Sunday mornings, when I was a young child, often meant going to church. But even more religiously, it meant blueberry pancakes. The pancakes were from a box mix, quite likely Aunt Jemima, although I don't remember for sure. The blueberries, however, were local, hand-picked by our family from a small blueberry farm owned by one of my father's co-workers, Viv Merschon. Mr. Merschon lived in a delightful stone house that he built with his own hands, and always let us eat as many berries as we wished while we were picking.
Our syrup wasn't Aunt Jemima—we shunned commercial fake syrup like the plague—but it wasn't real maple syrup, either. Even living in Upstate New York, that was beyond our budget. We made our own syrup with white sugar, brown sugar, water, and Mapeleine (maple extract). My recollection of the process was to bring 1 cup water, 1 cup white sugar, and 2 cup brown sugar to a boil, and stir until the sugar was dissolved. Then add 1/4 teaspoon (or maybe 1/2) Mapeleine, stir well, and serve. To this day, although I almost always use pure maple syrup (preferring Grade B, which apparently doesn't exist anymore), this homemade syrup ranks higher than any store-bought substitute.
And of course there was bacon. We weren't much of a family for sausage; I've since come to like it a lot, but it will never take the place of bacon when it comes to eating pancakes. The same budget that closed the door to real maple syrup meant that bacon was rationed: three half-slices each. We never felt underprivileged, but happy to have bacon at all, and content to know what was our share.
I don't think it was thrift, per se, that made my mother save the grease that rendered out of the bacon. That was common practice in those days—why waste such a good source of fat and flavor? But that's a story for another post.
