My Turn: Forgoing the vice of bacon
There's much to be said about a preoccupation with peanut butter, a staple of the school lunches of yore. Credit: Newsday, 2011 / J. Conrad Williams Jr.
During the relatively tranquil days of pre-World War II Corona, Queens, a wide variety of lovingly prepared foods graced the tables of Italian-American immigrants. Despite the limitations imposed by the Great Depression, most families dined reasonably well, thanks to a remarkable degree of culinary ingenuity.
But bacon, known as lardon, was not a significant staple. Moreover, the butcher shop warned that pork must be well cooked before it's eaten.
Though bacon was not a favored flavor for my mother, she reveled in her regular ham sandwich on white bread, complete with a quarter inch of white fat that lovingly surrounded the cured meat. "Mama," I'd chastise her, "this stuff is so bad for you." She'd retort, "I know, but it tastes so good." She also savored the chopped beef she'd down raw. "But General Eisenhower eats it that way," she would defensively argue. (Mama made it to age 82.)
Proud of my new moral eating habits, I had just begun to forsake the glowing yellow bacon fat in which I used to fry my delectable eggs. But I can't recall whether the term "cholesterol" was yet in our vocabulary. (In later years, I was dutifully appalled, yet amused, when Marie, Ray Barone's mother in "Everybody Loves Raymond," jealously guarded her jar of the brightly colored artery-clogging drippings.)
Now, fast-forward to post-World War II Brentwood, with a household containing as many as seven children. Not surprisingly, bacon was seldom seen there, nor was yellow cheese.
But during their teen years, some of my children staunchly rejected the more healthful white cheese over their favored yellow variety. "Is milk yellow?" I'd smugly ask, secure in my dairy wisdom.
They would reluctantly concede the point, but years later, they could take refuge in their obviously superior grasp of technology. (It must be admitted, however, that in that regard, they were much more modest and tactful than their dad had probably been about eating healthier.)
The children did watch with some degree of interest as Dad meticulously and thoroughly separated all the inner fat from the lean portions of the chuck steak -- our sole variety of steak in those days. Porterhouse and filet mignon were necessarily unknown in our household of that era. Where lunch sandwiches were concerned, the BLT (bacon, lettuce, tomato) was also unknown. Peanut butter and jelly or tuna salad sandwiches were frequently found in their lunchboxes.
This must read like ancient history. Today's world of technology is not the sole concept that escapes me. I fail to comprehend much of the food trends so prevalent today.
I remain faithful to my preoccupation with peanut butter, which I still relish.
I probably won't be the last surviving veteran of World War II, but who can fault me for hoping?
Ralph A. Romero, Stony Brook
