Commentary by Geordon T. Howell

Like many young men, my diet consists of a disproportionately large amount of fatty foods.

During my college years, several of my courses included the trading of commodities in the curriculum. One of my favorite professors almost exclusively used sow bellies for his examples.

By the end of each lesson, all I could think about was mastering the quickest route to Wendy’s so I could silence my craving with a bacon cheeseburger. It can be guaranteed that if a food makes the bed of coals below the grill hiss and spit while cooking, or if you find it necessary to cover the stovetop skillet with a screen so that grease doesn’t coat everything within a five-foot radius, the upcoming meal is going to be delicious.

Following the preparation of a hearty, home-cooked, artery-clogging meal, there always seems to be that paper cup of gradually solidifying fat drained at some point during the process. What do you do with this cup of white gelatin?

Until about a year ago I did not know. I had always just drained the rendered fat because I grew up watching my mother and grandmother do the same thing and presumed the cooled mixture would be detrimental to the garbage disposal.

But then, standing in the back yard last winter, I looked at the square of store-bought bird suet in my hands and thought, “I can make this stuff for free.”

Thus, I was finally able to not only justify bacon on top of about everything, I also had a use for all the paper cups full of lard lying around that were ultimately destined for the garbage. Bird suet is basically fat and seed, two things that cost next to nothing, yet birdwatchers spend lots of money making sure their back yard visitors have plenty of the high-energy treat.

To the woodpeckers, chickadees, and nuthatches, a visit to the suet feeder in the morning is much like humans eating a steaming “stick to your ribs” meal before heading out to work in the cold. What I like most about making your own suet is that you can customize the ingredients to make the suet cake more appealing to certain kinds of birds.

The main ingredient of suet is, of course, fat, and if you are conscious about trying to save both the rendered fat and the fat trimmings from your steaks and pork chops, it does not take long to accumulate more than enough to prepare a couple of suet blocks (if you’re impatient, lard is always available for purchase).

To prepare suet, the first step is to render the fat to a liquid state in a saucepan or skillet on low heat. Once this is accomplished, you can add cornmeal, peanut butter, craisins, raisins, sunflower seeds, flour, regular bird seed, corn, dried fruits or oats; essentially anything birds like to eat. After a few trial runs you will soon find out which birds like certain ingredients and can create your own personal mixture to suit them.

When the concoction of melted fat and various foods is uniform in consistency, you can pour the warm mixture into a baking pan and let cool before cutting into squares. Or I have found the small containers in which some sliced deli meats are packaged work even better, with much less clean-up because each block cools to a feeder-ready size. In addition, the small containers are easy to stick in the freezer until they’re needed.

The only downside to homemade suet versus the blocks available at stores is that the suet you make in your kitchen should always be stored in the fridge, and its use is usually limited to the winter months because it can become rancid in warm weather.

Aside from this one limitation, which shouldn’t be an issue again until spring, homemade suet is hard to beat.

— Geordon T. Howell is outdoors columnist for the Daily News. He can be reached by e-mailing highbrasshowell@yahoo.com.