It's October. I always say that September, the back-to-school month, is the start of my year, but it's really October, when the garden gets dryer and more straggly, the leaves drift down onto the just and the unjust alike, and the morning air nips at my nose, turning the tip bright red.
In our family, October means the beginning of the birthday season (dark January and February nights lead inevitably to October and November birthdays): six at last count. A friend recently described her family's fall birthday parade as a time to celebrate all these wonderful people. I'd never thought of it that way. To me, this string of birthdays means I have to think of and find gifts, wrap and mail them (and I never do it enough in advance, so my gifts are always late), then remember to make a birthday phone call on The Day. Perhaps if I re-frame all this along the lines of my friend's comment, I can improve my attitude toward birthdays. I'll think of celebrating the presence of all these people in my life. But I'll still have to get the packages in the mail.
This year our son's birthday falls on Canadian Thanksgiving Day, which is on the Monday after the first Tuesday of October. Some Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving with a big meal on Sunday, because it's more convenient, but I can't bear celebrating Thanksgiving on any day but the actual Monday. Last year we had dinner for nine. Because I'm so very bored with the traditional feast, after fifty years of making Thanksgiving dinners, I decided to make a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Lots of trimmings, but no turkey. Any dinner that ends with three kinds of pie is hunky-dory with me: pumpkin, pecan, and an apple-prune tart. I love little mincemeat tarts, but no one else in the family likes them much, and even I, the consummate devourer of pie, can't eat more than one or two mince tarts a season. Maybe three.
So let's go into the eternal pie question: if you can't use vegetable shortening (and I haven't for 30 years) then how do you make pie crust? Lard is the answer, of course—half-and-half lard and butter, to be precise. I used to buy quarts of homemade lard and quarts of goose fat from Elizabeth's, the Hungarian deli on Bloor near Spadina, until Elizabeth up and left in a huff one night, abandoning the deli. No more goose fat. No more lard. I had to learn to make my own lard.
To make lard, simply dice white pork fat, add a little water, and put it in a low-moderate oven until the fat renders out. Cool it and strain it into sterile pint jars or freezer containers; store it in the refrigerator or freezer. The cracklings that float on top of the rendered fat are the cook's bonus. Skim them off the top of the melted lard, drain them on brown paper, and freeze to chop and add to your next batch of cornbread. (I must confess that whenever I make lard, I treat myself to a sandwich, just one, of cracklings and homemade bread and a little sea salt. Heaven.)
Can you call it a vegetarian Thanksgiving if all the pie crusts are made of lard? Probably not.
Copyright 2012 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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