Tallow Was Not the Plan

I started with bees. The tallow came later, from a problem and a friend.

The problem: my hands were always cracked from pulling frames. The friend: a rancher down the road who couldn't sell what wasn't going into ground beef. She offered me a freezer's worth of clean fat. I rendered it down on a Saturday at 200 degrees for six hours, whipped it slow with a little olive oil, and rubbed it on my hands that night.

The cracks were gone in three days. I made a second batch for my sister. Then her friends asked. Then strangers asked. So now there are tins on the shelf, next to the honey, and Kobe is the one with cracked hands when we're behind.

The same standard applies to both. Two ingredients in the tallow. Hand-strained, single-source, low-temp rendered. If I can't explain it in one sentence, it doesn't go in the tin.