from the unbridled global growth of overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities by the human species, put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future for children, not only in Chapel Hill but elsewhere on the surface of our planetary home. If we are to halt the reckless destruction of Earth as a viable resource base as well as the irreversible degradation of an already polluted environment and a warming climate, we must accept limits to growth.
We must start somewhere soon to chart a sustainable course. Endless economic and population growth appear to be unsustainable. Let us consider now and here ways we can humanely, fairly, equitably and realistically define limits to economic and population growth in Chapel Hill, while there is still time to do so. Once the comfortable and friendly size of Chapel Hill is lost due to economic and population growth pressures, Chapel Hill’s quality of life and special characteristics will be impossible to regain.
Perhaps we can “think globally” about the predicament seven billion human beings present to the viability of Earth as a fit place for human habitation. Then we choose to”act locally” in ways that move us in the direction of a sustainable future for children everywhere and for life as we know it.
A Petition to Define Limits to Economic and Population Growth in Chapel Hill
Whereas the Town of Chapel Hill appears to be outgrowing the comfortable and friendly size that has made it a wonderful place to live, raise children, work and retire; and
Whereas increasing traffic congestion, crime and other social ills are presenting worrisome trends that result from human population growth which will eventually degrade Chapel Hill’s eco-friendly environs, deplete its limited natural resources and conceivably ruin what makes our town beautiful and special; and
Whereas the Town of Chapel Hill has established limits and the Great State of North Carolina has boundary lines that separate it from adjacent states; and
Whereas the USA has borders that confirm the limits of authorized human activity under its regulations and laws as well as distinguish itself as a separate nation; and
Whereas Earth is round, bounded and finite with frangible environs not flat, unbounded and unperturbed by human production, consumption and population activities of the human species worldwide; and
Whereas there are well-known biological and physical “rules of the house” in our planetary home that are categorically different from the manmade laws which regulate day to day production, consumption and population activities of human species, but are no less important to citizens of Chapel Hill, the State of NC and the USA as well as to the global citizenry of the human family, precisely because the biophysical reality of God’s Creation places immutable limits on the unbridled global growth of human overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities; and
Whereas a billion human beings were added to family of humanity worldwide in the last dozen years (1999 to 2011); and
Whereas in the month of October 2011 we expect that the seven billionth human being will join the human community; and
Whereas there are more human beings in November 2011 existing on resources valued at less than two dollars per day globally than were alive on Earth in the year of my birth (2.3+ billion in March 1945); and
Whereas we have heard many times, understood well enough, and can reasonably be expected to at least consider acting in a morally responsible way upon a shibboleth of humanity that goes like this, “Think globally, act locally,”
Now, Therefore, It appears appropriate to Propose and Present this brief Summary of a Program for Action.
As a part of the town-wide envisioning process to consciously and deliberately manage economic and population growth in the Town of Chapel Hill between now and 2020, leaders, planners and stakeholders will assure that the maintenance of the unique character and the quality of life in Chapel Hill, as we enjoy it now, is protected and preserved for the children and future generations. To accomplish this goal, various scenarios or different elements of a single scenario will be developed with the hope that the following steps will be examined for their efficacy.
Because overpopulation is ultimately a local issue, set an optimum/maximum population size for the Town of Chapel Hill in 2020. This goal can be fulfilled by adopting growth-management policies related to limits on the number of new residential dwelling units and to additional eco-friendly curbs on commercial developments per year between now and 2020. Zoning regulations can be promulgated to further restrict the size of residential, commercial and industrial buildings within the town limits. The reality-oriented adoption of “soft caps” on economic and population growth will make it possible for the Town of Chapel Hill to sensibly acknowledge and adequately address the considerable and potentially unsustainable growth pressures that are readily visible on our watch.
Steven Earl Salmony
1834 North Lakeshore Drive
I agree with you, but it's a
I agree with you, but it's a bit contradictory. Eating birds, feeding birds :)
May I feed the birds with
May I feed the birds with turkey?