All About Bacon

Yes I am writing about bacon.  It is one of life's guilty pleasures.   It almost feels wrong to dedicate an entire post to what is essentially pig fat.  But it is so good and such a hit in the Brown household thus the reason it is getting blog time.

Much to Glenn's delight, Sidney has inherited his love of bacon.  Like his father, our son can smell bacon cooking, recognize it in the freezer and just one bite elicits screams of "bacon!"  Bacon can be bought here in Albania- usually under the name of "prosciut".  The quality of it varies and none of it comes even close to tasting like the American version we are used to.  Because of this, bacon and bacon items are a special treat in our house with both Brown boys getting very excited when I dip into my special stash that we imported from the commissary in Naples.

Bacon can be fried and served as a breakfast side but it has so many other uses.  I remember my Polish Nana having a can of bacon fat next to the stove for frying foods.  (This was obviously before the health conscious 1980s rolled around).  In his quest to learn to like the taste of eggs, Glenn spent many a childhood breakfasts eating various styles of eggs drenched in bacon grease.  (He never learned to like eggs but I suspect this experiment only intensified his love of bacon).

Currently I rarely serve bacon as a breakfast side; rather I incorporate it into other dishes.  As the saying goes, everything tastes better with bacon.  Both Glenn and Sidney will eat Brussels sprouts if I braise them with bacon.  A quick weekend favorite in our house is a BLT risotto.  For a completely piggy meal I've wrapped bacon around pork tenderloin before roasting it in the oven.  During a fit of complete decadence that would make my doctor cringe, I discovered King Arthur Flour's recipe for maple-bacon biscuit bake. It is a completely artery clogging gooey goodness incorporating maple syrup and bacon.  It is also so decadent that it is definitely a special-occasion dish.  I recently started following the Adventures of the Kitchen Ninja blog and the first recipe to pop up was one for oatmeal bacon cookies. I was intrigued and decided I had to try it. I substituted dried cherries for the raisins and my two in-house food critics both loved it.  Even while the cookies were still in the oven cries of "bacon" could be heard in the next room (I won't disclose who was the source of the bacon cries).
So yes; this is a post about bacon.  It is indulgent but it tastes so good.  Just as everything is better with bacon everything must be consumed in moderation.  That is my story and I'm sticking to it.  Even when I'm in my doctor's office.