Archives for the 'This Week in Bacon' Category
This Week in Bacon
Most bacon lovers love bacon because it tastes so good. But who ever thought that you could use bacon for other purposes, like making a fashion statement? Apparently Jia Jem did, as she made a dress out of bacon and salami for an Aqua Teen Hunger Force birthday party the other day.
Yes, she actually used real meat:
I chose salami because it’s thin, keeps in one piece, and is quite cheap, and bacon because it looks very, um, meaty. I considered somehow vacuum-sealing sheets of meat with those sealers they have on the markets now, but the machines were too expensive for a one-time-only disposeable dress. I ended up using the K.I.S.S. method of construction, which involved a basic shift dress out of thick cotton. I layed the meat on top, then put clear vinyl over it and sewed tracks with clear thread. I used a wide stitch length to avoid perforating the meat to the point it might just… uh, slide down the bottom of the dress. I also blotted it all before sewing to get rid of as much grease as possible to avoid clouding the vinyl. Lastly, I made sure to bind the bottom of the dress with a strip of clear vinyl to catch drips. (I love talking about this; it’s so disgusting.) The whole project took about 6 hours, and I kept it refrigerated until the party. Good times.
[Via BoingBoing and Geekologie]
This Week in Bacon
The latest drinks to hit happy hour menus: the Bakon Mary and the Bakon Chocolate Martini, mixed with the finest (or only) bacon-flavored vodka. Black Rock Spirits of Seattle just recently launched “Bakon” vodka, made from Idaho potatoes:
Bakon Vodka is a superior quality potato vodka with a savory bacon flavor. It’s clean, crisp, and delicious. This is the only vodka you’ll ever want to use to make a Bloody Mary, and it’s a complementary element of both sweet and savory drinks.
Bakon Vodka is also a great Bar-B-Q companion. Use it in a marinade or sip it chilled with a steak. Check out our recipes section for more ideas.
[...]
We start with superior quality Idaho potatoes instead of the random mixed grains that make up most vodkas. Our vodka is column-distilled using a single heating process that doesn’t “bruise” the alcohol like the multiple heating cycles needed to make a typical pot-still vodka.
No tinge or burn on the tongue, no obnoxious smoky or chemical flavors, just a clean refreshing potato vodka with delicious savory bacon flavor.
In the words of the Bakon vodka creators: “Pure. Refreshing. Bacon.” Coming soon (hopefully really soon) to a bar near you.
This Week in Bacon
Today’s the day, bacon fans. Heather Lauer’s long-awaited paean to bacon–which she may have announced publicly the existence thereof for the first time right here at Crispy–is released today.
To write the book, Lauer, proprietor of Bacon Unwrapped, traveled the country to learn the story of bacon from the people who raise the pigs, serve up bacon, and create cutting-edge bacon dishes.
Order your copy of Bacon: A Love Story: A Salty Survey of Everybody’s Favorite Meat today. Kindle it here.
Congrats Heather!
This Week in Bacon
Following in Paris Hilton’s footsteps, Padma Lakshmi, host of Top Chef, now stars in her own Carl’s Jr. commercial. The commercial — a 24-second ad — promotes the Western Bacon Cheeseburger. Watch as pieces of mayonnaise and bacon bits strategically fall on random parts of her body, so that she can entice the viewers by subsequently licking them away, or as she puts it, getting rid of the “evidence.” NY Daily News reports that this commercial isn’t the only place Padma promotes the burger:
But the sultry star isn’t just indulging for the camera. In her own cookbook “Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet,” she credits the grab and go burger joint for awakening her from her vegetarian slumber as a teenager.
“The sublimely pleasurable taste of bacon … was further enhanced by its mingling with the barbeque sauce, greedily licked off as it dripped down my teenage fingers,” she wrote.
And I thought Padma and I had nothing in common . . . never underestimate the power of bacon to provide common ground between strangers.
This Week in Bacon
As someone who likes to think he has a bit of food-tattoo cred–I’ve had a steaming cup of coffee inked on my left arm for about 15 years–I’m still impressed by the image at right.
That’s a version of the BaconFreak.com logo tattooed on some pork-obsessed dude’s still-raw arm. At least I think it’s an arm.
More here.
In related news, for those of you who find Bacon Salt to be cool but lacking in, um, actual bacon, BaconFreak.com has you covered with their new line of bacon-flavored seasonings that are actually flavored with bacon.
