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.

A perfect storm

Every Wednesday morning, Mama Duck drags me out of bed to help her make breakfast, usually from a chicken egg (though once I used duck eggs, not hers). This morning, cool and clear, came far too early, punctuated by visits from the Tooth Fairy and a perambulating Little One, as well as my new phone reminding me that I forgot to turn off the reminder alarm.

It was me who had to drag Mama Duck from her nest this morning, to make pancakes, since that’s what needs to be used up. Bacon was also on the menu for the same reason, as well as the fact that it would be positively un-American to not have bacon with pancakes. And this is an election year.

There is a Russian proverb that says that you always have to throw out the first pancake, so I nearly always plan on it. But this morning was different. Perhaps it was Mama Duck’s gentle coaching, perhaps I’m just better than I think I am, but there were no dud pancakes. And the bacon came out, well, perfectly.

We’ve been watching the weather forecast for Dublin intently, noting the differences and the sameness; today is the first day that the three day forecast includes a day that we will see there. Met Éireann, the Irish national weather service, is predicting a fair day, with a bit of sun and 66 degrees, about as good as it gets. This is a good thing, as Hanna (not our Hannah, but the one that pummeled the Gulf) has followed the jet stream all the way to Dublin, and is getting the last drops out of her system as I write.

We are down to one pot of soup for tonight, and snacks for the plane tomorrow. The adventure begins, on a full tummy of a full American breakfast.