Thank you for lurking and finding information that you can use, you are welcome to join in, any time, it was never planned to be a granny doing all the posting site.
Your background sounds like mine, a dirt sharecroppers farm in Texas.
Do some research on Teflon skillets and pans, they now accept that they are not good for you.
The Parrot breeders knew 30 plus years ago, that all your birds would die, if you forgot a teflon skillet on the stove and let it burn up.
I always figured that anything that was instant death to a parrot, would not be good for me........
LOL, I never figured out where all those chemicals went when you scratched the pan.
Lard, there are some things that just do not taste like they should, without lard or bacon drippings........fried potatoes and lard to make crisp Peanut butter cookies.
Nor, do I make gravy [milk] without bacon drippings.
At times, I am tempted to laugh, so many who a few years ago, thought I was too old fashioned, now want to know how to “Make do”....it had to come, if we could get the young to learn the old ways, they would not need all those credit cards.
We went to town when and if a crop went in and shopped for the year, maybe a trip or two in between, and I still do not understand how people do so much shopping, every day.
I too could wring a chicken’s neck and cook it, by about 10 years old, but will admit that I hate the smell of wet feathers and raw chicken and eggs.
It is a good day, when people learn something new, for me at least.
I preferred the hatchet - they would bleed out on their own in that few seconds of running and flopping around that they do, which made the gutting & cleaning easier (plus it left more usable neck meat and we used it). We dipped them in a boiling pot then plucked most of the feathers and singed off the little downy ones with a blow torch, but those parts of the operation don't smell so great I agree.
There's nothing like a fresh cracked corn fed southern fried or broasted chicken though. Whatever they feed them at the commercial chicken growers around here (probably full of artificial hormones and antibiotics) makes them nice and big, but not as tasty. When I buy chicken at the supermarket I go for the southern grown birds. They taste better and they are cheaper - but they are not as fresh and I also feel the need to wash them off extra good before I do anything with them.