"Wow, Mom! What's cooking?"
Will walked into the kitchen and looked into the big metal bowl on the counter. I had just poured melted bacon fat over a mixture of chopped suet, bird seed, bread crumbs, and peanut butter.
"It looks good enough to eat," he said, looking at the melting mess. He reached a finger in tentatively.
Well, it is good to eat, I answered, but not for humans. This mix is for the birds. Literally.
I found the recipe for chickadee pudding in Evelyn Birge Vitz's cookbook A Continual Feast and made it years ago when the girls were small. I pulled out the recipe again this Christmas when the wild birds refused to eat the millet-filled birdseed we put out in the feeders. Chickadee pudding was the answer to what would have been a woeful waste of seed. The birds love it, and we have had a lot of activity at the feeders especially from downy and hairy woodpeckers, who happily swing on the suet cages. I'm now making a second batch to carry the birds through the remainder of the winter. Whatever is left will freeze well until next November.
The recipe is straight forward and is good for using up kitchen seeds (pumpkin, apple, etc.), saved bacon fat, and old dried bread. Chop suet until fine in the food processor. Add seeds, crumbs, dried fruit, and whatever else the birds might find interesting. I like adding peanut butter. Melt the bacon fat and pour over the mix, stirring as the suet melts and the mix becomes a thick pourable mass. You may have to gently heat the bowl if the suet doesn't readily melt. Pour into a cake pan and chill. Cut into cakes and let the birds enjoy!