This Week in Bacon
Here’s an idea for a competition, based on the popular turn-of-the-millenium game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. We all know the game, which posits that “any actor can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon.”
Well, my game, which I’m calling Three Degrees of Bacon, works as follows:
Any food can be linked to bacon, via a recipe published in print or online, by three or fewer degrees of separation.
Even with me halving the degrees of separation from the SDoKB, with the explosion of bacon-in-everything recipes, I’m thinking this shouldn’t be too difficult. Even stinky durian gets there in the requisite three steps, thanks to both it and bacon appearing in ice cream recipes. I invite you all to try to prove me wrong.
This Week in Bacon
It’s 2009. The most common New Year’s resolution people make is probably to get healthy or to lose weight. Deciding how to accomplish this is the hard part. You could do Atkins or South Beach or the Tabasco sauce/water/lemon diet. But those aren’t enjoyable, and they require too much effort. What if your diet could consist of something you actually LOVE to eat, like, say, bacon! Well, that’s exactly what a San Diego man decided to do: an all bacon, all the time diet.
The San Diego resident has embarked on a month-long “nothing but bacon” diet. He’s eating just over a pound of bacon a day–that’s bacon for every meal for all of February. Why? Well, as explained in an NBC video report, he’s an SD website personality, and the site’s readers have joined the rest of the country in having an obsession with the divine pork product. The fondness for pork fat inspired Nelson to go on a bacon-y trip down memory lane and then the idea of “the bacon diet” was born.
“There can never be too much bacon,” says the man who admits he’s “not a huge fan of vegetables.”
Sure, this sounds like a great diet, but the point of a diet is to get healthy, right? Is this realistic on a nothing-but-bacon diet?
Well, Nelson says he’s lost weight and his blood pressure has gone down. He attributes this partly to his getting full pretty fast and not leading him to eat starches. Nelson also rationalizes that “pork fat is very similar to olive oil,” so you’ve got “perfect proportion of protein and fat.”
It’s worth a try, right? Bacon: cheap, easy, and delicious. And if I can lower my blood pressure and lose weight . . . sounds like the perfect diet to me! Now, all I have to worry about is my cholesterol. And I’m pretty sure it’s not safe to continue the diet past a month . . . you remember what happened to Morgan Spurlock, from Super Size Me. You don’t want to end up like that.
This Is Why You’re Fat
No, really. This Is Why You’re Fat.
Click through for hot dog pie, the McNuggetini, bacon cheeseburgers with chocolate covered bacon, and so much more.
This Week in Bacon
Bacon truism: everything tastes better with bacon. But how about bacon bacon bacon, 24/7? Could you eat nothing but bacon for a whole month? I mean, (nearly) everything tastes better with Tabasco, but I most certainly couldn’t subsist on it alone for a day, nevermind a month.
Nevertheless, one dude is on a visionary quest to eat bacon every day this monthlet:
I’ll get right to the good stuff: for the entire month of February, 2009, I, Michael J. Nelson will eat nothing but bacon. Nothing, my friends, but bacon.
Why? Because bacon is nature’s finest and most nourishing food. Also, because several doubters on the RiffTrax staff had the unmitigated gall to insult bacon by making the outrageous claim that, as good as it is, no one could eat very much of it and live. I can and will. Therefore I will spend the month proving it.
Via @BaconUnwrapped.
Surprisingly, this is only the second weirdest food news I’ve read today. First prize goes to Gwyneth Paltrow, who writes about the joys of “bowel elimination” at her personal website, Goop.com.
This Week in Bacon
It has been a good year for bacon. Yumsugar has voted our favorite breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack as the trendiest ingredient of the year (even above the readers’ pick, pomegranate). Read about it here. Happy New Year and here’s to the next twelve months of glorious bacon consumption!!
This Week in Bacon
Still don’t know what to get your family for the holidays?? Don’t show up to your family reunion empty-handed. Gigglesugar has created the perfect bacon-inspired gift guide that offers something for everyone in your bacon-loving family. Get your grandma a bacon scarf (it just looks like bacon, it’s not actually bacon) to pay her back for all the oversized reindeer sweatshirts you have received over the past few years. Or treat your little brother to his very own bacon-scented tuxedo for his high school prom. Even more practical: start to train your little nieces and nephews to become bacon fanatics like yourself with bacon band-aids to cover the cuts and scrapes they’re bound to get from jumping all over you and hanging from your arms and legs.
