That’s not from the lost cooking chapter in Orwell’s 1984 it came from a conversation with a relative of mine.
She’s from a small farm/ranch town in an unspecified northern state and in some ways is untouched by the modern world. We were talking about cooking during her recent visit and she said that she often accidentally threw out frying pans in the trash, which caused great friction with her husband. She explained that she drained the grease out with the pan upside down on the trash and sometimes forgot about it. I figured that everyone is entitled to an absent minded moment now and again so I suggested she use less grease when cooking or at least drain it into a crock or coffee can while still hot to avoid clogging the drain. She replied that she did already did save her bacon grease because her husband said it’s the healthiest kind.
It took me a second to realize she wasn’t kidding me. I was flabbergasted. I realize her family is from “beef country” (her husband runs a feed lot) but I found it hard to believe that anyone could call large daily doses of saturated fat healthy.
Part of it I can understand because both my parents came from ranch families. When I was growing up beef was on nearly every dinner plate and if you had steak less than once a week something was wrong. Times change, at least in my part of the world. In other places I’d be branded a communist for eating chicken more than once a month and probably get the chair for serving a vegetarian meal.
