Bacon Grease Sandwiches

Have you ever eaten one?

What is a bacon grease sandwich, you ask? First, I should say that a bacon grease sandwich has no bacon on it. It only has bacon fat. When I was a kid a hundred years ago my mother used to make bacon grease sandwiches occasionally. Whenever she cooked bacon she would pour all the fat into a glass jar and put it into the refrigerator to congeal. To make a sandwich she would take one slice of light rye bread and then with a butter knife she would thickly spread congealed bacon fat over the bread then douse it with salt.

That is an open-faced bacon grease sandwich.

Were you nauseated by that description? Did you clutch your chest in anticipation of coronary problems? Or did you get hungry?

My mother was a child during the Great Depression. She experienced the horrors of World War II as a teenager. While she and her family celebrated when Hitler invaded her homeland of Czechoslovakia (they were German, not Czech) things got ever worse as the war progressed. Life became brutal. It was not long before food became very scarce — especially meat. Farmland turned into battlefields and everyone was fighting instead of tending the crops and farm animals.

My mother’s family was forced to scavenge for food — any food. On a few rare occasions they were able to procure some bacon. They would cook and eat it and save the fat to spread on bread on those occasions when they were able to find bread. For weeks at a time that bacon fat was the closest thing they had to meat.

And that is when she developed a fondness for bacon grease sandwiches. It is also when she developed a very strong lack mentality. In America in later years during the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies when she cooked for her husband (who also lived through the Great Depression and had his own mentality of scarcity and lack) and her four children, her number one priority in feeding her family was doing so at the very least possible monetary expense. She took frugality to extreme levels.

Notions of health and nutrition never entered her mind. She became an expert at feeding her family on pennies a day. She never bought any food unless it was on sale or unless she had coupons for it. When there was a really good sale on she would buy in bulk and hoard away food for some potential day when war might suddenly break out. (She hoarded money, too, although we kids did not know it at the time.) She shopped and cooked as though there was an economic depression going on but, of course, that depression was only in her mind.

So on those occasions when bacon went on sale at a good price she would splurge and buy some. And then afterward the family would eat bacon grease sandwiches.

And yes, I ate them. I was a growing boy. I would eat anything and everything placed before me. And I never got enough. Our mother doled out the food she prepared in very small, conservative portions and ‘seconds’ were not allowed and considered sinfully extravagant. I was always still hungry after finishing every meal that I ate.

And so I, too, developed a bit of a lack mentality. There was never enough and to want more was selfish. On my own as an adult I tried to shake this attitude of lack and sometimes I was successful, sometimes I overcompensated, and sometimes the lack would linger in the recesses of my thinking.

But once out of the house I never again ate bacon grease sandwiches. As a child I had no earthly idea that there was any connection whatsoever between the food we consumed and the health of our bodies. No one ever told me about that connection — certainly not my mother — and it was not taught in schools and at that time there was no mention of that connection in the media. The nationwide health craze had not yet started.

As an adult I became very passionate about food and cooking but I also learned that there was indeed a connection between the food we ate and the health of our bodies and minds. I started reading a lot about it and I eventually turned into a bit of a health nut.

It was in the Nineties that I gave up pork.

My giving up pork had nothing whatsoever to do with religion. It had nothing whatsoever to do with trichinosis. It had nothing to do with price or flavor preference.

The reasoning I used back then for my decision was DNA. I decided that for optimal health one should not eat something that has DNA that is similar to one’s own DNA.

That is one reason why cannabalism is discouraged. That is why we don’t eat chimpanzees or gorillas. That is why cows, when fed other cows, end up with mad cow disease. The more different the DNA of the food we eat is from our own DNA, the better. And, it turns out, that pig DNA is very close to human DNA. That is why pigs are used in medicine for transplants and such.

So I gave up all pork, including bacon. While the average American eats around 18 pounds of bacon a year I ate zero pounds. Pork is a 4+ billion dollar industry in America and the raising of pork is a serious contributor to environmental pollution. I decided I was not going to contribute to that. Most importantly, I felt that my decision would improve my health.

There is a story I read many years ago that has stuck in my noggin. It involves the famous American psychic Edgar Cayce. Some spiritual dignitaries were visiting him to pick his brain. He invited them to dinner at his home and for the meal his wife Gertrude cooked pork chops. The spiritual dignitaries were surprised. They asked Cayce how, as a psychic and spiritual leader, he could eat pork. All the great spiritual masters eschewed pork. Cayce stuck his fork into his pork chop and held it up, saying, ‘What kind of spiritual master would I be if I were incapable of transforming this pork chop into nourishment?’

About a month ago a friend of mine who gardens extensively gifted me with a big bag of organic heirloom tomatoes from her garden. She said that she had no many tomatoes that she just could not use them all. The bag had about 20 tomatoes in it and they were all huge and they were all fully ripe.

The difference between a home-grown, vine-ripened tomato and those red things at the grocery store labeled as tomatoes is vast. It’s like they are two different species. The tomatoes at the store are picked green then shipped across the world then shipped from warehouse to warehouse to store where they are gassed to get them to turn red. They taste like styrofoam.

I immediately ate one of those tomatoes in the bag. I did not eat it with anything. I just ate it by itself. I immediately entered a s state of tomato nirvana.

But then I realized that I still had 19 tomatoes that I needed to eat quickly while they were at their peak freshness. I immediately started thinking about all the many dishes I could prepare involving tomatoes. Every meal that I ate over the next week involved tomatoes somehow. Every meal was pure heaven but at the back of my mind was a particular tomato meal that I had not had in over twenty years.

A BLT!

Having given up pork, I had not eaten a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich since the Nineties! The more I thought about BLTs, the more I began to crave one. Soon, I could not stop thinking about them. With these incredibly tasty tomatoes on hand a BLT would never taste better. My memory kept telling me that the quality of the tomato is very important to the overall quality of a BLT.

So I broke down. I broke my own rule. I bought a package of bacon and I ate BLTs for lunch for four consecutive days! And I’m pretty sure they were the very best BLTs I’ve ever eaten in my life! I ate them in pure joy without any guilt or concerns about DNA or coronary health or anything other than culinary ecstasy. It was beyond wonderful! And I am sure that not having a BLT in almost a quarter of a century contributed to how much I enjoyed them. As with the heart, perhaps absence also makes the stomach grow fonder.

I probably won’t buy bacon again for years, if ever. I didn’t fall off the pig wagon to make bacon now a regular item on my shopping list. I ate it and I survived but I’m back on the wagon. Next September when the local tomatoes are ripe I may consider it again but not until then.

Yes, I ate bacon. But one thing I sure as heck did not do is save the fat drippings into a jar. Bacon grease sandwiches are out of the question for me.

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