Last Sunday I had the distinct pleasure of driving through some heavy rain for one hundred miles from Frankfort, Illinois to Covert Michigan. The low hanging dark grey clouds and the pouring rain combined with some heavy traffic slowed down the trip. Lovely and I were attending my family reunion. It doesn’t happen every year, but my older brother decided he may not be here next year to organize another, so he invited everyone to his place in Michigan for a good old fashioned Hungarian bacon fry. He is guaranteed a crowd if only his five kids come with their kids, and grandkids. It gets bigger if our sister and her three boys come with their clans, and even bigger if I come with my three kids and their families. We didn’t have perfect attendance, but there was enough of a mix from all three families to make it a great visit. The rain stopped about ten miles from our destination, but the grey sky lingered.
The bacon fry is a family tradition founded by my parents when we were still little. Although it is not recommended by the American Heart Association, we do. It begins with a square of bacon preferably taken from a hog’s jowl. The bacon is skewered onto a long stick and held over a very hot wood fire. Naturally, the grease begins to drip from the bacon into the flames. Sitting on the ground next to the fryer-person is a plate of freshly sliced old world rye bread covered with diced onions and tomatoes. When the bacon is running, the fryer swings the rod off the fire and holds it over the bread to capture the drippings. The fryer, this year was not my brother, but his Irish son-in-law Kevin. Brother Bill told him that since he’s been in the family for twenty-five years he was now qualified to spin the bacon.
When the plate full of bread is soaked in hot bacon grease, a fresh one is placed before the fryer while one of the girls walks the finished plate around offering scrumptious greasy bread to the guests. It takes a while to make enough of the recipe to satisfy everyone’s palate. For those who consider the greasy bread just an appetizer there is also grilled, bratwurst, hot dogs, and a cooker full of Szekely Goulash (Shepard’s Stew slow cooked with cubed pork in sauerkraut, garlic, Bell peppers, and onions), along with number of salads. For me the afternoon turned into a non-stop eating fest.
We spent the time dodging occasional droplets of rain and catching up on the families. Most of my brother’s family came the day before and set up tents to sleep in. The children played lawn games while the adults mostly gabbed away.
The drive home was a pleasure since the rain had stopped, and since the following day was Labor Day, the Sunday night traffic was extremely light. By the time we pulled into our drive there was no evidence of rain at all, and the sun was beginning to burst through the clouds in rays of light just in time for sunset.
Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, Food | Tagged: Shepard's Stew, Szekely Goulash | Leave a comment »
