Grease: It's More Than a Musical
by Karen Williams | August 31, 2006 - Seminole Chronicle
Let's face it, when a person fries hamburgers in a skillet, there's going to be grease involved. And I, for one, have no qualms about it.
Somewhere within the diabolically bad-for-your-health components of grease, there's surely a hidden enzyme without which life-as-we-know-it could only exist in a dried-up form. I don't get my knickers in a twist about trans fat and such, for medical science will probably reverse itself about its dangers one of these days anyhow. Remember the incredible, non-edible egg?
Thus I was surprised to see my feller, Mark, wasting paper towels recently, blotting grease from some hamburgers I had cooked.
"Unlike your skillet, my stomach isn't made of cast iron," Mark commented, as I stared with disapproval.
"Ha - you don't know the true meaning of grease," I retorted, proceeding to relate my experience when once a student in London.
A group from our college stayed at the home of a certain Mrs. Thomas, who used part of her brick house in Muswell Hill to accommodate visiting students. It was a no-frills situation, and over-use of the bathtub, as in once-a-day, was frowned upon. But Mrs. Thomas tried to caulk up any holes in our assessment by serving huge breakfasts.
Each morning there were eggs, sausage, bread, and tomatoes - all swimming in grease, for every bit of it was fried in fat in big skillets on Mrs. Thomas's "cooker."
The sight of it evoked horror in us girls in the group, as we kissed goodbye to aspirations of looking like Twiggy and understood why the British measured weight in "stones." We were going to be the size of boulders when Mrs. T. was done with us.
After a few days of these breakfasts, one guy in our group, Donnie, decided to give Mrs. Thomas a culinary message. Grabbing green paper napkins, one-by-one, from a napkin holder, he proceeded to sop up grease from two slices of fried bread that were sliding around on his plate. Donnie saturated napkin after napkin before leaving them wadded up in a big pile by the marmalade.
Mrs. Thomas seemed to get the message, for the next morning we were each greeted with a boiled egg in a little ceramic holder to go with our sausage, fried bread, and fried tomatoes.
But Mrs. Thomas wasn't the only source of bad cholesterol in London. For dinner, we students frequented a fish, chips and chicken restaurant up the street. Everything was apparently deep-fried in the same vat of grease, for the fish tasted like the chicken, the chicken tasted like the fish, and the chips tasted like both of them. And everything was dripping with more oil than the Exxon Valdez.
One night at ye olde restaurant, Donnie made another statement about English dining. He took the wax paper in which his "ficken" and chips had been wrapped, wadded it up in a soggy ball, and went outside to a round, red mailbox.
Therein, he deposited the greasy clump. No stamps. No return address. No nothing.
An English friend, who was with our group that night, became angry with Donnie.
"If you don't like our food, why don't you go back to 'Americar' and eat your hamburgers," he barked, saying the last word in a sing-songy, nasal way.
Of course, according to my feller, Mark, our hamburgers are greasy, too. But should a half-roll of Bounty, the quilted-picker-upper, be sacrificed as a result?
And I had better not see him headed anywhere near the post office.
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Copyright 2006, Karen Williams
