The Sad Story of Jack Sprat

What a horrible tale. It’s almost unimaginable. Fat is everywhere, and it is wonderful. Granted, it needs to be good fat, and prepared well, as I very clearly remember a time in my childhood when I would eat around the fatty bits of a steak or a lamb chop because they were too chewy.

Tough gristly fat is not the good fat. The good fat is the buttery, juicy, delicate bits that add flavor and an unctuous texture to otherwise toothsome meat.

Now addiction is a weighted word. I think I prefer compulsion. But clearly, whatever you want to call it, I’ve got it. And this active effort to stay away from what doctors call “the bad stuff” has just been fueling my desire for what I know to be “the good stuff.” Even in this week where I’m giving up bread, pasta, beer, and pizza, my thoughts and longings drift elsewhere.

Come and take a peek into my own little private torture chamber.

On all other nights we usually don’t eat meat. Why on last Saturday night did we eat two kinds of meat? For our seder we served both Nature’s Place rotisserie chicken from Hannaford and Capital Q’s barbecue brisket.

Over the past few years, Capital Q has become the default brisket for my family gatherings, and over time I’ve learned how to order it best. This last time I hit the nail on the head when I asked for “A two pound piece, unsliced, preferably with an end attached if possible.”

By leaving it unsliced, you both reduce the chances it will dry out in transit, and make it easier to reheat if necessary. A whole brisket is very festive, but that’s a lot of food.

Mrs. Fussy did the honors and sliced the brisket for the meal. She did an admirable job, but there on the cutting board, looking right up at me, was a silky piece of beef fat covered with smoky bark that she had left behind. My arms wanted to reach out, my fingers wanted to grasp it, and almost every fiber of my being wanted that delicious discarded piece of fat in my mouth.

Amazingly, that night I was able to walk away.

I was also able to carve the chicken, with its cracker crisp skin and succulent fatty dark meat, and once again avoid my favorite parts of the bird. I did not dig out the oyster from its back. I skipped the skin covered wings and the juicy thigh. That night must have been a Passover miracle because in the face of all that deliciousness I removed the skin from my chicken breast, and ate it dutifully.

Leftover brisket has proved to be challenging, but I’ve found a good compromise that sacrifices my children’s health in lieu of my own. Each slice of brisket contains a good bit of fat. So I tear off the delicious, buttery, flavorful fatty bits and feed them to Little Miss Fussy. She gets a little meat with her fat, and I get the little bit of meat that remains.

Either I’m the father of the year or CPS is on its way. I have no idea.

Sadly, I no longer keep duck fat on hand either, and my potatoes are suffering for it. But don’t feel too badly. I still have four different olive oils, peanut oil, safflower oil and toasted sesame oil on hand. So I’m not entirely without options. And my new favorite snack is freshly made organic popcorn cooked in expeller-pressed safflower oil, doused in XV first cold pressed olive oil and kosher salt.

But the whole avoiding bad-fat thing totally collapsed around me on a recent trip to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. I thought about this meal long and hard. I was going to be good. I was going to get the half chicken, and I was going to eat the breast and remove the skin. I had a plan. It was a very familiar plan that I had practiced many times before.

Yet somehow when confronted with that plate of food, the plan flew out the window.

I dove in right for the wing. Then the drumstick. Then the thigh. I thought skin wouldn’t be a problem, because occasionally when birds are smoked their skin gets dry, tough and unappealing. But this bird was finished on the grill, so its skin was crisp and delicious. Uh oh. I even found the oyster and ate that too.

And I don’t regret a thing. All that was left was the breast of chicken I was supposed to eat in the first place. In an attempt at moderation, I neither ate that nor its final piece of skin. Soon, I’ll get back on the wagon. Or maybe I’ll decide to run adjacent to the wagon, and get some much-needed exercise.

Because staying away from animal fat is really freaking hard. That stuff is just so good.

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