Pork Fat Rules

O.k. Nobody freak out.


Tonight when deciding what we would have for dinner, Sebastian suggested hamburgers. I needed to go to the grocery store to pick up some produce for my infamous beef stew that I'm making tomorrow and I said, "Hey, do you want me to get some bacon? And we can make bacon & cheese burgers?"


Yes. I. did.


After Sebastian recovered from the shock, he promised me the moon and the stars (if I was serious) and if we could have bacon on our burgers. It was out there. I couldn't take it back. Just like when Harry told Sally that. Only my Harry didn't need to tell this Sally that- because When Harry Met Sally happens to be my all time favorite movie and I've seen it like a ga-zillion times...


Anyhoo. I bought bacon. And what do ya know, there is a certain finesse to the cooking of bacon that I was not aware of. Apparently, Neptune's third moon and Uranus need to be aligned... or you should not have the pan scorching hot.. and there seems to be a need for carefully watching it so that it doesn't burn.


When I finished, I had this. (see over there -------------->)


uh. Where did my money go? (see that. how I exchanged from the phrase "bring home the bacon" the money thing. I know.) But, where did my money go? because that is not what I put into the pan. It shrank. Considerably. And then the Foodnetwork folder in the filing cabinet in my brain clicked itself open and dictated it's contents.


I heard, "pork fat rules" (Lagasse et al. 1992)


So my little dilemma of what to do with all of this pork fat solved itself by serving as my oil to caramelize some onion and jalapeno that I intended to lie under the bacon. Yes, I did.

Yes. I did.


And then I needed to toast the buns. I won't degrade you by asking you to bother guessing what I brushed the buns with before putting them in the oven (pork fat).

It was good. REAL good. And though Sebastian and I may be having the Brackston hicks version of a myocardial infarction tonight, just know that we've got each other's back. We'll be tossing a bottle of tums back and forth to each other tonight-and we recognize that we may be doomed to eat oatmeal every morning for the rest of our married lives. But,

Experiment confirmed. Yes, Emeril. Pork fat does rule.

He had the beef burger, I had the chicken. NO laughing that we both also had a pile of spinach with all of our pork fat.