I remember helping my mother in the kitchen as a kid. She baked a fair amount, which — in the 1970s — meant that there was always a large can of vegetable shortening in the pantry. Seeing a can of Crisco always makes me think of my mom, and pie crusts, and sometimes biscuits.
That is, until today.
Because today, in a blogpost critiquing recent obituaries for singer-songwriter and poet Rod McKuen, I came across this:
And read this sentence:
In the 1970s, Crisco — a vegetable shortening — was practically synonymous with gay sex as gay men used Crisco as an anal lubricant.
I may never look at a biscuit the same way again.
* * *
Or at Rod McKuen either, who — according to Gillian Frank’s discussion — was far more interesting and activist than I had ever realized. I feel like I should spend today listening to some of McKuen’s music, to make up for roping him into my own private Remembrance of Pie Crusts Past so soon after his death.
[Crisco image via]
This one was never on the cards when I played Trivial Pursuit. 😉
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Ooh! Well, lemme see if I can get you prepped for other Crisco-related facts, should it ever turn up on Trivial Pursuit! Which it no doubt will some day. (It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a commercial product in possession of a long-standing brand, must be in want of tie-in marketing. I’m just sayin’…)
On Facebook — where all my contacts seemed well-versed in *this* particular use of Crisco — people have quite helpfully been offering me (and one another!) a number of other Crisco-related facts:
~ the formula was changed in 2007 to legally qualify as having 0 grams of trans fats.
~ which is good, because the transfat-free version they produced from 2004-7 had a tendency to turn blue in the can shortly after opening.
~ Crisco is highly flammable and can, in case of a power outage, be turned into a handy-dandy light source.
~ Or possibly burn down your house.
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Quite possibly. I knew this. But then again, I’m hardly a representative sample.
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See, I just KNEW everybody knew about this but me!
Damn. And this has everything I pay attention to, too: sex, cooking, and cleverly referential pop culture artifacts. I have absolutely no excuse…
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I used Crisco until I stopped doing much baking. Oh dear.
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Your “Oh dear”? Made me LOL harder than any other comment I’ve gotten on this post, here or elsewhere!
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My Mom still uses Crisco. Is this an album cover?
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Yup. From 1977.
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