Grease

Where does the grease come from?
As a reporter, I’m used to asking the tough questions. But I’ve never gotten a decent answer to that one.
I have covered many public school systems in my day. I am a product of a public school system. What links them all? Greasy spaghetti.
Where does the grease come from?
When I was a kid coming up, I lived for Spaghetti Day in the cafeteria. I thought the Lunch Ladies were magnificent magicians (also liked alliteration.) Let’s face it. Mom didn’t make it like that.
Grease…God’s Gift to humanity, right after fire, which, if you think about it, is needed to make grease.
Now, I’m an omnivore. That’s defined in my book as someone who’ll eat anything with bacon. You can put the arugula on the side with the lemon zest vinaigrette.
I know where grease comes from. I’ve cooked me some pig pieces before. It’s a natural by-product. Sometimes you want to throw out the meat and drink the grease. That’s the good stuff, anyway.
But in cooking spaghetti, I’ve never gotten grease. My own sister married into an Italian family and was taught how to cook by her Italian grandmother-in-law, who couldn’t speak English, but thought she could…
I digress. It was funny, though. Later.
Basic spaghetti: tomatoes or tomato sauce, mucho garlic, a bit of olive oil and spaghetti noodles, made from flour and eggs.
Where does the grease come from?
This is how the Lunch Ladies made magic (still like alliteration.) They can take vegetable matter and a protein and make it into something spectacular, if horribly fattening.
So I’ve come up with a theory ¬– only a theory. There is a Top Secret recipe kept under lock and key in a vault in a basement room of an unnamed mega-home in western North Carolina. Only Lunch Ladies have the key because, if the terrorists get it, the terrorists win.
So you may well ask where the grease comes from. But never, ever ask where it goes.