Whew! It’s getting crunchy in here!

Art by S., grade 1

I’ve always admired the traditional First Nations way of using every part of the buffalo they killed.  It just seems right, that if an animal is going to die for our benefit, none of it should be wasted.  Until now, I’ve never had the desire to actually put that into practice in my life.  In the past few months, though, I’ve been making more effort to make lots of bone broths, which are amazingly nutritious.

Recently, I learned through reading about the GAPS diet, that the cooked fat (tallow) from deer, bison, and grass fed beef is much higher in vitamins, and beneficial factors like conjugated linoleic acid.  It’s also readily absorbed.  It’s actually really good for our skin.  When we cooked a bison roast recently, I saved the drippings.  Instead of discarding the fat, as I would have done in the past, I put the tallow in a jar in the freezer.

This week I’ve been doing a few interesting things with it, that may gross you out if you’re not on the path to crunchiness.  (A few months ago, I had to look up “crunchy” in the urban dictionary.  It’s the equivalent of being “granola”, as we used to say when I was in high school.)

Inspired by this  post, I used it as a makeup remover and skin moisturizer.  My elbows have never been softer!  (And no, they’re not greasy.  Although Nathan figures they smell faintly of soup.  🙂

For Sarah and mommy time tonight, we made homemade lip balm, with tallow, olive oil, and maple syrup (sarah’s scent of choice) and stored it in some little jars I’d bought.  It was fun, and virtually free, and beat petroleum-derived products hands down.

Have you ever done something interesting with tallow?