Thrift Store Cooking

Cheryl can come up with some crazy ideas sometimes. Even though she has dark brown hair, I am convinced that she must have blonde roots.

The other day I was watching a DVD of the Lucile Ball show from the seventies, and for the first time in over 18 years, I finally realized why, when I met Cheryl, I had a strong feeling like we had met before. Those two women have a lot in common! Allow me to give you an example.

Cheryl picked up a book at the thrift store the other day that was some kind of a healthy eating / healthy cooking / wellness / try not to die of unnatural causes thing or something. Whatever its purpose for existing, it caught her eye and she brought it home.
Sometime during the night Cheryl comes to me with a very excited look in her eyes, and she begins to share with me some of her newly found information on a better way of life; a healthy life that for some ungodly reason would involve lard. Yes…lard.

Seems that frying, anything, in the home is an unhealthy proposition unless you choose to use liquified pig fat. Look, I’ve never even seen lard before this little revelation; and I am pretty sure that the reason we as a society have ceased to fry food with the “liquid of the swine,” is because someone came up with a better idea!

Well that kind of logic does not get me very far with my little angel, especially when I am contending with information she receives from a book found in the thrift store; so yours truly took a pilgrimage to the local grocer to see if one can even buy the stuff nowadays.

I went into the store and made my way down the aisle that was marked “oil,” you know…the better option. Much to my dismay, there at the bottom of the shelf, I found the promise of a long and healthy life contained in a blue can, with bold yellow letters, simply marked…LARD.

That night I began to cook dinner which would include french fries. I grabbed the lard, spooned it into my pot, and turned on the heat to melt the awful stuff. Cheryl had not gotten home yet, and I was pretty excited to show her that I was making an effort to bring validation to some of her craziness. As the pig juice began to melt…it began to stink…like a melting dead pig…seriously!

The stench filled up the house within seconds, and the children came running into the kitchen to find out what in the world I was doing! My answer? “Cooking some fries with lard, I said.” Would you like to know their reply? “We aren’t eating anything that smells like that!”

Then my sweet little wife walked in the door. The minute she walked into the house the smell hit her. She runs into the kitchen and looks at me like I’m the bad guy! Then she proceeds to interrogate me as to what in the world I might be doing to the house and her precious innocent children.

I explained to her that I was simply following her “thrift store book instructions” to a healthier life, and cooking “dem fries in da lard for de cherrins,” as we say it in Louisiana.

After removing the pot from the kitchen, and airing out the house for a few hours, it was agreed that from now on, we would cook with vegetable oil…so be it! Cheryl decided that this experience pretty much disqualified any other suggestions that the book might have to offer our family, and returned the book to the store.

So yesterday Cheryl comes up to me and said, “You’re never going to guess what happened!” Evidently, one of her good friends, who volunteers in the thrift store, found this book on the shelf and read it. Yep! You can probably figure out what happened next! She went to the store, bought some lard, and fried some chicken with it! Her poor husband and children are expected to make a full recovery…and the book is back at the thrift store…leave it there.
Jason, father of six