When we were served breakfast buffet style at a department meeting, the first thing to go was the bacon. We had pancakes, biscuits, sausage, scrambled eggs and fruit to feed a battalion, and orange juice and coffee in quantities that would keep them so jacked up on caffeine they wouldn’t care about scurvy. They dove into the bacon like crowds at a Black Friday bargain table.
I got no bacon and settled for sausage.
Our obsession with bacon goes back centuries to when the first haphazard lowly laborer accidentally let a pig die in a burning hut, only to find out later, when touching the smoldering corpse, that hot pork tasted pretty darned good after the burn kicked in and they unknowingly licked their fingers. So cured pig became a household staple, and bacon the holy grail of breakfast food.
Of course, bacon is not good for you. It’s on a naughty list up there with smoking, drinking alcohol in excess and watching too many prescription medication commercials, because of its fat and sodium content. It does count as meat, so physical laborers want it for energy. The rest of us just enjoy the experience for its own sake.
Turkey bacon is a good substitute, and I’ve sworn by it for a few years. I also advocate broiling or baking bacon. Heck, it has “bake” in the name, so why not? And Rachael Ray also does it; she even touts her own broiling pan just like my mother always used. Years ago, my mother prepared bacon with breakfast for a slumber party, and one guest swore she ironed the bacon. If you broil it, it will stay flat. In the army, bacon was cooked in a lump, and one never could be sure if all the pieces in a section would be thoroughly done or not. Often the outside was cremated and the inside raw.
Bacon works well in a sandwich, particularly with lettuce, tomato and just a bit of spread, but most people seem to want it at breakfast. They’ll forget their manners for it, and leave a buffet table barren of even a corner off a slice. It I didn’t know better, I’d swear they had no bacon, but I smelled it on the air. Gone in moments. Fortunately tomorrow is Sunday and I have my own bacon, flat as a board and just as tasty. I can smell it now.
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