Sometimes old logic works just as well as new gadgets.

My mom was not a fancy cook, just good-filling food to feed a farm family. Lots of it came from a large garden, preserved with love. Other things were just simple – pancakes for dinner, for instance, a meatless meal but one we kids thought was great. Breakfast for dinner is so popular now!

Here are 3 things I learned to do watching my mom.

Making and using a grease spoon

A simple way to easily grease a skillet or griddle – those pancakes for instance. Mom used an old spoon and a piece of cotton fabric secured to the spoon bowl or in my case, a dishcloth tied to the end of a paint stick. The first few times it is used, it will need to be dipped into melted shortening, butter, or bacon grease. After a while, the cloth becomes soaked and needs only new grease added every few times it is used.

For pancakes, just run it over the hot pan—a cast iron griddle in my case—and the pan will have a thin film of grease to prevent sticking and add some browning to the food. It will not cause a sticky buildup like cooking sprays. A quick rinse of my pan, and I’m done.

Using ice cubes to collect grease off drippings

Back on the farm, there were no fancy gadgets like fat separators to remove the grease from meat drippings, most often used to make gravy. My mom’s simple method was to pour the drippings into a cold skillet, add a bunch of ice cubes – and wait a couple minutes. The ice cubes quickly cool the liquids, and the fat comes to the surface and congeals with the ice. The remaining ice and conceal fat can easily be scooped out with a large slotted spoon, and viola! Nearly fat free drippings to be used for gravy.

Make gravy by stirring in a cornstarch slurry and seasonings of your choice.

Soften Hard Brown Sugar with a Slice of bread

Who doesn’t end up with hard brown sugar at some point. Don’t worry, it’s not hopeless and you don’t have to discard it!

Brown sugar is just plain white sugar with molasses added (you can even make your own in a pinch). When it gets really hard in a big lump, don’t throw it away, and you don’t have to grate it to use it. Although this hack needs to work overnight, by morning, you’ll have soft, fluffy brown sugar again.

Just add a slice of bread to your sugar container. Any kind of bread. White. Whole wheat. A roll. Store bought or homemade. All you need is the moisture of the bread (don’t use stale bread) to permeate through the sugar. It will take at a few hours, or overnight, to get your soft sugar back. So plan in advance if your baking needs soft brown sugar to pack into a cup. And store brown sugar in an air-tight container. I like the Oxo pop top containers; a too large container with a lot of empty air space will cause sugar to go hard faster, so use one appropriate for your sugar needs.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. While my mom’s hacks are not life-changing, they are helpful. She used what she had when she needed it. She had no fancy equipment; she only had the basics in our farmhouse kitchen.

And the food was often the stuff of dreams. I still can’t make gravy like she did.