Bacon Brown Sugar Squash

I'm not turning the blog into a full fledged "Food Blog", but I loved to cook long before the "Food Channel". My Mom is Chinese and my Dad is Arkansan so it made for an interesting cuisine in our house. My Mom is an intuitive cook, I don't recall anything bad she ever made, including Arkansan food. I learned to cook intuitively from her and rarely measure anything so I usually have to guess at portions when giving a recipe.

My Mom and I lived with my paternal grandparents for a summer while my Dad did sea duty. She learned to cook Arkansan and showed my Grandmother some tricks herself. I recall my Grandmother getting up at 4:30 to start breakfast. Home made biscuits, pork chops, bacon, eggs, pan fried potatoes, white toast made from Rainbow Bread and home made plum and pear preserves. There was always a quart mason jar of bacon grease on the back of the stove that got used to prepare various dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner and was replenished each morning. The other staple was a can of Crisco in the cupboard. I don't recall ever seeing a bottle of "oil". My Grandparents both lived well past 80 and probably never touched an ounce of olive or canola oil in their life.

One of my favorite childhood dishes was, and still is, bacon brown sugar yellow squash.

This has converted vegans to bacon drippings and "EWWWWW SQUASH!" kids to vegetables.
It is the perfect blend of vegetable and animal.

So here you go:

4-6 medium yellow crook-neck squash sliced into half-inch discs.
Boil the squash for about 3-4 minutes or until just barely getting tender.
Drain in a collander and let as much water drain out as possible.

Prepare a skillet (I ALWAYS use cast iron to cook). Get it hot (high heat) so a drop of water dances in it. Throw about a tablespoon of bacon grease into the pan (if liquid, if you keep in the refrigerator a slightly mounded teaspoon will do).

Pour the squash into the frying pan and spread it out. Let it fry for a while then flip it over with a spatula. Keep the heat high.

Add some sea salt (a couple sprinkles), about 2 good tablespoons of brown sugar, a teaspoon of coarse ground black pepper and a heaping tablespoon of butter. Stir it up. Keep cooking on high heat.

There will usually be a lot of liquid from the squash. A lot of it will evaporate while cooking. Once the squash is done (soft but not total mush, even though it is still good as squash mush), you can remove the squash and reduce the liquid on high heat (boiling and stirring) until it is syrupy then add the squash back in. You can leave the squash in the pan and just let the liquid boil off but the squash gets cooked more and mushier. Either way, you don't want to pour off the liquid, it has all your flavor in it.

If I leave one "food legacy" to the world, I think this would be the one I'd opt for.
Enjoy!