Canning a Greasy Tradition
George Foreman’s Lean Mean Grilling Machine sings health and convenience. Between its Teflon coated jaws sizzles a chicken breast – a breast no thicker than a deck of cards – and within minutes its pale pink flesh morphs into a doctor-approved piece of protein. I taunt two slices of cholesterol-free, dark bread with a pat of Smart Balance margarine, dribble a few drops of olive oil over a sliced tomato and spritz it with balsamic vinegar. Dribble and spritz is my latest, minimalist approach to salad dressing. For dessert I pick key lime Yoplait, which carries the Bestlife dot com seal of approval. I know Mr. Bestlife is one of Oprah’s friends and product validation is all the rage. To add a touch of fizz to my routine, I open a can of diet soda. My lunch is ready.
After I came to America at the age of 25, it took a few years to banish my cravings for potatoes fried crisp in bacon grease. I missed the curdled, peppered blood that oozed from a sausage when you poked it with the tines of a fork. Over time I taught my taste buds to accept Spam and corn on the cob and the bland all-time favorite of American children: macaroni and cheese. Eventually we all learned about the dangers of cholesterol-rich and vitamin-poor meals. The effects of sugar gained attention. Salt became the enemy. I’m not sure it all went in the right direction, but I know that most modern meals point away from my German childhood favorites.
I remember the wild side of my grandmother’s kitchen. Sparks flew when she poked a dying fire with an iron rod. Onion rings danced in a pan of hot grease and sent their greeting throughout the house on the wings of steam and smoke. A black cast iron stew pot blew bubbles that exploded and scorched my arm when I lifted the lid. Oma fried brains, kidneys, livers, tough to chew gizzards. She boiled pigs’ feet, Sauerkraut, red cabbage, and soups that lasted for days. I always ran to obey her orders.
“Pull up some carrots and snip a few sprigs of parsley.”
“Set the table for supper.”
“We need buttermilk. Go. Don’t dawdle. The store closes in a few minutes.”
One of the most used items in our kitchen was a blue and gray stoneware pot. It sat on the cabinet right next to the stove. With a big wide-bladed knife Oma cut thick slices from a slab of bacon, cubed and fried them until they crumbled into bits and swam in their own transparent liquid. She poured it all in the blue and gray pot where it cooled and solidified. A smooth layer of fat, replenished weekly, treasured almost as much as the barrel of Sauerkraut in the cellar. Every morning she covered a huge slice of dark bread with a thick layer of bacon grease, salted it and covered it with a second slice. That was lunch during my grade school years.
My mother was a less intense kitchen master than my grandmother. She preferred reading to cooking and she was often too busy in my stepfather’s photo shop to spend much time on preparing meals. But she inherited my grandmother’s grease pot and she continued to make my favorite lunch. When I was teased by my high school classmates in the city about my “poor country girl’s taste buds,” she reassured me.
“Don’t pay attention to them,” she said, “Your great-grandfather ate bacon grease sandwiches every evening with his apple wine. He was a good, strong man.”
Years later, when I was married and fried bacon for breakfast, I sometimes let the leftover fat sit until I could spread it on a slice of bread. But all my efforts to interest my children in it failed. America was in love with Wonderbread and peanut butter while they grew up.
“Disgusting,” I heard my daughter say when I stuck a knife into the grease.
My son bent over the pan and sniffed. “Yuk!”
My mother-in-law drained her bacon on paper toweling and discarded the fat. My husband ate mustard and mayonnaise and bologna sandwiches.
I didn’t own a blue and gray pot. My grease hid in a coffee can behind a jug of cool-aid and a pickle jar in the refrigerator. It was too gross to be left out on the counter, I was told. A once thriving tradition turned into solitary, occasional indulgence and would eventually be banned from my life as an artery clogging health hazard.
When my granddaughter was six or seven, I told her about my childhood lunch favorite while she sucked in a piece of spaghetti. She nodded and gave me a blank stare. “Whatever, Grandma,” she seemed to say.
Since I retired I spend more time analyzing foods than cooking them. Doctor’s orders. Bacon grease hadn’t entered my mind for years, until last September, when I spent a month in Germany. One weekend I attended a Medieval Festival in Heidelberg. University Square was crowded with knights in armor and maidens in costumes. Cobble-stoned Main Street thronged with pork-munching, mead-guzzling Germanic tribal life. On the sidewalk musicians, storytellers, pig roasters, and candy makers vied for attention. As I squeezed through a split in the crowd I suddenly stood in front of a stall that offered Schmalzbrot. I hadn’t seen the German word for bacon grease sandwich in more than 40 years. Was I dreaming?
“Schmalzbrot – 1.00 Euro”
My face must have shown delight when I ordered a piece.
“That’s what we ate when we were children, didn’t we?” The saleswoman’s laugh jiggled her body under the sackcloth apron. Her voice beamed with knowing.
I pulled out my camera and zoomed in on the single slice in front of me. While I bit into the dark bread and let the salted bacon grease tease my palate, my grandmother’s kitchen came back to me. I was happy, the way a child is happy. I watched Oma hold a loaf of bread against her chest, cutting into it with her big knife. I saw her dip the tip of the knife into the blue and gray stoneware pot by the stove. I might even have heard her say something like,
“You want another slice?”
I smiled at my medieval hostess and shook my head, “No thanks. One’s enough.”
