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Entries in bacon (3)

Tuesday
Dec082009

nosh nook #192 - tuesday, december 8, 2009

loved by all, bacon truly is the perfect junk food (link)
12.7.09 - charlottesville daily progress - by bryan mckenzie

wow. it's been a while since i last rapped at y'all about bacon, so let's just for today give the hip breakfast favorite a little bit of long-overdue face time. i figure it's the least we can do for bacon since its popularity has been waning a bit recently. ever since cupcake decided to storm the scene & steal all the hipster glory from my beloved bacony buddy, the hype surrounding it has sort of died down. bacon lovers have tried desperately to keep bacon's popularity strong and j&d's has been pumping out numerous bacon-flavored products, but it's been an uphill battle recently for the tasty, greasy strips of breakfast wonder. it's not easy being a hipster fad. just ask white belt & big sunglasses.

for what it's worth, the charlottesville daily progress' bryan mckenzie is trying to do his part to keep people excited about bacon. just yesterday, since he's a believer that "everything's better with bacon," he penned a punny, passionate ode to it and lo & behold, the newspaper went ahead & published it, much to the delight of the bacon-loving populace of charlottesville. why now? well, he recently had that "painful epiphany" that "everything's better with bacon" whilst chatting with the assistant manager at the blacksburg wendy's & he just had to share with everyone. after all, "bacon is a major part of american life," so it's important that he's kept the bacon dialogue going.

we LOVE bacon. as mckenzie says, "it's in our genes!" he even spoke with martha hester stafford, owner of the charlottesville cooking school & she said that "bacon has everything we're genetically programmed to love: fat, sugar & smoke." mmm. fat, sugar & smoke. it's the scientific reason why we make "bacon candy, bacon-fried bananas and bacon brioche." everything's better with bacon. it's so true. mckenzie provides this example: "wrap a chevy in bacon and you get a cadillac." i'm pretty sure that is also true, although the science to back up that claim might be unproven at this juncture. so yeah, don't give up on bacon, no matter how trendy it gets. put it on your sandwich. put it in your coffee. put in on your boobs. put it in your heart.

Thursday
Aug132009

#118 - bacon bacon bacon!

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?

Tuesday
Jun022009

nosh nook #57 - tuesday, june 2, 2009

bacon jerky, a new kind of bacony goodness snack for bacon lovers (link)
06.01.09 - news blaze

friggin' bacon. one day, it's just another part of a hearty breakfast & the next, it's become all hip & shit. one company has even gone as far as to come out with baconnaise & bacon salt, because, as their slogan says, "everything should taste like bacon." hasn't this damn bacon craze gone far enough? how many bacon-themed tattoos & articles of clothing must we endure before the madness ends? i'm actually a fan of bacon, with a leaning towards the turkey variety, but all this "i ♥ bacon" nonsense that's going around is seriously making me reconsider our relationship.

one such organization fighting on the side of bacon evil is bacon freak's “bacon is neat candy” gourmet bacon club, who has now created a bacon jerky. according to what appears to be a press release (& a biased one at that) on newswire, a few months back, the folks at bacon freak created bacon jerky. as a result, "no longer are you limited to eating bacon at home." as one who can't even count the amount of times i've longed to be able to tear into some bacon while i'm out & about but haven't felt comfortable doing so, i can now "satisfy (my) daily bacon urges on the go."

bacon jerky is one of those snacks you shouldn't have to share with your friends, but with flavors like "coastal caliente jalapeno bacon" & "boss hog hickory bacon," it sounds like it'd be tough not to. luckily, as the press release notes, "the best part about bacon jerky in comparison to regular bacon is that when you cook bacon, the aroma floats through the air calling out to those around you to come and get it which means that you have to share." with bacon jerky, not only is there no cooking involved, but all that baconacity is now contained in a pouch that you can squirrel away from your friends. the press release also notes that "you can simply enjoy a few pieces and those around you want know that you're snacking on the most delectably delicious bacon ever."  that's not proper english, but who cares when you've got bacon jerky?