A Treatise on Bacon Salt

As I sit here at my computer (obviously), listening to a variety of tunes on Random Play (Fleetwood Mac, then Green Day, then Shirley Temple. Awesome) after spending entirely too long on Facebook (or Crackbook), I am aware of the transient nature of technology and community and networking and music. We all flow apart, then sometimes find each other again, at different places in life, but still connecting on the same old jokes and shared memories. Then sometimes you start to build something new, some new strange connection that initially makes no sense, but in your new life, with your new hair and your new love of mushrooms and possible acceptance that everything Neil Diamond recorded wasn't total crap, it makes sense.

Sort of like Bacon Salt. "You have a friend request from Bacon Salt."

On first take, it makes no sense. Bacon is meat and salt is a condiment. Does not compute. They are two different substances. They serve two different purposes. But then you stop and think about the experience of eating bacon. Of course, there's the delicious sizzling smell, the grease squirt as you bite into a perfectly cooked piece, the feel of the slice in your hand (only heathens and lovers of zuchini bread cut their bacon with a knife and fork), and the flavor of the bacon sliding down your throat, the tingling salt and nitrates.

Stop! Salt?

Hmmm...maybe this does make sense. Bacon is very salty due to all the preservatives and smoking and things they do to it to turn it from pig into bacon (I just re-read "Little House in the Big Woods" and I know all about this process now.) So...what is bacon flavor? Is it the actual meat or is it the chemicals that go into the processing of the meat? What came first -- the meat or the chemicals (or condiments) that create the bacon?

Sometimes I like bacon bits on my salad. I always like salt. What if the two were combined? Would I get the succulent crackling sensation or would I get more of a chemical burning of my taste buds?

So, I put bacon salt on my salad. And I am sad to report that I found that I missed the meat. The chemical burning won out. It was just too...too...unnatural. The flavor was too removed from the actual flavor of the food. I like bacon flavor, but I also need the fat, the grease, the slice in my hand to fully enjoy the experience. I'll just have my salt separately.

I am ignoring the Friend Request from Bacon Salt.

What's this? A Friend Request from Baconnaise? Hmm...I shall have to explore