No Waste Cooking: The Pan From Cooking Bacon

After frying bacon and draining off most of the bacon fat, I allow the pan to cool then place it in the fridge until an evening when I'm sautéing green vegetables.

For my birthday breakfast last week, we had some bacon with fresh fruit. I saved the bacon grease in a small dish, leaving just a little fat still in the pan, maybe a table spoon. I kept this pan, unwashed for about 2 days in the fridge, until I wanted to sauté some broccoli. I used the bacon-crusted pan to do the broccoli. It was delicious, and made use of some flavoring that might have been washed down the drain.

Our favorite vegetables for cooking in bacon-crusted pans include fresh green beans, cabbage, broccoli, spinach, and frozen corn. After the initial quick sauté of about 30 seconds, I put a lid on the pan and allow to continue cooking, softening up the bacon crust as the vegetables finish cooking. The liquid naturally in the vegetables provides the moisture needed to create steam, preventing drying out. (Green beans tend to have a lower water content and tougher fibers. Adding 3 to 4 tablespoons of water to the frying pan just before putting the lid on the pan will provide all the moisture needed to create a good steam and reduce fibrousness.) The vegetables tenderize and complete cooking quickly. A sprinkling of salt and the veggies are ready for the table.

Not only does this use every last bit from frying bacon, but the steaming of veggies makes the pan easier to clean afterward. A double win!

What are your favorite no-waste cooking tips?

Rhubarb Cup: A Delightful Springtime Dessert from the 1940s

Our rhubarb is is growing by leaps and bounds each day. And I still had a bag of chopped rhubarb in the deep freeze from last season to use. Oops! Well, no time like the present to cook that up.

The other evening I made Rhubarb Cup, which is basically individual pre-cooked rhubarb compotes topped with a sweetened biscuit, each, and baked in custard cups. I used a scone dough recipe for the sweet biscuit topping. 

I had enough rhubarb that I could have baked a pie. But I thought I'd rather do cups with biscuit topping as biscuit dough is lower in fat than pie pastry, and I could incorporate some whole wheat flour in the biscuit dough, making this dessert slightly healthier than pie.

During WW2, opting for cobblers or crisps over making pies or cakes was a great way to spare precious butter (or other rationed fats) and sugar, and still produce a tasty dessert. My grandmother was raising 3 growing children during World War 2. Sunday dinner was the one time per week dessert was served. When butter went on ration around 1943 in the US, my grandmother, and other women at the time, had to shift gears when it came to cooking. Substitutions were made in recipes, and in some instances, certain types of recipes became more popular as they naturally used less of the rationed foods than others. Cobbler and crisps were types of desserts that grew in popularity for this reason.

My grandmother made "cups" as she called them, using whatever fresh fruit she could obtain and named it according to that fruit. "Cups" were baked as individual servings in custard cups, hence the name. They moved frequently for my grandfather's work. As a result, what was available changed from year to year. When they lived where peaches were abundant in summer, my grandmother made Peach Cup. When they moved to a place where wild blueberries were free for the picking in summer and apples came to the house in bushel baskets in the fall, she made Blueberry Cup or Apple Cup. When their family returned to Utah at the end of the war, my grandmother had access to her father's large and well-tended garden, which included several rhubarb plants. Rhubarb Cup made its way to the weekly menu in spring.

When I went to make something with my frozen rhubarb, I remembered my grandmother and her fruit dessert "cups." In that moment, a Rhubarb Cup sounded so appealing. My grandmother took the time to use a biscuit cutter to make neat little circles of dough to top each serving. I took the easy way out and made wedges of dough cut from a round. They tasted delicious, and my family devoured them. I think I'll make more cup desserts this season as a way to use some of our abundant garden fruit. 

Does nostalgia prompt you to cook or bake particular dishes? Do you have a memory of something your grandmother cooked or baked that you like to make now?