Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

This is the gourmet equipment from my mother’s kitchen–garlic salt and an old coffee can she kept full of bacon fat.

My mother’s recipe for hamburgers:

Go to Boy’s Market and chat with neighbors while waiting for Mr. Boy to grind up some beef.
Pay for groceries by saying “charge it, please” before heading home.
Put some bacon grease in the huge black skillet to melt.
Pass out bites of raw hamburger to any children or dogs hanging out in the kitchen. (Kids get a shake of garlic salt on their meat, but dogs don’t.)
Put some garlic salt into each patty and a whole bunch more on top.
Sear burgers top and bottom in pan–serve when meat inside is hot but still dark red.

I love all the extra choices I have now for cooking. (Cilantro! Szechuan bean curd! Miso soup!) But the real secrets of cooking I learned from my mother–who had 4 tricks to make anything taste better:

• Add a pinch of sugar.
• Add a teaspoon of salt.
• Mix in a tablespoon of butter or cream.
• Do all the above

Of course, all these things are now known to be very, very bad. And I’m a good girl, so I rarely do them. Some day, though, modern medicine will change its mind again, as it has so often before. Mmmmm, bacon fat as health food. I can hardly wait.