Bacon

I swear I'm not really all that into food, it just so happens that when I ask people what I should blog about, they keep suggesting various types of food. Maybe I should stop asking them right around meal times... Bacon in particular is interesting because it has somehow become a meme, with bacon mints, bacon shirts, bacon artillery (not a means of launching the tasty breakfast meat--an actual gun-shaped bacon artifact) and even a bacon plushie hitting the market. One comedian did an entire segment in his sketch all about bacon, including how we use bacon to improve other foods. Even a commercial reflected our collective desire to take all the bacon at those hotel breakfast buffets.

We all know bacon isn't a very healthy food. True, it has protein, and a little fat in our diet is fine, but bacon has way more than "a little." This is why we like eating it. From all the hype I'd say bacon has come to represent gluttony in general, how we wish we could indulge in every physical desire that comes our way. Oddly, society has built in some of its own restraints. Why don't we take all the bacon at a buffet, or only eat it for an entire meal? Society makes us feel guilty for being that indulgent, yet it is still okay to acknowledge how much we would like to do it. We collectively laugh at our glut, at the same time knowing we would never actually follow through with it because, again, of restraints society places on itself. Not to mention there IS such a thing as too much of a good thing.

My maternal grandparents loved the traditional American breakfast, complete with eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, hash browns, toast and coffee (they weren't members--but we did manage to get our grandpa to stop smoking :). They really didn't take very good care of their health, though, and both developed type 2 diabetes in their sixties. My mom would try to convince them to change their eating habits, but to no avail. My grandma would claim she didn't want to live to be a hundred if it meant not being able to enjoy what she ate. Keep in mind when my grandparents formed their adult eating habits--in the forties and fifties nobody had even heard of heart disease, much less diabetes or lung cancer from smoking.

My husband also loves the American breakfast, but he has the metabolism of a sixteen-year-old boy. Seriously, he wears the same size pants as when he was a freshman in high school, over ten years ago. (Some say that will catch up with him eventually, but I have my doubts. A few lucky souls never have to worry about their weight their entire lives.) 

There are ways to make the "American breakfast" more healthy, especially now. Some health-conscious cooks discovered that applesauce can make a great substitute for oil; whole wheat pancakes are more nutritious; sauces other than sugary maple syrup can be used; there are also healthier ways to cook the eggs in this kind of breakfast. Ironically, turkey bacon is not healthier than regular pork bacon. In this case the only way to make it healthy is to eat less of it.

My mom kept the metal tongs her mother used to use when cooking bacon, and whenever she uses them, my mom thinks of her. One recipe in particular comes to mind that my grandma used to make--bacon mixed in a pan with canned string beans and stewed tomatoes. (Yet another example of how we use bacon to make other food better!) Since then my own mom has introduced me to a "fancy" salad that also uses bacon--how else can you make broccoli taste good?

Oddly enough, I hate cooking bacon. My husband is the bacon fryer in our family--he doesn't seem to mind having that hot grease spit at his bare arms. If I don't plan well, however, and I have to cook bacon when my husband isn't around, I will wear long sleeves and oven mitts. And forget about asking me to make scones!

As tasty as it is, I really think all this bacon hype is from the hype itself. People keep adding to the bacon-worship because it's funny, much like Chuck Norris jokes. Sorry, but Chuck Norris can't really e-mail a roundhouse kick and he doesn't have a fist behind his beard in place of a chin. Maybe if he ate some bacon...