From
Monkey Goggles:
How to Survive the Bacon Apocalypse
Bacon is fallen. The salty paragon has enjoyed a terrific burst of stardom these past few years — bacon martinis, bacon-filled chocolates, bacon-flavored mayonnaise and other culinary landmarks almost too wondrous to describe — but the recent outbreak of Swine Flu has taken the sizzle off the strip.
Baconnaise has become
a favorite Jon Stewart punchline (despite the fact that it contains no actual bacon), and in a May 2009 Stranger article titled “The End of Baconmania,” writer
Erica C. Barnett declared, “(I’ll take a) fresh radish dipped in butter … over a fatty, greasy hunk of bacon any day.” (lstew's note - I'll be tracking Ms. Barnett down and promptly punching her in the neck and then eating a package of bacon in front of her while she tries to get up)
Thus are the fatty excesses of Baconmania condemned to the freezer-can of history. Radishes. Wow.
I could never give up on bacon. It occupies a dedicated place in my heart that’s both spiritual and potentially life-threatening. Granted, I didn’t jump into the frying pan with the rest of the baconistas – I consider bacon “martinis” to be an abomination of both the breakfast and cocktail hours – but I can’t imagine a hearty breakfast without bacon, and I don’t want to. I love it lean or streaky, smoked or peppered, chewy or crispy. I enjoy simply looking at it – one long, gently bowing strip on either side of my eggs and toast, like edible parenthesis.
However, I completely understand if you’d like to keep your own passion for bacon in check until this plague of Hamthrax has passed. Perhaps you’re leery of blurting out “Hey, howzabout that bacon?” at social functions, where the mere mention of pork-barrel politics could render you suspect as a motorboat riding the wake of a supertanker — a possible baconeer.
It is at that moment, when the eyes of your peers are upon you, that you should burst forth with “Hey, howzabout that mac ‘n’ cheese?”
An electric pause will hang in the air as heads swim and eyes roll in expressions of naked ecstasy. Yes, of course! What better to replace one cholesterol-heavy dish than another, even more cholesterol-heavy dish? A dish that evokes childhood happiness as well as adult rebellion? A dish that could be made at home with store-bought ingredients, or enjoyed in hoity-toity restaurants with the same ingredients at three times the price? What indeed?
And like bacon, thee possibilities for hybrid mac ‘n’ cheese creations are virtually limitless in number. I’ve already seen deep-fried mac ‘n’ cheese balls in some of the finer establishments, and it’s only a matter of time before mac ‘n’ cheese salads, mac ‘c’cheese ice cream and even mac ‘n’ cheese martinis make their appearances. And through it all, we can continue to live
the bacon adventure in what will become a judgment-free environment, while also enjoying what a mac ‘n’ cheese renaissance has to offer.
Not convinced? Then consider this: Late at night, behind locked doors and drawn curtains, we can even put bacon into our mac ‘n’ cheese. It’s as perfect an expression of Yankee ingenuity as you’ll ever taste.
Hmm. Now that I’ve said that, it seems like an awful lot of fat and calories to put down in one sitting. You may want to eat a vegetable of some kind afterward to keep yourself from going into shock. A radish, maybe.
