Bacon and a Year without Summer

Photo credit: pofta-buna.com
I’m placing the thickly sliced uncured bacon in the pan and, when it begins to sizzle, the marvelous aroma fills the house. It is a memory from my childhood when Grandma Elena would render bacon fat into lard in her tiny kitchen. It was a preservative for chunks of pork she would seal with wax in glass jars that would feed us for an entire year. It was stored in the cellar, the dank, damp, and constantly cool place. We did not need refrigerators and could not have afforded one anyway. Continue reading