Archives for the 'bacon' tag
NFL Player Does Canned Bacon, Other Stuff
Chris Cooley would probably be considered the Washington Redskins’ team oddball were it not for his outrageous teammate (and my fantasy-team co-anchor) Clinton Portis.
Still, Cooley is rapidly catching up to Portis in sheer volume of endearing oddball antics. Last year, it was a beard contest. Last month, Cooley inadvertently posted a photo of his own penis at his blog.
Today, Cooley is hyping Yoder’s canned bacon. And, frankly, I prefer the latter meet meat to the former.
Thanks to my friend Jessica, a Skins fan 97.5% of the time, for the tip.
Suspicious Package Containing . . . Bacon?
Yesterday afternoon, Representative John Boehner’s offices in Ohio were evacuated due to a suspicious package he received in the mail, which was “leaking an oily substance.” This oily substance turned out to be bacon — a message to Boehner, some people claim, criticizing his support of “pork barrel” spending by voting twice in favor of the $700 billion bailout legislation.
I understand and appreciate the message, but what a waste of some delicious bacon . . .
Lunch Buffet
–Gym’s new bacon smell not conducive to client’s austere treadmilling, reports the Bolton News.
–Why fake foods? “Because we can,” says a food marketing professor, thus explaining Tofurky and Bacos, in the Chicago Tribune.
–Happy National Pretzel Month!
–Cooking in a restaurant (shocker!) harder than it looks for home cook/reporter, notes Miami Herald writer.
–Demand in China is fueling turtle poaching in the U.S., laments the Lakeland Ledger. (Thanks, Brad, for the tip.)
This Week in Bacon
Is it bacon, or is it art? Yes.
The Paolo Maria Deanesi Gallery in Rovereto, Italy is featuring a new exhibition by the hyper-realist artist Simone Racheli.
He’s created several artifacts, like the chair at right, made to look as if they were wrapped in bacon.
More on Racheli’s latest here. The original Bacon artist here.
[Via Inventorspot.]
This Week in Bacon
There has been a string of bacon thefts this past week, reports Lancashire Telegraph. The cost of bacon has doubled in England since last year, and thieves have been targeting the product so that they can sell it at a lower price:
Sgt Phil Carter, of Burnley Police, said: “Heroin addicts steal it, along with items like coffee, because it is an easy commodity to sell and easy to conceal in a jacket.
“They often steal it to order and then sell it for half the price of what it is sold for in the shops.
“If a wrap of heroin costs around £10, they only need to sell a few packs of bacon to pay for it and they can steal that in one fell swoop.”
Now, stores are hiding their bacon packs behind the counter, and potential consumers must request assistance in order to purchase it. One shop owner even posted this sign on the store fridge: “Due to the fact that our bacon is so delicious the shoplifters can’t resist it! If you would like to try some please ask at the tills.”
You know times are tough when you are buying bacon packs (which likely were not properly refrigerated after the theft) on the street from drug addicts. Even worse, though, you know you are really addicted to heroin if you’re stealing bacon, and then selling it for a fix.
I guess you can’t have your bacon and eat it too.
This Week in Bacon
Breaking from Baylen’s usual Friday musings about bacon, I thought I would share something today that just couldn’t wait: the latest in bacon dental hygiene.
Most people brush and floss their teeth to get that refreshing minty, clean feeling in their mouth. Well, now you can leave your mouth with the delicious taste of crisp bacon (all while actually cleaning your teeth too), without the fat!
Fred Flare boutique has recently started selling a new product — bacon floss.
It is not just for breakfast any more… So wrong it’s right, this pack of dental floss has the delicious flavor of crispy bacon! Is there anything bacon cannot improve? We think not.
While that might be true — bacon does improve nearly everything — I don’t know if I could say that it would improve my flossing. Especially for $9 plus shipping and handling. A pack of bacon costs less than that — if I want my mouth to have that delicious bacon taste in it, I would rather it come from eating the bacon, rather than flossing with it. And, I’m pretty sure 0 in 5 dentists recommend it.
[Via Stylelist]
Thanks to reader Dana for forwarding the story . . .
This Week in Bacon
If you don’t see any flames, how exactly do you know when your bacon smokehouse is on fire?
This Week in Bacon
A three course meal fit for a (schizophrenic hyperactive infant) king. The fig/bcaon starter comes courtesy of Eric Ripert (thanks reader Jim). Your entree is Beech-Nut’s patented Cereal Egg Yolks & Bacon. And the mmm-mmm bacony cupcake dessert arrives via (thanks friend Alan) Chicago’s Bleeding Heart Bakery.
This Week in Bacon
When it comes to pork, no state more readily comes to mind than North Carolina. But it’s usually barbecue–not bacon–that is associated with the Tarheel state. Until now–thanks to eBay seller sharontuttle, who is selling a months-old piece of bacon shaped like North Carolina.
Bids are now up to $49.99 for the North Carolina Shaped Bacon NC Tastey State!!!!!–pictured at right above a NC nickel, resting on what looks like an extra-absorbent Bounty paper towel sheet. (Yes, my investigative skills are that good.) The auction ends in three short days, so get your bid in pronto.
Image of a state shaped like a rectangle here. If you’re looking for bacon you can eat instead of look at–i.e., that isn’t months old–try your hand at chicken-fried bacon instead.
This Week in Bacon
It used to be that bacon on a stick meant this. But Minnesotans, who hold state fairs seemingly for the sole purpose of showing off what foods can be sold on a stick, have revolutionized (!) bacon on a stick, KARE reports.
