Of all the crappy things I eat, bacon is probably the crappiest. Thankfully, I eat it only rarely, but if you were to put a pound of cooked bacon in front of me, I would eat a pound of cooked bacon and ask for more.
But since I want to live long enough to watch my kid grow up, it's better to wax nostalgic on previous bacon encounters than to accrue new ones.
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How can something so good be so bad?
On Sunday mornings, my dad and I used to drive down to the car wash and then over to the bagel store. We'd pick up fresh bagels, and sometimes smoked fish, and usually, by the time we got home, my mom had bacon going on the stove (OK, not terribly jewy, but...). The smell of fresh-baked bagels and bacon frying reminds me of a warm house with fogged windows and good food. It's a comfortable smell of my childhood.
When I was a kid teaching canoeing up in Ontario, I used to take some of the advanced students on early morning cookouts. We would get up as the mist was was just lifting, get in our cedar-strip canoes, and paddle to one of the islands in the middle of the lake. The kids would collect wood and show me they could make a fire. Then I would take out a loaf of fresh-baked bread and hand each kid a couple of pieces and show them how to bite a hole in the middle.
Then I fried up a mess o' bacon. Lots. Each kid would give me their bread and I'd set it in the pan full of grease and drop an egg in the hole. The smell of bacon, sweat, and woodsmoke is a smell of the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Now, as someone who may or may not be middle-aged, I still love bacon, but I will be content to keep the memories and associations I have and keep the bacon to a minimum.
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Battle stations! http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=5563
Wait? are the pro-baconites the oppressors or the oppressed? Because either way, our side has bacon.
Does sci count at accomodationist if I say I love bacon but hate chocolate covered bacon? Or that I prefer my bacon in moderation?
I'm a bad science blog follower. I...don't like bacon. Never have much cared for it. I do, however, enjoy a good episode of waxing nostalgic over food and the memories it brings up.
I KNEW there was an advantage to not having kids! Thanks for pointing it out.
Now I need to go cook a giant pan of Wisconsin bacon.
So I can put it in a cheddar cheese sandwich.
Grilled.
In butter and parmesan.
Bacon abstinence is easy once you realize that it's just a fat-based carrier for all of the chemicals added by curing it: smoke, sugars, salt, etc.
When you get down to it, it smells wonderful. Hold your nose and it tastes like salty grease.
It follows that you can fry up bacon while eating something reasonable and then feed the bacon to the dog, with general improvements for all concerned.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Not at all. However, there are healthier greases than lard so it's possible to substitute, or cut back on the grease content, or moderate the salt (or substitute KCl for NaCl as I do) etc.
Oh my, I do love bacon. And really good, crisp-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside french fries. Too bad I can't eat them very often.
Then there's the ...
Which I'm considering trying in a couple of years when I turn forty. After spending the remainder of my third decade racking up many thousands of miles on my bike.
sorry.. I had an html fail. I tried to link to the Bacon Brittle on Chocolate Pie recipe:
http://scienceblogs.com/pontiff/2009/03/spicy_pi_bacon_squared.php
Just saying "bacon brittle" out loud sounds dirty.
Thanks for the memories, Pal!
Back in the day, we'd camp out in the orchard, and in the morning make nests (what we called fried bread with an egg in the middle).
The smell of frying bacon in a warm kitchen before going duck hunting, dove hunting, or skiing is also a treasured memory. My Uncle Joe was a bacon master.
Now I have bacon maybe a couple of times a year. Somehow that's enough. But always bacon for breakfast on the first ski day of the year.
Heritic! Next, you will say that you do not like Monthy Python.
On a breakfast tangent, I thought of your stories of mornings with your daughter when I came across this.
http://www.jimspancakes.com/
I urgently need to lose about 20% body weight, so I asked for salad for dinner last night. It was delicious, due to the pound of fried bacon on top (not to mention the half pound of cheese). I don't know if my wife just loves me or tries to sabotage my diet ;).
mmmmm bacon! [Drool] [/HomerSimpson]