We participated in the Change the World Wednesday (#ctww) challenge hosted by Reduce Footprints again this week. On the chopping block: paper towels. We’re not particularly paper towel dependent around here, having a plentiful supply of dish towels, sponges, and cloth napkins. The only real challenge I ran into was bacon. You know, the whole paper-towel-lined-plate-to-soak-up-the-grease thing. I couldn’t quite figure out how to get around it, since I didn’t much care for the idea of sticking in on a dish towel to degrease. So, I asked the Internet.
Most recommendations were to bake the bacon in the oven on a broiler pan, letting the juices simply drip through. Others suggested to let the bacon drip dry on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet. These are both excellent suggestions, but I needed to render the fat in the pan to use for cooking up some other ingredients. And the recipe instructed me to chop the bacon and then cook it, so I just couldn’t figure out a way to get small pieces to drain. Now, why it didn’t occur to me to just cook the bacon whole, drain it, and then chop it we’ll never know. But I didn’t and the whole house was anxiously awaiting dinner, so I caved and used paper towels. But only two.
Sigh. Bested by bacon.
Green Legume 
That is a tricky one. I don’t eat meat, but I do like to have a paper towel to blot if I fry polenta patties or chunks of tofu. I figure that I really only use paper towels for two things (cat vomit and blotting fried things), neither of which happens often. I think it’s okay to cut yourself a little slack. 🙂
I think you did great! If bacon is the only paper towel used … fabulous! That being said … I heard about another method that may work well … the splatter guard. It’s a fine enough mesh to keep oil from spraying up but if you put bacon, either whole or chopped up on top of it, the oil should drip through. Since it fits over a pan, that would also allow you to collect the drippings for further use. Someone else wrote to me to say that they keep a couple of towels specifically for blotting food.
I didn’t see this post early enough to get it into this week’s wrap-up but will, for sure, include it next week. Thanks so much! 🙂