ah yeah... lard with shredded garlic through it is pretty good too

but to be honest, the main thing that is good about lard is it's like butter, but a little softer, very easy to use as spread on bread

you can't do this with beef dripping, it's too waxy at room temp, and sheep and goat dripping is borderline

i tried to make some "beard wax" based on olive oil and cacao butter but it also has this stearate-hardness problem in common with beef dripping... after noticing that a jar i made of this actually was reasonably soft at room temp i may have to try again with a bit more olive oil to get that spreadable consistency, ideally, while stored in a refrigerator for freshness

i'm going to buy a few kilograms of proper beef dripping soon... cacao butter is about to become unobtanium due to the drough next door in west africa... to be honest, the smell of cacao butter is a little offputting, but the benefits are indubitable... in The Apocalypse of Yajnavalkya it makes reference to some dude who went on a diet of just croissants covered in pure 100% cacao, and had a massive improvement in his health

i can't begin to overemphasise enough: high stearate, and saturated fats, are the primary fuel of a human body, they literally are so critical that you almost don't need to get anything else right