My Life With Bacon

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues, and on this great Friday afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of new people.  I'm going to be doing some work with a new friend, Brad, and we had lunch at the wonderful McCormick & Schmick's Seafood & Steaks restaurant in Rosemont, IL.  It's one of my favorite places to eat, albeit the downtown NYC and Chicago locations are preferred (not because of quality - it's extremely high in all locations - but because I love the downtown).   The chain has an interesting history ; and according to one of my favorite information sources, "The company dates its roots back to the 1970s, with Bill McCormick 's purchase of Jake's Famous Crawfish , a 100-plus year-old restaurant in Portland, Oregon .   McCormick hired Douglas Schmick for management, and the two formed Traditional Concepts in 1974, the precursor to the McCormick & Schmick's restaurants. The original McCormick & Schmick's restau...

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues this week with a review of Niman Ranch bacon, purchased at The Fresh Market in Lake Forest, Illinois. But first, a bit of news! BACON IN THE NEWS . The Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED for short) Virus is on the rampage , killing new piglet litters very quickly.  Scientists think it has to run it's course before things get back to normal.   They think the virus is spreading on transport vehicles; they are recommending that truckers thoroughly clean their trucks after transporting pigs: "You should always follow very strict biosecurity steps," said Dr. Bruce Broderson, assistant professor at U of Nebraska.  The virus hasn't hit Nebraska yet. Bacon Painted Ford Fiesta.   Seriously now, this bacon craze has gotten out of hand when you can customize your Ford with a bacon finish.  But it is absolutely true.  check it out. In other news, Ozzy Osbourne had to call the fire department when he set his house on fire cook...

Check out this link .  Bad news - some pig farmers indicating that up to 20% of their pigs could be affected.  Let's hope it doesn't spread!

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues this week with a look at lifehacker's ultimate burger, an interesting San Fran vote for the best food cart, THE ULTIMATE BACON CHEESEBURGER is featured at lifehacker.  I will most definitely be trying the weave pattern: IN BACON IN THE NEWS , unfortunately , the BACON BACON food truck lost in the semifinals of voting for San Francisco's best food cart .  The site for voting is here ; voting ends on August 2nd with the two finalists: The Creme Brulee Cart vs. Sam's Chowder Mobile.  Much like visiting all major league ballparks in the country, it would be a cool thing to eat from each of these mobile restaurants! The Huffington Post blasted the Bacon Bowl (mentioned recently here in this blog) as one of the most useless inventions ever.  They say that all you have to do is turn a cupcake tin upside down and it does the same thing.  Sure it will, but it wouldn't be a dedicated tool, and cleanup for the cupcake tin ...

Nice breakfast bacon; no time for a full review.  Roundy's Mariano's supermarket is the Wegmans of Chicagoland!

My food-savvy son Sam Murphy got me into using a cupcake pan, and instead of putting in a paper insert for a cupcake, put Canadian bacon and/or prosciutto in there instead.  He got the idea from lifehacker .  Then, fill the cavity with eggs and cheese; bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes (or microwave as appropriate), and you have a ready-to-pop-in-your-mouth breakfast.  I tried to line the pan with bacon instead, but the bacon didn't properly crisp up. In the category of "why didn't I think of this" comes the Bacon Bowl.  Watch the video , check out their website .  Pure genius; I ordered a few and will be handing them out as gifts.  Comes with a recipe book too.  Way overpriced, but worth a look!  Stay tuned.

YES, IT'S TRUE.   Bacon, when used properly, can actually cure a disease , within a couple of hours.  Check out this story about a young woman from Connecticut, who, upon returning from a vacation trip to Columbia, had incredible pain in her head.  She had become infected with a screwworm infestation, known as myiasis, during the trip.  Columbian doctors gave her antibiotics, but they didn't work.  Her US doctors applied petroleum jelly, and BACON to her skin, which resulted in the attraction and death of 142 larvae! The original article is in Discover Magazine. "In the U.S., the agriculture department wiped out screwworms by releasing sterilized male screwworm flies into the wild wherein they bred uselessly with females and obliterated the population, according to Discover Magazine."   Only this simple picture (from the CDC) will be provided, but you can do your own search for screwworm.  Nasty. But the good news is that we found...