My Life With Bacon

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues with an excellent Lifehacker post on why you should save all your bacon grease, and ends with some bacon in the news. SAVE YOUR BACON DRIPPINGS! I've been doing it for years. Here's why: it's excellent to cook with. Imparts incredible flavor. Fry bread in it for your egg sandwich. Fry the eggs in it. It's called "Eating Trash With Claire"... you'll have to put up with a commercial first, but worth watching! BACON BUTTER. Yum. Nice mayo recipe.  Link . I have a large bacon dripping jar in the fridge. DOUBLE CRISP YOUR BACON : Read this interesting article about a restaurant in Austin, TX called Joe's Bakery (nice name). They lightly coat their bacon on both sides with flour, and then fry it normally in a pan. Link . On the menu there, this is the Joey Rocha plate, which includes Two eggs any style served with pork carne guisada, potatoes, beans, sausage, or bacon and two tortillas. The place is pretty nondescrip...

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues with a visit to Wright's BBQ in Fayetteville a few months ago. Sorry, I'm just getting around to posting this. Lots of backlog material in the queue. THIS PLACE IS THE BOMB . Outstanding BBQ. On the plate you can see some brisket, ribs, tips and of course, there was also BACON. Highly recommended location; real hand-crafted smoked BBQ on site; if in Walmart-land, stop by. BACON IN THE NEWS There are LOTS of bacon stories out there. Just two interesting ones : KOSHER BACON possible? Maybe, according to Rabbi Gavriel Price of the Orthodox Union. He's in charge of determining if 'clean meat' could be turned into bacon."Clean meat' is not really meat; it's grown in a lab. The "Impossible Burger" is in this category; not really meat, but tastes like it. Interesting article . Some lab meat in a test tube above. SUBWAY CUSTOMER MAD ABOUT UNDERCOOKED BACON : Yeah, I hate undercooked bacon too, but it...

MY LIFE WITH BACON CONTINUES this week with a visit on my wedding anniversary to a new place in Highwood: Greenwood. The site of an old bowling alley, Greenwood is naturally a complete makeover. And the interior wood paneling is actually greenish. It was very busy on Saturday night, but the noise was not overwhelming. Our server Sarah and her able assistant-in-training, Matt, were very attentive and even watched me do a bar trick (with which they will make lots of money). The meal was excellent and very reasonably priced. Owner and head chef Mark Newman came out to visit when I asked where the bacon came from. Turns out that it's from the North Country Smoke House in New Hampshire! I was given some of this bacon as a gift in the past from my friend Bob at NEPS , and it was excellent. You can find my evaluation in the archives. For my main course, I ordered the skirt steak, and in an attempt to go low carb, I did not want the potatoes; instead  I ordered a brussels sprout...

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues with an old tweet by a justice and a new twist, and a new location for Bar Bacon. BACON IN THE NEWS Aside from Kevin Bacon being selected for a new   Tremors reboot pilot , it appears that bacon has made it to Congressional testimony this week. Interesting article in Business Insider: " Patrick Leahy, a top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday questioned a federal judgeship nominee's ability to interpret Supreme Court precedent over a tweet about wanting a constitutional right to marry bacon." Back in 2015, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett tweeted a satirical comment, basically saying that same-sex marriage was a slippery slope and that he'd support marrying his bacon.  Funny - if you look at the tweet, 76 people "loved" it at that point in time. This is pretty funny, and reminiscent of the young man in the UK (about whom I've written previously) who changed his name to "Bacon Do...

MY LIFE WITH BACON CONTINUES this week with another crime story. BACON IN THE NEWS Ok, while this one isn't exactly bacon (but it could contain pork), a man was arrested after having robbed a hot dog stand in Chicago. After robbing the place, he reached for his pistol and apparently shot himself in the leg and in the pecker. Even though this isn't directly about bacon, it is about a smoked meat product, possibly pork, and the story is too good to pass up. The robbery happened at Maxwell's Classic Polish on the South side. Here's a picture and a quote from the Chicago Tribune : "Police were called to 700 block of West 116th about 6 a.m. Tuesday  regarding a person shot and found Pouncy with two gunshot wounds, one to the right thigh and one to the penis, according to his arrest report."

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues by cooking up some great home cured, home smoked, home cooked bacon, about which I blogged recently. This is on cast iron. Jack's high school football team won its state playoff game; COOKIN' WITH GAS:  http://jwcdaily.com/2017/10/27/spotlight-charleston-scouts-had-a-good-time-in-playoff-win/

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues with some good, old-fashioned home-cured and smoked bacon, plus the standard Bacon In The News section. I really like the flavor profile of the spice cardamon , so I searched for a bacon cure recipe using that ingredient. Check out the Wikipedia article on cardamom ; pretty interesting. Had no idea it was commonly used in Scandanavia. Apparently lots of folks from the middle east and India visited the nordic countries as far back as Viking days. A quote from the article: "It is a common ingredient in Indian cooking . It is also often used in baking in the Nordic countries, in particular in Sweden, Norway and Finland , where it is used in traditional treats such as the Scandinavian Jule bread Julekake, the Swedish kardemummabullar sweet bun, and Finnish sweet bread pulla. In the Middle East , green cardamom powder is used as a spice for sweet dishes, as well as traditional flavouring in coffee and tea. Cardamom is used to a wide extent in savoury ...