Bluebird Banquet Recipe

I tried this homemade recipe for the first time this year and our bluebirds love it. It was developed by someone at the University of Minnesota (I think) who did a lot of experimenting.  Peanut hearts are available at Agway.  We rendered our own suet as describe below. The birds like the cracklings too. Present the food on a platform feeder.

MIX
1 cup peanut butter
4 cups yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached or whole-wheat flour

ADD:
1 cup fine sunflower seed chips
1 cup peanut hearts (or finely ground nuts)
1/2 – 1 cup Zante currants (or raisins cut in halves)

DRIZZLE and STIR IN: 1 cup rendered, melted suet. COOL
Resulting mix will be crumbly and should have bean/pea sized lumps from the drizzling of the melted suet. If too sticky after cooling, mix in a bit more flour. If too dry, drizzle in more melted suet. Refrigerate any mix you are not using – to prevent suet from turning rancid. You can use a commercial pure bird suet cake or you can render you own suet. To render suet, grind or cube butcher store suet. Melt over low heat. Watch carefully as suet is a fat and can start on fire with too high heat. A microwave can be used. Strain out the stringy bits (cracklings). Cool. Remelt a second time for the recipe.

Phil