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'Bacon Tastes Good, Get Over It'
I could forgive Ms. Lauer’s disinterest in the politics of meat, but I can’t forgive the prose. For any blogger-turned-author, myself included, tone is tricky, and unfortunately Lauer hasn’t made the transition gracefully. She is too fond of corny jokes, capital letters, and exclamation marks—the phrases “Best Meat Ever” and “Bacon Nation” pop up in nearly every paragraph, many of which conclude with declamatory sentences such as, “Just like humans, when bacon has had a chance to ‘chill out,’ it’s much easier to work with!”
The recipes rounding out Bacon are more successful—gleaned from pig-mad chefs and cooks around the country, they are mostly unsurprising but appetizing, sometimes with small twists, like a BLT with caramelized bacon. By the time I got to the recipe for bacon jalapeno pizza—a personal favorite of mine—I was almost ready to forgive Ms. Lauer. If only she’d stopped hammering the “Best Meat Ever” line until I was literally beating my head against a wall, perhaps I would have.
Yes! Bacon tastes good! Get over it!
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Julie Powell is the author of Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously based on her blog The Julie/Julia Project. Her forthcoming book, Cleaving: A Story of Meat, Marriage, and Obsession, will be published in December.
Love affairs with bacon would end if you saw the way it came to the dinner table.Try soy bacon..you would be shocked at the wonderful taste.Animals are treated with cruelty because of mass production.I think we all need to look at this issue in our country.It isn't good for you anyway!
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Faux bacon isn't quite as good, but it is useful. I do wish bacon was made of leaves instead of a carcass.
Go back to North Korea, you commie.
Pigs are farm animals and exist to be eaten. Industrial production of animal foods is not good. That has nothing to do with the morality of eating meat. You can protest the methods, insist they change, choose differently produced products. Everything we eat is alive, including carrots and wheat grass and the soybeans used to make soy bacon. Agriculture is cruel to earthworms and insects -- does that make eating vegetables immoral? if it makes you uncomfortable to eat an animal, that's fine -- it's your personal choice. But there's no reason to try and make it into some universal law that everyone else should follow. Self-righteous people like to do that - it makes them feel better about their own choices if they insist that everyone else has to do the same.
I've seen bacon (and sausage) being made, and I still love it.
I have raised the pigs to become bacon. Bacon is great. Almost as good as butter.
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Except for chocolate candy or perfect sauces, you are right: bacon is better than butter.
I was visiting Santa Cruz, CA in February and, believe it or not, tried a local candy shop's chocolate covered bacon. As scary as it sounds, it was actually pretty good - not something I'd go run out to buy, but I wouldn't turn it down if it someone offered me a taste, either.
-CDT
I'm pretty sure that if you live in Texas, they sell some sort of dark chocolate with bacon bits at Central Market. I tried some of it a couple weeks ago -- you can feel it gathering in your arteries, but so good -- it's a bit like the saltiness of chocolate-covered pretzels with smokiness, but the meltiness of both is complementary...
Blood,fat and chemicals..yum!
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Actually, I nominate any meat from the pig, be it any form of bacon, pork or ham as the most delicious food.
If you love bacon, butter and foie gras, make sure to order marrow bones at a restaurant. Unbelievable beefy-butter taste.
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I love bacon. Just had some for breakfast this morning with my better half and daughter. As in everything else, it is best enjoyed in moderation.
Pork growers raising "super pigs" that cannot live outdoors sounds inhumane to the extreme. Guess I better get in touch with the pig growers groups and ask them to stop this practice, if it is true.
Best bacon comes from 'free-range' pigs, hogs allowed to roam, instead of confined.
Nothing beats chocolate, but that bacon chocolate sounds interesting.
As for meats, a filet mignon wrapped in bacon is just about as god as it gets.
But bacon rules.
Thank you.
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