It’s hard to believe it’s been three weeks since I wrote about bacon.
I know! I know! You’ve been anxious to read more, both you readers have called.
Actually, I had kind of put bacon on the back burner, so to speak. Then I heard Tompall Glaser singing, ‘Put another log on the fire,? which continues, ‘Cook me some bacon and some beans.?
On another occasion I stopped in Ithaca to visit friend Pat MacDonald. While there her son, Tom, came in. We weren’t done shaking hands when excitedly he said, ‘I got to go home and get you a pound of bacon. I guarantee this bacon will lay flat when you fry it, or I’ll come to your house and show you how to cook it.?
Seems Tom’s newspaper, The Gratiot County Herald, bought a 4-H hog at the county fair last year, and he had it processed by Bellinger Packing in Ashley.
It fried flat and was delicious, though the tomatoes that go into my BLTs, without the L, offered in markets these days are less than tasty. They are also less meaty, have very deep cores and are odorless.
Then I got the second shipment of daughter Susan’s Christmas gift, membership in the Bacon of the Month Club. The first month’s offering was Oscar Mayer ready-to-serve bacon, fully cooked.
It was not an inviting presentation. It just laid there, thin, crisscrossed and flat. Oh, I ate it, but I don’t endorse it.
This current offering is New Braunfels (it’s between Austin and San Antonio, Texas) Smokehouse Comal County Bacon. It came in a freezer package, with a history of the town, the Bohemian ancestry of founder Carl, his arrival in Texas in 1844 and his business changes from operating an ice plant, to locker plant, to smoking pigs. Still thrilled?
I couldn’t even get away from the bacon theme by going to daughter Luan’s for dinner. As I walked in she was offering her dog ‘Beggin Strips.? You’ve seen the commercials of doggie treats shaped like non-flat fried bacon ?
Might as well keep going. My encyclopedia says bacon is a ‘valuable energy food because it contains a high percentage of fat.?
Then, of course, there’s Roger Bacon, Nathaniel Bacon, Bacon’s Rebellion and Sir Francis Bacon.
In my first column of 2004 I wrote of the pen
that came with the Bacon of the Month Club membership. Here he is. Push down on the pen and the pink pig lights up. Push on his tail and his eyes bug out. It brings smiles everywhere.
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There’s one good thing about snow. It makes your lawn look as good as your neighbors?.