I’ve heard the ladies – you know — the old women with eyes like ash who still want to tell you things – talk about smearing Crisco over their dry skin in the winter because it’s cheaper than lotion. I haven’t tried it on my elbows and feet but it works well on chapped lips. I won’t use the butter flavor because that just seems wrong. The good thing about Crisco is that doesn’t get hard like most balms and it’s basically tasteless. It’s pure gloss, slippery and fine for me. I’m not a lipstick kind-of-a-girl (though I thought I was one once) and also Crisco doesn’t smell like fake cherries or menthol. The only thing is, is that it wears off quickly so you’ve got to keep putting it on. But a can of Crisco seems to last a long time no matter what you do with it. Some people use it for their piecrusts and bread but others say that lard is much better. I’ve never put lard on my lips so I can’t tell you how it compares.
All that fuss about a perfect piecrust has never made much sense to me. I only care about what it’s holding – the lemon meringue, the pumpkin or the chocolate cream. My own crusts have never been flaky or anything to brag about and I think that they’re a pain to make anyway – ice water, pastry cutters, rolling pins, and egg-washed lattice tops, crimped edges... Usually I just cheat and buy the pre-made ones that come two to a box. Nobody’s ever complained to me about my pies, at least, not to my face.
Anyway, back in Wisconsin, we always had a bucket of lard that we kept in the basement refrigerator. We bought it direct from the local Oscar Mayer processing plant. Boy, the smell that came out of those smokestacks was decidedly pig and was particularly poignant on winter days when the crystal-clear prickly cold, froze your nose hairs. My father, Paul (I’ve never called him ‘dad’ — we’ve always been on a first-name basis) he always used lard – never Crisco — for baking bread on Saturday nights. He made white bread and kneaded it by counting out loud although sometimes it sounded more like a hiss. Baking was his form of relaxation, therapy or mediation or whatever, but he’d never say that. I think it was in the late ‘70’s that he first started mixing in whole-wheat flour. Because I remember that it was after he quit smoking Pall-Malls and drinking jug wine, and instead, took to collecting the scrap wood and the trash he’d find alongside the road when he went out for his walks. He’s always been impressed with the amount of recyclables that people throw out of their car windows.
Paul would never let us near his fresh baked bread until it cooled down enough to slice properly. Otherwise we’d squash it, he said, and ruin that golden shiny crust on those lopsided, top-heavy loaves. When it was ready, he’d cut with a steel blade knife – you know the kind that rusts? Most people don’t even have one of those anymore because they’re hard to keep up but they sure do sharpen up nice. Anyhow – he’d slather butter on each steaming slice but it wouldn’t melt all the way because butter left out in a winter kitchen never gets soft enough. We drizzled honey over ours but Paul liked his plain with butter, or butter and salt and together we’d eat the whole loaf. And that was ok because he always made at least two, and sometimes four loaves, depending on how hard – or stressful — his week had been.
originally broadcast on Feb. 2, 2005
