"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived."
-Jean Luc Picard

Monday, January 12, 2009

Bacon on my mind....

After reading 50sgal's post about making pancakes with bacon fat, I've had bacon on the brain.

Part of that was because I knew I didn't have any more squirreled away in the little freezer and was reminding myself to be sure and get out some cash to buy bacon. I do most of the shopping but, Mr. Hairball is usually the one who buys our bacon and hamburger from the local university. Most of the year, they have a store in town open on Friday afternoons that is near his office so it's very convenient for him to go by there. The bad part is that they don't carry the full line at the store in town so depending on what you wanted to buy, you may have to drive out to their lab.

Mr. Hairball checked his email on Thursday and had a email from them reminding their customers that the in-town store will not reopen until the 23rd but, the store out at their lab would be open. We drove out to the lab planning to only buy bacon as we still have several pounds of hamburger in the freezer. After we were warmly welcomed, we were told there had been a run that day on bacon and they only had one package of maple flavored pork bacon and one package of beef bacon left. NOOOOOOOOOO!!! They promised me they would have more available on the 16th. We were told that the beef bacon is lower in saturated fat than the pork, and most customers who try it prefer it to the pork bacon. We decided to go ahead and try the beef bacon as neither of us likes maple bacon. I decided to go ahead and get some flank steak as well. ( I'll make some braciole with it.)

So on Saturday Mr. Hairball made breakfast as usual and served me some of the beef bacon. It was really good so now I have to decide if we should switch to the beef since it's quite tasty and better for us, or stick with the pork bacon. It should be noted that the beef bacon is only available out at the lab so it's not as convenient since one of us would have to make a special trip to buy it. I need to decide by Friday as I'll be going back out there to get some bacon and I'll probably splurge and get some pork tenderloin as I saw a recipe back in November that I wanted to try. Now if I can only find that magazine....

We watched an episode of Iron Chef American Sunday night and the secret ingredient was BACON! Can you say spooky??

I received a ginormous early birthday package from Mama Hairball on Friday. Inside was a bread machine to replace mine that sadly went to breadmaker heaven after 14 years. She had mentioned to a friend of hers that I wanted one to replace my dead one and her friend said she had one that had only been used a few times and would be happy to have it go to someone who would use it. Mama Hairball asked if I would mind if it was used and I chuckled and said that it was not a problem as Mr. Hairball and I love great deals on used stuff and free is a very good price!

I tried it out on Sunday by making a simple cheddar cheese bread and so far so good. The real test is seeing if it can stand up to making 100% whole wheat or mostly whole wheat bread. That's what finally killed my old one off!

Enough rambling for now. Have a good day everyone!