Enjoy the holidays and spread some bacon cheer!
Thanks to reader Dana for the tip.
This Week in Bacon
By now you’ve undoubtedly seen the words “Bacon is Meat Candy” plastered on some website or, perhaps, a t-shirt. The slogan is the brainchild of overcaffeinated BaconFreak.com founder Rocco, who contacted me a couple of weeks ago about our mutual interest in things cured and porcine.
We chatted about Rocco’s bacon of the month club, and Rocco agreed to send along some bacon, t-shirts, and bacon jerky–yes, you read right–for the Crispy potluck last weekend. (All the Crispy contributors save Jackson, who was unwilling to leave his wife and kids behind and drive 250 miles for mouthfuls of pork, were present.) Jerry’s already posted some nice snaps.
Anyways, the t-shirts were a giant hit, as expected. That’s my girlfriend suited up at right. The bacon, too, was overwhelmingly loved–it’s a real bacon-eaters’ bacon.
We tasted the Bourbon Street vanilla variety as a group. The vanilla was very subtle, and nicely balanced the salt and smoke. BaconFreak.com bacon is thickly cut, and has a great mouth feel. (Can you say that about bacon?)
Meanwhile, I stole the packages of hickory smoked bacon (chewy, salty, and gone in a blaze of crispyness well before the potluck) and the Cajun country bacon (the spicy aroma of which is wafting through my apartment and from my breath right now), while bacon-drink-maker Jerry nabbed the honey BBQ rubbed bacon.
In short, we loved the BaconFreak.com bacon.
The jerky was the only product that produced divergent views. Of those we sampled, the cajun variety seemed to more approximated the texture one expects of jerky. Every once in a while, though, we’d find a piece that seemed a little too moist–a little too underjerkified. The jerky, as I understand it, is a totally unique product that’s just coming to market. Based on the quality of the bacon itself, I’m confident BaconFreak.com will perfect the jerky in time.
Thanks to Rocco @ BaconFreak for the samples. You can learn more about his Bacon of the Month Club and other bacon and of-the-month varietals here.
Need more? Check out BaconUnwrapped.com’s Heather Lauer interviewing Rocco earlier this year. And Jerry and I spoke with Heather during a Crispy podcast (membah those?) earlier this year, too.
This Week in Bacon
Bacon tastes good. We all know that. However, we also know that bacon has some undesired calories. So, what if you could enjoy the taste of bacon in the morning, without actually consuming it? Well, Boca Java just developed the perfect solution: Maple Bacon Morning coffee. This is how Boca Java describes the coffee:
Reminiscent of a hearty Saturday morning breakfast around the table, this sweet, savory coffee delights the senses with the smell and taste of home! Maple Bacon Morning has a base that’s full-bodied and complex, and it’s a delicious way to rise when the rooster crows!
So, now you can get your caffeine fix and your bacon fix, without the calories! (And it’s vegetarian-safe too!) What an effective (and much healthier) way to start your morning. I’m all for this coffee/bacon/maple syrup consolidation, but it could be a hit or miss, depending on how closely Boca Java could replicate the tastes of maple syrup and bacon in the coffee beans. Consumers so far, have given the coffee 4.5 of 5 stars, so it’s probably worth a try. Rise and shine!
This Week in Bacon
Besides being a tasty anytime snack, bacon is increasingly becoming a ubiquitous accessory pattern.
Everyone knows about Archie McPhee’s bacon bandages. You probably recall–even if you don’t want to–the bacon bra (gross, if NSFW). You may even know about the bacon tie.
But how about the bacon iPhone cozy? Pretty cool in my book, even if the pattern looks as much Body Worlds as bacon.
Thanks to Erik at Flash in the Pan for the tip.
This Week in Bacon
England for English snouts! That’s the message the utterly horrid Jamie Oliver is communicating, saying he likes his bacon best when it’s not all foreign and stuff.
…Oliver will go to war with European pork producers in a new television show.
In Jamie Saves Our Bacon, the campaigner will fight for British pork farmers who are being hit by cheap imports.
He said: “Seventy per cent of the pork we import is from countries with lower welfare standards than ours and would have been illegal to produce here.”
More here. Reminds me of the racist BBC presenter who was fired this week because she didn’t want her daughter to have to ride in a taxicab with some “guy with a turban on.” Nice.
