It involves an argument over what to have for dinner. I don’t want to give away the ending, but it involves my favorite type of meat.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYisz-LQHPQ

Matt Blum of the Geek Dad blog, had a post about his recent experience making bacon pancakes and, since I’m a bacon aficionado, I thought I’d give it a try. My daughter was game, too, but we had to leave for a horse show at 7:45, so I had no choice but to get started early… on a Saturday, no less!

So I fried up a pound of brown sugar cured bacon. We didn’t eat the whole pound, but hey… I opened the package, so it might as well get cooked, huh? …there are worse things…

Having filled the kitchen with the spectacular aroma of bacony goodness, I went to work on the pancake batter. I will admit that I skimped on this part, as I used some Crusteaz pancake mix. Matt Blum made his from scratch and I will acknowledge his batter superiority, but hey… I was on a timeline here. I did, however, add a bit of the bacon grease to the batter for some extra flavor.

All that was left to do was griddle me up some pancakes! Taking Matt’s advice, and taking into consideration the ease of griddle cake flipping, I decided to tear a piece of bacon in half for each pancake instead of making a long, bacon-shaped pancake. It worked fairly well. I did three combinations.

1. Batter then bacon then more batter on top of the bacon
2. Bacon directly on the griddle topped with batter
3. At Megan’s suggestion, the inverse of the first version – Bacon on the griddle, topped with batter, topped with more bacon. (!!!)

Here is version #2 about to come off the griddle.

Megan got the first batch of two pancakes. She ate both of those and a small part of a third. I ate four of the #2 version. Nobody ate the one pancake that was version #3. We were both way too stuffed at that point.

Of course, pancakes aren’t complete without butter (real butter) and maple syrup (real maple syrup). Yes, Yes. I know there was already bacon in the pancakes and bacon grease in the batter (we added more for the second batch, by the way, because the batter didn’t have enough of a bacony flavor), but that doesn’t preclude adding butter. It’s a different category of fat. Now move along.

In retrospect, I think that they would be easier to eat if the bacon were cut into smaller pieces… perhaps squares. A more even distribution of bacon within the pancake would be a definite enhancement. That said, they were still awesome. Megan gave them a thumbs up.

After eating four of the pancakes, it was a long time before I was ready for lunch.

…and there is some bacon left over. Hmmm…

We taste-tested pounds of bacon from the grocery store to find the sizzling winners.

The folks on Rachael Ray’s website have got it made!

The winners?

• Best Oddball: Mountain Products Smokehouse Country Sliced Chipotle
• Best Turkey: Oscar Mayer Turkey Bacon
• Best Thick-cut: Jimmy Dean Thick Slice Premium Bacon
• Best Sweet: Beeler’s Uncured Apple-Cinnamon Bacon
• Best Original: Ozark Trails Hickory Smoked and Peppered Bacon

I’m a big fan of thick-cut bacon, but I’d be more than willing to try the others, though turkey bacon holds a lesser appeal. It’s not real bacon. As we all know, real bacon comes from magical pigs.

Hint: All pigs are magical.

It’s from a book called This is Why You’re Fat… which somehow seems appropriate.

(via Pharyngula)

Think I’m kidding? I don’t kid when it comes to bacon.

I present… with all due glorious fanfare… Chicken Fried Bacon …with gravy!

Yes. You read that right.

This is bacon, covered in seasoned flour, dredged in an egg wash (which includes cream), rolled in crackers… and fried. Then it’s dipped in a gravy that’s made with butter, cream, and chicken broth (and some spices). So let’s see… that’s bacon, egg, cream, butter, more cream, and chicken broth. Oh… and fried in oil.

I’m having a cholesterol-gasm just thinking about it (that’s a good thing, in case you’re wondering).

Now I know.

Behold, the bacon lance… a torch made of bacon that burns so hot it can cut through a steel pan. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a cutting torch… made of bacon.

Ummm… wow. You can watch the video below (or at the link above) of the bacon lance’s construction.

My favorite quote: “It turns out that ordinary American bacon does not have the structural integrity that’s necessary for this applicaiton so I’m using an engineering grade of bacon which is known as prosciutto.”

“Engineering grade”… R0XX0R!

Sadly, at the end of the article, there’s a warning which says, “Theodore Gray is trained in lab safety. Don’t try this at home.”

So much for my weekend plans.

Whenever I had a bad day, I’d pop that movie in the VCR. If I was extra lucky, a good friend who also loved the movie would come over, too, and the two of us would sit there watching it and talking along with almost every single word of dialog. To anyone else, it would have been annoying beyond compare, but to the two of us, it was bliss. By the end of the movie, the bad day had been forgotten and the sunlit world of happy endings had taken over.

I’ve always had a knack for remembering lines from movies, songs, or scripts, something that came in handy during my participation in high school plays, musicals, and barbershop quartets. It’s also something that is a source of aggravation…either for me or for someone else who gets a movie quote wrong while I’m around.

“No. She didn’t say ‘like that.’ She said, ‘I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.’”

Believe me, if you’re not surrounded by friends who really like you (or by happy drunk people), that kind of thing gets eye rolls of derision.

I’ve learned (mostly) to keep it in check unless I’m just teasing a friend… or my boss. The only time it’s really tough to do is when someone screws up dialogue from a favorite movie; specifically The Princess Bride.

For instance…

Recently, my father-in-law was visiting (which is good, since I like my in-laws). He’s usually sleeping when I go to work, so I don’t get to see him in the mornings, but this particular morning, I was taking it easy and left the house later than usual, so he was up. As I was saying goodbye and was walking out the door, he said (in a Jewish Miracle Max voice), “Good luck stormin’ da castle!”

I smiled. I chuckled. I closed the door behind me. I got in my car. I started the engine. I pulled out of the driveway. I took a deep breath.

“It’s ‘HAVE FUN stormin’ da castle!’”

And that is how my knack for remembering movie dialogue creates aggravation for me.

But family harmony was preserved… which, like bacon, is a good thing.

A Great Start!

Bacon makes everything better… except cholesterol and blood pressure. Overlooking that (negligible) downside for the time being, what do you get when you mix 2 pounds of thick-cut bacon, 2 pounds of Italian sausage, and some barbecue sauce? You get the Bacon Explosion… bacon and sausage wrapped up and barbecued for an artery-clogging feast fit for a 500-pound king.

Now just serve this other recipe as a side dish, season it all with a few shakes of Lipitor, and you’ve got yourself a party!

When it comes right down to it, you can’t beat the pig for providing humanity with the largest variety of indisputably succulent meat. I mean, seriously.

And bacon is, of course, the supreme meat.

w00t!