I love bacon. I love everything about it, from the smokey flavor to the crunch, to the little pieces of fat that have not totally rendered out during cooking. Everything about it is wonderful, but I've noticed a somewhat unhealthy (pardon the pun) obsession with bacon in the past few years.
First, let me offer some background. Bacon is cured pork belly, that is typically cut into strips and fried. It is stripped with lots of tasty, delicious fat, but what used to simply accompany eggs on breakfast plates or sit between to bread slices with lettuce and tomato has now found its way into every product imaginable. Some of this is good. I've eaten a bacon, maple cupcake before and liked it very much. Have you ever taken a piece of bacon and raked it through some leftover syrup after eating pancakes or waffles. It tasted sort of like that and that salty, smokey flavor actually played very nicely off the sweetness of the cupcake. I don't know that I'd be able to think of anything positive to say about bacon cologne, though. Did you know that there is a wide array of "bacon fragrances" on the market? This isn't one little company making bacon-scented body spray as a novelty, there are a dozen or more pork-scented perfumes, colognes, deodorants and aftershaves. Here again, the smell of bacon cooking is wonderful, mainly because it is an indication that I will get to eat bacon sometime in the very near future. I don't want to spray myself down with this stuff and have people assume they're going to get to eat me later on. I also don't know how much of a turn-on this stuff would be to the opposite sex. I'm not in the business of dispensing relationship or dating advice, but trust me fellows, you are SO not picking up ladies if you smell like bacon. "What is that I smell?" I imagine a lady on a first blind date with a gentleman saying. "Is it bacon? I thought you said you were a lawyer. You must work at IHOP or something, you liar!" "No, I am a lawyer. That's my bacon-scented body lotion. Do you like that? Does that turn you on?" the hapless guy would respond before making some off-color pork jokes and being slapped. There may be a woman turned on by the smell of smoke and hog squeezins, but I've not met her...and probably wouldn't want to. If you really want to smell like bacon, though, you don't have to pay for some expensive cologne. You could just rub some bacon grease on yourself. Both of my grandmothers used to keep a big coffee cup of it sitting on their ovens for cooking purposes. It never once occurred to me to grab a handful and slap it on my neck. Anyway, if you think a dab of bacon behind the ear is just a little bit too subtle, you're in luck, because also available for purchase now are bacon breath mints, toothpaste and dental floss. Yes, your dream of having a mouth that smells like smoke and meat can now be realized. Now, I'm certainly not telling anyone how to live their life, do their job or handle their oral hygiene, but I thought the point of brushing and flossing your teeth and using breath mints was so your breath WOULD NOT smell like the food you just ate. "Whoa, somebody ate a lot of bacon for breakfast!" "Nope, had a bowl of Apple Jacks...but thanks for noticing cutie." Probably not a conversation that has ever taken place. They make bacon-scented air freshener...which is a contradiction in terms, frankly. Making the air smell like meat is not really the definition of "freshening" in at all. Bacon scented candles emit a smell I do enjoy, but they would also be maddening. As mentioned earlier, the pleasant smell of bacon frying in the kitchen is most pleasant because it means I'm going to get to eat some bacon. I can't eat a candle...can you even imagine the unfortunate and probably painful means by which that would leave your body? On that note, you can get bacon-scented toilet paper now...I am not making this up. There are other, uh, items that apparently taste like bacon. You know what, no need to spell everything out for you. Look it up if you want to. Well, bacon-scented things may be an ill fit in most situations, you might say, but surely there is value in things that taste like bacon, right? Well, as I mentioned, a piece of actual, real bacon is one of the more sublime things a person can consume. It works surprisingly well with sweet things, giving a nice salty/sweet contrast. That cupcake I ate had real bacon in it, though and sadly, "bacon flavored" often means something tastes like liquid smoke or heavy salt instead of actual bacon. That's a generalization, though, since I haven't tried all of them. For example, I've never had Baconnaise, which is mayonnaise that purports to taste like bacon. Maybe the stuff is good, who knows, but I think I would just want my mayonnaise to taste like mayonnaise. If I wanted the delicious taste of bacon on a sandwich or burger then I would FRY A FLIPPIN' PIECE OF BACON and put it on there along with the mayonnaise-flavored mayonnaise. On the plus side, I'm sure mayonnaise that is infused with the taste hog belly is at least healthy and good for you. Seriously, how did bacon get to be the "it" product of the minute? How did it get to be the thing everyone wants to be able to eat, drink (did I mentioned the bacon-flavored soft drink?) and smell like? What if we'd anointed chitlins as the pork product of choice? Well, I guess I understand people not wanting to smell like something that poop has to be washed out of before cooking, but you see my point. I'm not attacking bacon at all or the people who love it. I just don't get it. Bacon certainly has its place in life...but that place is on my plate, not on my toothbrush, in my armpit or swirling in my commode.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
Categories |