In the can

He was in my dreams last night, uninvited, but certainly welcome, as it has been too many years since I have seen him. He looked relaxed and happy, relieved of the suffering that plagued the last years of his life, and clearly enjoying the sweet monologue of Little One, the grandchild who barely remembers him, as he held hands with my mother, who was uncharacteristically silent, not making any comments about why I was tying gingerbread ornaments on the cello teacher's laurel hedge. I still haven't figured out the ornaments (perhaps because we are headed into the holidays?) and the hedge (the cello teacher's house doesn't have one), but I welcome visits from those who have passed over the rainbow bridge, and am comforted to know that I will still be able to visit every now and then after I have made that journey.

So, it seemed a perfectly normal thing to do, making pancakes for the boys' breakfast on this crisp autumn morning. It was, after all, my father who taught me to make pancakes on a morning similar to this, to use bacon grease in the cast iron pan from freshly cooked bacon and the can for that perfectly golden edge.

Yes, I did say can. You see, my parents came from a time where no one could afford to waste, and one of the things that is still present in my mother's home is an old tin can next to the stove with bacon grease in it. The heavy cast iron pan lived on the stove (never made it into the cupboard), and the hot grease was poured straight into the can, to be used for pancakes and any other dish that might need a bit of grease to preserve the cast iron's cure and add a bit of flavor.

At some point, I realized I was using olive oil by the case, but was having to add back the odd bit of bacon or prosciutto to flavor the base of whatever pot-au-feu was bubbling on the flames. At some point, I caught myself pouring bacon grease into the food waste container (our municipality composts food waste, including the grease that would attract too many rodents to our cool heap), and stopped dead in my tracks.

How could I lament industrial processes like refining flour that take out the good and then have to put chemically extracted vitamins as artificial, if I was essentially doing the same thing to my own coq au vin? I set down the hot pan, rummaged through the recycle bin for a tin can (looks like Number One had chili for lunch--again) and poured the grease in there instead.

As a child, my parents had bacon for breakfast nearly every day, so the can filled faster than it could be emptied. In our household, where bacon is a weekend affair, the can never empties all the way, but it never seems to get very full either. I'd like to think my father would smile at that as well.