Fried Fat Winter Solstice

Yesterday I just wanted to wander around aimlessly in the cold and fall into the snow and die. But instead, I cooked fat!

I don't know much about fat, having been a vegetarian for many years, and also having an aversion to fat. I grew up in the age of anti-fat. I thought I was fat. I wasn't, but I thought I was. I'll never forget the time I was cooking with my Grandma Myrtle and I said we should cut off all the fat from a piece of meat, and she scoffed at me, took the raw fat into her mouth and chewed it. "Fat is good!" she said, "You never get rid of the fat." She grew up on a farm and lived through the Great Depression. Here was I telling her we should get rid of something so valuable. Because I thought fat was bad.

So that's the sum of what I know about fat. But I decided to experiment with it.

I took six chicken drumsticks (free-range, of course; all my chicken is free-range), boiled them in a pot on the stove, and removed the skin. Burned my fingers taking that skin off! Then I used some leftover oil from the night before (more on that delicious experiment later) and fried the skin. Was it good! Yum yum! Crispy, juicy, fried fat! In leftover oil! What's not to love? I think this was a very fitting response to the Winter Solstice darkest shortest day of the year with migraine headache. And a very good start to my blog.