I don’t know where the time has gone.  I think I’m spending it in all the usual ways: work, showering, updating The Val Kilmer Project, sleep.  But then I wake up early-ish on a Saturday morning and realize that I haven’t read my friends’ blogs in a minute, and I wonder what the fuck is going on because that’s only my favorite thing to do on the Internet.

Normally when I wake up early-ish on Saturday mornings, I use the time to write.  I make coffee, sit at the dining room table, and start making stories.  Sometimes this works and I don’t look up until one in the afternoon because I’ve been so wrapped up in a story that I didn’t realize my house smells overwhelmingly of cat pee and I still haven’t purchased any fresh litter.  Sometimes it doesn’t, and I end up contemplating punching myself in the head because nothing is coming out right.

But I have never been a masochist, so instead of self-abuse, I start reading blogs.  For a long time, I had nothing to read.  No one I knew was saying anything.  Realistically, I knew their lives had become busy, important, and just basically elsewhere, but for awhile, going back to the same blogs with no updates for so long was like a kind of rejection.  And my body knows rejection.  It senses rejection on a cellular level and conditions itself to avoid the rejection almost subconsciously.  (So hey, all you boys who stopped calling me {including at least two who later claimed it was a test to see if I’d call them}: if you ever wondered why I disappeared so quietly, this is it.  It’s a biological survival tactic.  I have no control, and I lost your numbers on purpose.)

Anyway.  This morning I went back to Robin’s blog for the first time in like ever, and thankfully, there was a lot to catch up on.

OHMYGOD, Robin, how do you not understand the bacon fat jar?

Maybe it’s a Midwestern thing.  Growing up, everyone I knew had a bacon fat jar.  It was just a castoff jar in the back of the fridge that was full of bacon fat drippings.  When you made bacon, you’d get out the jar and drain off the excess fat into it.  Once the fat cooled a little bit, the jar went back into the fridge.

Sometimes you used the bacon fat, which, by the way, keeps indefinitely.  It’s like butter, only made of meat (did you just have a sex moment, because I did).  Bacon fat is an excellent lube for browning onions and other vegetables (not so much garlic, as the low smoke point can cause it to burn quickly) for chili or soups.  It’s a great starter for pan drippings when you roast chicken or potatoes.  I mean, without animal fat, how do you fry stuff?  Olive oil is all well and good for sauté, but frying?  Like real, honest, I’mma give you mouth orgasms frying?  Fat.  Without question.

Some people didn’t use the bacon fat, though.  Which is fine.  These people also made frozen vegetables out of the bag and pre-made pasta things with powdered cheese.  Their bacon fat jars were ways to keep the bacon fat in a semi-solid state so that it could be thrown away.  Not a bad idea, actually.  Word of advice: dumping liquid bacon fat down the sink is a bad idea.  It clings to all the other gunk down there and is a bitch to clean out, at which point your landlords should charge you a fuckload because you’re a dumbass who’s ruining their plumbing.  Also, hot bacon grease poured into the trash is akin to pouring acid in there.  It eats through whatever is in inside – partially cooking it at the same time, thanks to the temperature, which I guess is a good thing if you find meaty garbage aroma appealing – including the trash bag.  Do you want to clean stinky bacon grease from the inside of your trash can?  I don’t.  Best keep a bacon fat jar and store that shit until you can toss it, like a self-contained grease bomb, into the garbage.

The point is that the bacon fat jar is a key component of every kitchen.  I keep my bacon fat in an old Senorita Merz salsa jar.  It’s on the top shelf, in the back, behind the box of baking soda (what, you don’t do that, either?!?!) and in front of an old Tupperware container of soup from like a year ago that I’m just going to have to throw away instead of wash because I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I kept it in there for so long.