Since we had our first SNOW today, I decided to play inside and make Suet for my Winter Bird Friends.
Diana’s Suet Mix
2 Cups Oatmeal
2 Cups Cornmeal
1 Cup Flour
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Cup melted lard (bacon grease, bear fat, real lard)
1 Cup Peanut Butter (crunchy or plain)
In a big bowl, mix all ingredients, together. It takes a little muscle power. Mix should hold together firmly, about the consistency of Chocolate Chip Cookie dough.
Using a cookie scoop or tablespoon, put scoops of the mixture on foil-lined cookie sheets. One recipe fills two standard cookie sheets; makes 20 per sheet. Press them down and out so they’re about 2” wide. Put in the freezer until frozen, then put individual pieces into a zip lock bag.
A standard square suet cage holds 4-6 of the pieces, per fill. If you’ve been saving those square containers that purchased suet comes in, you can also press the suet mix into those and freeze.
My birds LOVE this stuff! It takes them about 5 days to eat a commercial suet cake; the homemade is gone within the day, once word gets out. ;) I alternate between purchased and homemade, depending upon how much lard I have on hand. I also always ask my family to buy me ‘birding supplies’ for Christmas, so I get suet cakes that way, too.