Pioneer Days - Zambian Style - By John

As we slip into September, I am reminded that Pioneer Days, that celebration of all things Mennonite and old fashioned, is held around now at the Mennonite Village Museum in Steinbach. You know, the place where they butcher a hog, just to show the kids how it was done in the old days? One of the things they would make from the pig would be tubs of Lard.

Lard happens to be one of the few things I have missed and have not been able to find in Africa. It just isn’t available, you can only buy something called "Half Fat Spread" or Baking Margarine, which is strange and unnatural, and so my pie crusts aren’t as flaky as they should be. Do you remember the old Lard commercial from the seventies?

When I bake a pie
For the apple of my eye
I bake it with a crust
I know that I can trust
I bake it so good he (or she) can smell it from the yard
I’ll tell you what my secret is
My secret is my Lard.

Well, I wanted a crust that was good and flaky and I needed good lard, so I decided to follow in my forefathers footsteps and try to make my own. First I had to find a pig. Luckily there was already a dead and dismembered one at Rudi's (“The Swiss Butcher”), and so instead of all that killing and skinning all I had to do was buy a bag of fat.

Mmmm, pig fat!

Then I took the fat home, cut it up into little pieces and put it in a pot to render. Unfortunately,
this was exactly the time that Zesco, the local power utility, decided to cut the power in our neighbourhood! What to do with that pot full of slightly warm pieces of fat (other than get out a fork and dig in)? Well, the Zambian way is to pull out the brazier, fill it with charcoal, light it up and render away, which is exactly what I did.

The cooking apparatus, much like the pioneers used

It worked out really well, actually. All the smelly cooking happened outdoors, and the fire was good and hot, and in no time we had a pot full of lard and some cracklings to snack on later.

All I had to do was stir the pot

This is what it looked like while it was cooking

The result - almost 1Kg. of pure goodness

The final product will surely go into a yummy pie, just like Oma used to make.

Bon Appetit!