On Grief, Seasoning Skillets, & the Comfort of a BLT

Summer 2019. I have a new cast-iron skillet, and it needs seasoning. “Bacon,” my friends said. “Cook lots and lots of bacon.”

At first, I resisted. I’m not a bacon kind of girl, I reasoned. We didn’t cook it at all when I was growing up—even in a tho…

Summer 2019. I have a new cast-iron skillet, and it needs seasoning. “Bacon,” my friends said. “Cook lots and lots of bacon.”

At first, I resisted. I’m not a bacon kind of girl, I reasoned. We didn’t cook it at all when I was growing up—even in a thoroughly assimilated Jewish household, pork was a bit foreign. Plus, bacon was too fatty for my parents’ liking, even before they stopped eating meat altogether. I ate a whole strip of bacon once as a child, and later that day had a stomachache; I fancied the two connected, and for years I insisted that bacon wasn’t for me. Even now, in my 30s, my tastes largely mirror what I grew up eating: I prefer olive oil to butter, and low-fat milk to whole.

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