In a message dated 2/13/00 2:51:18 PM EST, [email protected] writes: << Your Mom has that right about the pie crust made with lard - it is the very best and crunchie. Jan >> Hello Everyone, I have very much enjoyed all of the food preparation posts (although to our storyteller G. Lee Hearl...well...I think you need to give me the email address of one of your cousins to verify that your most entertaining molasses/popcorn story isn't from your repertoire <grin>) At the moment I am confused between which posts are on this list and which are on the ETN (Eastern Tennessee) list, where we have been discussing, in the exact same vein, the making of and traditions surrounding "souse", headcheese, etc. with many contributors and stories, etc. In fact, I was just looking at subject lines and thought they were all on the same list. With respect to lard, my mother always used/uses Crisco (in the can, white shortening), in baking,including chocolate chip cookies, etc. She was born and raised in SW MO..the OZARKS. Once she came to my house inVA and made an extra trip to the grocery when all I had was margarine in the house. I had quite frankly forgotten about Crisco even because in the last years of my schooling, she taught school, did avariety of other activities and rarely cooked from scratch. When she came I was reminded and now I certainly use it for all pie crusts, tartlets, many of the dryer cookies (ie, some shortbread types) etc. as well. Friends my age (ie, 50) who are from the Northeast come and ask me what the white Crisco can contains sometimes if they see me use it. That doesn't seem to happen from anyone from the south or midwest (I live in Alexandria VA...a nice southern town infiltrated by government employees!!) You definitely can still find lard at larger stores, and many ethnic stores, especially hispanic. It is the ONLY thing to make really, really good refried (black) beans with. And since you are probably going to use fat anyway...why not!! (I also have a perfectly fine way to make refried beans with out any fat that I use when I am on my best nutritional behavior). And re buttermilk (and I don't know if it was this list or ETN), but some were talking about how buttermilk also is about as familiar to most of us as...well hard tack (what is hard tackanyway?..a cracker?). My father (the aerospace engineer) who grewup in SW MO, but unlike my mother, was one generation away from a farm, loved buttermilk. He had a whole buttermilk, bread, sardine, fruit (figs in season) ritual for his Saturday lunch that we three kids all literally gagged at...one of our beloved family stories. FYI, I grew up in Long Beach CA amongst many midwest transplants. The lady who took care of me after school received all of my mother's fat drippings (saved in the empty Crisco can). In 1959, she made hand made soap out of them in suburban Long Beach!! Thanks for all of the information...I also have Foxfire books..if this was the list they were mentioned. At one period, definitely before kids, I dreamed of the simple life on the farm....until a Washington Post writer, who had done it for three years on a hill in New Hampshire, pointed out why the simple life was a condominium involving no ground care very close to one's place of employment, that did not require either machine maintenance skills or god-given rain to ensure an income. Janet Hunter