I Love Bacon!

No, in all seriousness, I really love bacon. From the fields that cover the hills and the animals that graze on it to the all the unwed mothers, Iowa is an undoubtedly fertile place.
Where this really makes a difference is the quality of the meat. My uncle has been staying here as he's fixing up the house and loves it. "These steaks were mooing yesterday!" he'd say as we'd grill up animal flesh enough for he and I and his lucky dogs.

I've always eaten plenty of meat myself, so I've been making out like a bandit. Other than the occasional indulgence of bacon on a sandwich, I didn't eat much of the swine until I got to Iowa. I joked to my Dad that I had eaten every part of the pig since I've been in Shenandoah from the rooter to the tooter, although I did eat scrapple growing up, so the full rooter to tooter precedent may have been set in Delaware.

Bacon is truly magical. It is the main reason people say, "It must be bad for you if it tastes good" because nothing tastes quite as good as it is bad for you as bacon. Bacon is next to impossible to screw up making as long as it gets cooked all the way through; if it isn't, then(unless my mother has lied to me) it's unspeakably dangerous. This was the reason she cooked it until the only difference between the meat and fat was the residual color left after any other characteristic had been burned off.

Even though burned to a cinder bacon is still worth the price of admission to me, I like it a bit more raw, so just the fat curls up, like it senses it's own preciousness and wants to make the trip to mouth just that bit shorter. Just let the skillet have it's way enough to change it from dangerous to delicious, THEN GIVE IT TO ME!

O.K., AFTER YOU PUT IT ON THE PAPER TOWEL TO DRAIN OFF THE SCALDING HOT GREASE!

Put the bacon on the stove and watch it sweat it's golden greasy goodness. It's one of the only foods, along with grapefruit, that employs it's own defense system when you try to enjoy it. The grapefruit is armed with a juice squirt that always seems to hit the eye no matter where you put your spoon, while the the strips of bacon bubbles up pork napalm shooting from the frying pan with unpredictable power.

Bacon is what truly separates from heart of hearts vegetarian from the meat eater with the guilty conscience that became vegetarian. The properly prepared portabello mushroom can be a somewhat satisfying steak facsimile, but bacon is often what that subgroup of vegetarians miss most of all meat, regardless how many "Gluten Strips" they might have.

The canine contingent of the house always close by me and my uncle during any phase of food preparation, consumption and disposal. But they stay a reverent distance away when bacon's cooking, at least I like thinking it's reverence, it's probably just because they know their worst case scenario is to get the greasy golden goodness of what's left drizzled over their kibble.

They can't bring themselves to think about the REAL worst-case, that my uncle and I are felled by the massive amount of bacon grease we've been ingesting before we can get to the drizzle ritual.

I Love Bacon!