February 21, 2016: A Big Bacon Accident and some Archer Farms

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues this week, leading with a major traffic accident involving bacon.

BACON IN THE NEWS

BIG CRASH on I-64 between a furniture truck and a vehicle carrying bacon results in a massive mess on the highway. Quite an interesting story and must have been fun to watch the aftermath. Story and picture courtesy of NEWSCHANNEL3 in Virginia.

"James City County, Va. – Crashes involving loads of furniture and bacon created a mess on I-64 Sunday, closing part of the interstate for nine hours. According to Virginia State Police, a truck that was carrying a trailer full of furniture crashed just after 2 a.m. 

The truck hit the guard rail and went across both lanes of the interstate. During the crash, the trailer of furniture came loose from the truck and furniture fell out onto the roadway. Another vehicle slowed down to avoid the furniture debris in the road and was sideswiped by a tractor trailer carrying bacon. The tractor trailer then ran off the road and into the woods.

According to VDOT, as a tow truck attempted to pull the tractor trailer back onto the road, bacon spilled out onto the interstate and the tractor trailer fell down into the woods again. It took crews nine hours to clean the road and dispose of the bacon properly before the road could be reopened.

No one was hurt."   ...except all the folks who wanted that bacon!

Interestingly, no bacon related crimes to report in the last two weeks.

THIS WEEK'S BACON IS ARCHER FARMS THICK CUT - an uncertain wood was used for smoking (normally a bacon purveyor will list the wood type; maybe they had a bunch of small batches of different woods and got lazy.)

The package was labelled 24 ounces, and yielded only 21 ounces of bacon - a ripoff! Post cooking, this bacon yielded 5.8 ounces of bacon, and 250 ml of bacon fat.

Upon opening the package, the aroma was nondescript. These were thick cut slices, and took two batches to cook. This is a very wet bacon and difficult to fry. Very sticky. Very little shrinkage and was an uneven, challenging fry. It got good & crispy, and so I give it a crispness of 3.5, a succulence of average 2.5 and an above average flavor of 3 out of 5. I'd say cook this in a cleaner way, perhaps in the oven. Not worth the trouble to skittle fry; just check out the uneven-ness.