Thoughts on Bacon

Just last week I encountered the web site which features Bacon Salt and Baconnaise. I did not know before that these products were available locally. Saturday, while enjoying a wine tasting at Cost Plus World Market, I was excited to learn that they stock the salt--so I picked one up, at $3.99 along with a bottle of Pinot Noir, on sale for $6.99, which we had tasted--and had a name which reminded me of a special someone that I gave birth to.

 If there are products that make everything taste like bacon, what a world it would be! Who doesn't like bacon?

Bacon is tasty stuff, and funny, too. Comedians have milked the bacon jokes to death. Jim Gaffigan, who has a long bit on bacon, claims that the success of Kevin Bacon is tied to his name!

The husband used to entertain the children with an imitation of bacon frying in a pan, starting with little jerking body parts and working up to a full-blown whole-body shake. Wish I had a video--I'd have it played at his funeral to make everyone "laugh a little"--as my mother used to say.

Anyway, I was excited to try the bacon salt. My enthusiasm dampened as I read the label. It has no calories and is vegan--how can it possibly taste good?

I was right. It adds a saltiness and smokiness to eggs, salads and a few other things that I've tried it on so far, but does it make everything taste like bacon? Hardly. Of course, it was too good to be true.

Can everything really be enhanced by bacon?

With all due respect to "the pig-ness of the pig," which I learned was important from Joel Salatin's lecture last January, do we really need more products (another cocktail, for instance) that tastes like bacon? And if we say something is bacon-flavored, should it not have real bacon in it? Let bacon be bacon, let a pig be a pig and let me eat bacon like a pig! And no tof-iggy, either.

Only in heaven can we possibly imagine that something would have no calories, no fat, no carbs, no animal products, no cholesterol and taste like bacon!--served on brimming platters that never run out, like the miracle of the widow's flour and oil--and never rationed, as in the usual two thin strips alongside eggs and toast.

My older brother raised hogs for many years and even went whole hog once, roasting one of his own on a spit operated by his lawnmower tractor in his backyard. He loves bacon, too. I think the only thing that excited him about a Lake Michigan cruise off Navy Pier in Chicago which I persuaded everyone to take with me for my 60th birthday family reunion (thanks everyone--great pictures!) was the fact that the cruise included a brunch with an unending supply of bacon! I wonder how many slices he had.

I am still hopeful that the Baconnaise will be more satisfying...