back at the beginning of june, upon the exciting announcement of an amazing new bacon jerky, i opined about how the popularity of bacon was seriously spiralling out of control. there were bacon tattoos & bacon donuts & bacon dresses & bacon salt & bacon bacon bacon! since then, peeps' bacon obsession has continued to get more & more insane. bakon (the bacon flavored beer) has hit the market. andy richter did not approve. brooklyn brewery is working on a bacon beer. they even have a bacon exhibit at the met (for three more days). it's everywhere! don't take my word for it though. take baconbaconbacon's word for it...or maybe bacon unwrapped's. they've both sort of got a thing for bacon.
seriously, what's the obsession with bacon? how did it get elevated to such a status, something that's gone way beyond an ironic hipster fad? i have three possible theories as to why:
theory #1 - after years of the national pork board's attempts to woo the average joe pork-eating crowd with their "the other white meat" ads, the national pork producers' council (whose website appears to be porked at the moment...oh, back up! unporked!) decided to go after the hip crowd by going all viral. bob in marketing decided it was time to think big & think big he did. he & his team slowly inserted bits of bacon into the culture & folks started to be all "oh yeah, bacon. let's grab hold of that bus for a while." economic downturn & all, they've since laid bob off & he's been laid off for some ten months now, but that ad campaign that was his bacon baby has already been born. in fact, that bacon baby is now all grown up & driving that bus himself, speeding around town & doing blow off the chests of hookers as he does. the law's helpless to do anything. some drunk guy on the corner in the village once told me that cops love bacon, so i guess that could have something to do with it too.
theory #2 - hipsters were desperate. the yeah yeah yeahs & strokes had become lame & heroin was so passe & moustaches itch! & bushwick was becoming "too yuppie" & hipsters tried to fill the void with skinny jeans & big sunglasses & keffiyehs & trips to IKEA, but it just wasn't enough. we were living in a post-9/11 world & they needed to turn their irony toward america in order to heal. american food felt like a funny target. hamburgers were too boring. tv dinners were too cold. apple pie was too cumbersome. coca-cola was too evil...so they went with bacon. now they're just keeping it up to slight the cupcake people.
theory #3 - it's a combination of the two.
win rosenfeld (who worked with nova sciencenow for a while) seems to think that the bacon craze is finally over...
...i respectfully disagree.
#118 - bacon bacon bacon!
snack: vosges mo's dark bacon bar
drink: black sheep riggwelter yorkshire ale
last month in chicago, ms allison introduced me to the wonder of vosges, a line of gourmet chocolates with retail locales in chicago (we visited lincoln park), nyc & vegas. while there, it was revealed to the extremely friendly girl working there that i dabble in snack blogging, so she offered me some badass, probably expensive truffle. it ruled my face. super chicago friendly customer service! since we were en route to the pitchfork festival & they had a no entry with drink/food policy (although allison managed to smuggle in an avocado like a ninja), i had to forgo getting one of their crazy-ass chocolate bars for the time being. luckily, much to my surprise, during her travels the next day, allison picked up one of their black pearl bars for me. yay good host! it ruled my face.
since returning to nyc, i hadn't found the time and/or energy to travel to a vosges, but the other night, at a random park slope fancy bodega, they had a rack of gourmet chocolates. among them was the vosges mo's dark bacon bar. i'd sampled it in chicago & was completely intrigued that bacon & chocolate could taste so good together. i suppose reese's peanut butter cups got started in a similar "should we?" sort of way. i couldn't resist, especially after that sample. it's so good. since the bar ran me six & change, i've been taking my time with it, treating myself to a square or two at a time. tonight, the bacon bar comes to an end...a chocolatey, salty, occasionally crispy end. don't hate, people. this is one of the few good things to come out of the bacon craze.
one night this weekend i took in a pint of black sheep riggwelter yorkshire ale with a few squares of the bacon bar. the black sheep comes to us from the u.k., an area where folks have historically been huge fans of sheep...meadows & whatnot. it sort of explains why they also brew a monty python's holy grail ale. those blokes loved sheep. according to the back of the bottle, riggwelter is "from the old norse; rygg - back and velte - to overturn. when a sheep is on its back and can not get up without help, local dales dialect says it's rigged or riggwelted." silly helpless sheep...just like the ones i see while i fall asleep...but with less blood.
the flavor apparently contains "hints of coffee, bananas and liquorice." i tasted the coffee. not so sure about the other two. since the beer's a brown ale, it had a fairly typical english brown ale flavor, sort of like a newcastle but not really. it made for a rich & filling pint of ale, a nice complement to the bacon & the chocolate...which makes me wonder about the combo possibilities. can you make bacon out of sheep? yep. apparently you can...& when you're done, you can coat it in chocolate. done & done. bacon...is there anything you can't do?