This has become a week to remember. Maybe not foriyou, but for me it’s been supreme.
Thursday I again received my Bacon of the Month gift. Longtime Jottings readers will remember our daughter Susan gave me a membership in the Bacon of the Month Club last Christmas. The GratefuliPalate, Oxnard, CA is the pusher.
In June I got four months? supply because of the summer heat, so for four months you’ve read nothing here (I don’t think) about bacon.
However, you could have if I didn’t think it might become boring. Some might have enjoyed reading about my gift to our 5-year-old grandchildren on their 5th birthday.
I gave each of them five slices of cooked bacon. They loved it and still mention it. The twins are given over to another caregiver during the week, whose family raised a half dozen pigs fori4-H.
They all had names. One day Dan, the hog, was missing. Our Trevor, 5, asked what happened to it. ‘It went to be butchered,? was the answer. To which Trevor said, ‘Boy, that will make a lot of bacon.?
Driving down a road one day, his sister, Savannah, 8, said to her mother, ‘I think I smell bacon.? Could this be a gene thing?
This week’s pound is Ozark Hickory Smoked Bacon byiHam I Am. Processed in Arkansas, sold in Texas, a co-owner started in 1986 selling out of the trunk of a Volkswagen Rabbit. In three years she was doing $100,000 a year.
The literature says the bacon consistently fries up crisp and stays that way. We’ll see.
Did I tell you Elvis Presley’s favorite sandwich, peanut butter and banana, was fried in bacon grease?
With each pound of bacon I receive there is a cartoon. This one has the owner of the house handing a strip of bacon to a trick-or-treater. Love it!
Jane and Michael Stern have the program on Public Radio, ‘The Splendid Table.? For Delta Airlines SKY magazine they wrote on a subjectiforiwhich I believe I’m extremely qualified – bacon.
In their article, ‘A mouthfuliof ecstasy? they reviewed the offerings of 11 sizzling sites. They did it from a different angle than I would. I would write only of toasted bacon/tomato sandwiches, their eateries had bacon as side attractions.
Thanks to Brad Jacobsen, a flower merchant who loves to cook, I have Delta’s bacon story. The opening is terrific:
‘Is there a come-hither perfume more alluring than the smell of bacon sizzling? Does any food taste as wickedly good? Sharply salty, haloed by smoke, laden with the luscious luxury of sweet pork and yet fragile as a wafer, bacon is a mouthfuliof ecstasy. Thick or thin, sugar-cured or applewood-smoked crimson lean or amber fat, alone on a plate or the star attraction in a BLT, bacon is beloved in all sorts of ways.?
Then they start with Markjoseph Steakhouse in New York with Canadian bacon. My Bacon of the Month Club would never include Canadian bacon. It’s un-American and in NYC it’s $2.25 a strip.
At the Burgervilles in Northwest US, dime-thin slices of bacon are put atop their $3.99 ham burger. Rawley’s Drive-in in Connecticut puts shredded cooked bacon on their hot dogs. That sounds good.
At Roseland Apizza in Naugatuck Valley good-size squares of bacon are put atop pizzas. If I’m ever in Santa Fe, New Mexico I might stop at The Compound or Inn of Anasazi. The former serves bacon with duck steak, the latter with French toast.
The Sterns write that the American South bacon is ‘so good it brought us to our knees.? It wouldn’t have that affection me.
Mamie’s Kitchen in Georgia and Waysider in Alabama serve bacon with oven-warm buttermilk biscuits, and brown gravy and biscuits.
If the biscuits are warm put butter on them, then pick the bacon strips up in the other hand and let ’em mix in your mouth.
I’m submitting my BLT survey to Northwest.