There are 14 new food items at the Great Minnesota Get-Together this year. Yes, many are deep fried and several are on-a-stick. We went down the menu, and put four of them to the test. “Big fat bacon on a stick,” Larry Abdo exclaimed. “It’s got protein, it’s got sugar, it’s got pepper, it’s got fat, and some people even call it sex on a skillet,” he added. This isn’t your grocery store “sample day” size bacon. It’s thick. “It’s decadent, and it’s 3 bucks,” Abdo said. Vivian Mattson was impressed. “It’s a little messy, but it’s good,” she said, between chews.
Mmm.
BoaS inventor Abdo told WCCO that trying to sell bacon without a stick in Minnesota is “like going fishing without minnows. You have to have the stick.” So there.
If all this sounds like an Andrew Zimmern wet dream, well that’s because it is.
This Week in Bacon
Baconostalgia. It’s not been a word, but it should be, and becomes one with a little portmanteauing.
Baconostalgia is a noun, and refers to one’s expression of longing for the past through the medium of bacon.
Here are two proper uses of the word. First, I was feeling a bit baconostalgic, and so I used Google News to search back for cool articles about bacon from 100 years ago this summer.
“Eating [in] this hot weather should be made a careful consideration by everybody,” said a well known physician. “It is not a known fact, but fat meat, especially salt pork, is one of the best things to eat during hot weather. The stomach will digest bacon when it will not digest anything else.”
Second, A man set to be executed–in Texas, naturally–in a final fit of baconostalgia, had a bacon cheeseburger as part of his last meal.
[Michael] Rodriguez, 45, asked for fried chicken breast, preferably spicy, grilled pork steak with onions, bacon cheeseburger, a garden salad, and French fries with ketchup.
Satisfy your baconostalgia here.
This Week in Bacon
Westerners become accustomed at an early age to the idea that Eastern cultures engage in a bunch of wacky practices. China is a particularly strong example of the type–whether its people getting their ears cleaned with a metal rod in a public park or eating countless and incomparably bizarre foods. We grow so used to the idea that China = Strange that it is probably easy to forget that a lot of the crap we Westerners do is equally strange.
Take the Dunmow Flitch Trials, which pit married couples against one another in a storytelling contest, with the winners getting a “flitch”–a whole side of bacon.
What the hell’s up with that? Let’s let the incredulous Chinese news agency Xinhua explain:
A bizarre ritual dating back to the 12th century was staged on Saturday in Essex of Britain.
The “Dunmow Flitch Trials,” held every four years, requires each couple, who should be married for at least a year and a day to tell the story of their marriage, from how they met to the proposal and how their families reacted.
The winner can win half a pig by trying to prove to a mock-court that they have the happiest marriage.
Several couples won this year, including (and I had no idea what this meant until I looked it up) “Des Raynor and his agony aunt wife Claire.”
More here from the trials’ official website.
This Week in Bacon
Marco Pierre White’s revelation of the secret behind his renowned bacon sandwiches has caused a backlash worthy of Carla Bruni’s new album. White, the eminent restaurateur and chef who has had a hand in the careers of chefs like Gordon Ramsay and is revered by guys like Batali and Bourdain, says the key to a great bacon butty is… the microwave.
He demonstrates his technique in the latest episode of his ITV1 show, Marco’s Great British Feast.
Not only does it taste good, but it saves on washing up, according to White, who claims to have employed the technique for the past 15 years.
“Why do I want to wash a grill tray? Why do I want to make a mess? When I cook my bacon I have only one plate to wash up. It tastes better and it’s practical. Every household needs one,” he proclaims in the show.
Food writer Tim Hawyard takes White to task at the Guardian’s Word of Mouth.
As I watched last night’s edition of Marco’s Great British Feast, with hot, salty tears in my eyes, Marco Pierre White sat in a cabman’s hut and ordered his bacon microwaved.
[...]
Why would it be necessary for a man with MPW’s towering talent and stunning technical ability to go so insanely off-piste? Microwaving bacon, if my interpretation of McGee is correct, would sort of steam it from within. There’s no crispiness, no caremelisation, just a hot floppy cured product.
I must come to White’s defense (defence?) here. I know from crispy. I appreciate microwaved bacon, not surprisingly, for its crispiness, and also for its lack of mess. But too often microwaved bacon is burnt, and (like most microwaved food) is unevenly cooked. And, frankly, there’s still usually a grease splatter and a hot-ass plate to deal with as well. So it’s not perfect. But it’s hardly deplorable, right?
How about you, dear reader. How do you prefer your bacon?
Note: I found the foreign bacon controversy more interesting than the domestic one.
This Week in Bacon
Yesterday at work I was eating a healthful lunch (a modified Grandwich–avocado and cuke on whole grain with mustard, hold the nefarious sprouts and Nayo, please), and I was thinking it was a damn fine sandwich.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on just why–beyond the fact avocados are one of my favorite foods–and then it hit me. It’s the sesame seeds on the bread. Specifically, it’s the toasted sesame seeds. For, when you toast sesame seeds, as on a bagel or this Grandwich, the seeds have a smoky, porcine, crunchy taste.
They taste almost like… Hey! Toasted sesame seeds taste like bacon!
So, in this week’s TWIB installment, I’m asking readers to share foods they dig that aren’t bacon, and aren’t non-bacon intended to be bacon, but still have a lovably bacony quality about them.
Another food I love for tasting like bacon: Lapsang Souchong tea.
I don’t expect the list is too long, but throw your ideas in comments or shoot me an email.
This Week in Bacon
Eat up. Thanks to Patrick for the tip.
