Stay-at-Home Dad Survival Guide

Bacon Grease - Part 3

Sunday, 07 February 2010 00:50

You can fry onion and garlic in bacon grease - add just about anything - and make something awesome (and usually it's edible). Sometimes I’ll just start frying without any clear idea what I’m gonna do, and just roll with it.

Yesterday, I had a plan. For damn near a week, a pan of bacon grease had been beggin’ for my Jammin’ Clam and Salmon Ciapino.This is it:

Fry two chopped onions and too much garlic in congealed pig fat, transfer to a cauldron (muggles use any big pot), deglaze frying pan with dry white wine, or sweet white wine, or red wine, oh, hell you can deglaze with just about anything, but yesterday I found a cheap jug of white wine and it worked fine. Indeed that wine has many skills.

Add two cans chopped tomatoes, one can tomato sauce, two cans chopped clams (with juice), two cans of salmon (deboned or boned, oddly enough debone and bone mean the same thing, well, sometimes). Drink some white wine.

Pour the frying pan wine/bacon juices into the cauldron. Stir. Drink white wine.

Season to taste. I added pepper, salt, chili powder, crushed red pepper, Italian seasonings…I think that was just about it. Then I had some white wine.

Let simmer for 5 or 6 hours, stirring occasionally; drinking, more or less constantly. Serve with rice or corn bread.

It’s simple yet upgradeable. You can use fresh crab or salmon or shrimp and season with organic basil and fancy stuff like that, but for sheer frugality, making a bunch of food for little money, the above is hard to beat.

Just remember to refrigerate the leftovers. Otherwise you’re gonna have to throw out a big batch of stinky fish stew the next day because you got stupid-loaded, passed out, and forgot to put it away.

My Little Drunk Buddy

Sunday, 31 January 2010 01:50

Some call it "parenting."

It feels like shepherding a friend in the middle of a bad bender.

He’s ecstatic, laughing, happy to see you. But he’s moody. One thing goes wrong and he throws a bottle at you. He keeps ‘em stashed all over the house; grabs ‘em, sucks ‘em dry and flings ‘em to the ground in disgust. He’s a two-year-old in “The Lost Weekend.” He bumps into walls. Falls on the floor. Stairs are terrifying. You watch him like a hawk for fear he’ll damage himself.

Yet, a guy's gotta pee. Just be gone a moment, right? You’re alone. He’s alone. It’s quiet. Too quiet. Panic strikes. You rush out of the bathroom unbuttoned, stumbling, only to find him happily rolling on the floor making goo-goo eyes at the cat.

It’s like he’s perpetually stoned. He’ll dig random bits of food out of the trash. When he’s hungry, and he’s always hungry, or at least always putting crap in his mouth, he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants. He's relentlessly self-destructive.

At times he shows amazing promise. He opens the door, walks outside, takes a look at the sunshine, and smiles like it’s the first day of the rest of his life. He’ll turn things around and amount to something great some day. Then, in an instant, he's shrieking, “Bottle! Bottle!!” and is inconsolable until he gets one. He thrusts it into his mouth and drinks greedily as if he’ll never drink again.

So here I am: nanny, mentor, food-feeder, diaper-changer, putter-to-sleeper. The sober friend of a pathetically intoxicated 30-pound staggering ball of terror. His favorite game is Sit-on-the-Cat. He eats soup with his hands, then runs his fingers through his hair. If you leave the seat up, the toilet becomes a self-service baptismal font. All dogs belong to him. In short, he’s like every other toddler on the planet.

Yesterday, I took two minutes to check email, during which time he found a bag of peanuts. Slobbery shells, crushed nut particles, paper-thin brown peanut coverings littered the room and him. I stood trying to recall how many times - in books, classes, and in conversations with more diligent parents - the word “peanut” was used in conjunction with the words “choking hazard."

Over and over, I think to myself, “I can do this better.” Then I think, “If I spend another month pulling his hands out of his own feces, I’m gonna go bonkers.” The months go by fast, though. It’s the individual minutes and hours that seem to take forever. Ah, yes, good times. Hanging with my little drunk buddy. Er, I mean “parenting.”

What to do with a pan of bacon grease: Part 2

Thursday, 28 January 2010 18:31

It seems my first post about bacon grease touched a nerve (or an artery). Apparently, not everyone looks at a cast-iron pan of congealed pig fat and thinks, "Mmm...that could be the start of something delicious." That's a shame.

Bacon gets all the glory. "Bacon makes everything better," say the t-shirts. Yet, the remnants get discarded, cast aside into an old milk carton, their magical powers untapped.

I get it, though. Moderation and all that. So, Part 2 is a recipe that includes only a fraction of that pan of grease. The Bacon-Fried Cheeseburger.

Step 1: Fry bacon. This can be done immediately prior or days before final preparation.

Step 2: Burgers. Take a pound of hamburger, add an egg, salt, pepper, Worcestshire sauce and bread crumbs (crumbling bread works, btw, if you don't have a neatly-packaged silo of crumbs). Goo it all together until it holds it's shape, then split into four patties (or two, y'know, if you're feeling particularly piggy).

Step 3: (Pay attention, here comes the moderation) Scrape away some of the bacon grease. I mean, if you want.

Step 4: Fry the burgers in heated grease, flip, add cheese, cover to melt (optional: add bacon). 

For extra points carmelize onions in the amalgam of beef and bacon grease remaining in the pan. Condiment to your (struggling) heart's content.

Note: This is, of course, a winter recipe. If it's BBQ weather, all bets are off. No one should fry burgers if they can be cooked on the grill.

Stay tuned for Part 3 when we begin to explore the wondrous things a pan of congealed pig fat can do for soups and stews.

What to do with a pan of bacon grease: Part 1 in a 345-part series

Wednesday, 27 January 2010 02:06

So you made bacon, maybe it was this morning, maybe it was yesterday (hell, it could have been some time last week), but you haven't cleaned the frying pan. You're thinking, Mmm...congealed pig fat, crusty bits floating in a sea of white/gray goo all atop a tasty cast-iron ocean floor begging to be trawled for flavor. I can't let this go to waste.

I've been there. Was just there. And this is what I did.

I boiled about 8 potatoes until they were forkable, mashed 'em with 3/4 of a stick of butter, drizzled some half & half, sprinkled salt and pepper.

Warmed that lovely pan of bacon grease, added too much garlic, and a chopped head of cabbage, let it fry awhile, threw in half a stale beer and some chicken broth then covered until flaccid (the cabbage). About 15 minutes.

Combined potatoes and cabbage.

Kind of like colcannon.

Part 2 coming soon. If my arteries hold out.