When my wife and I were getting our ingredients together to make them, it dawned on my why I hadn’t had one in so long: mayonnaise! In my humble and unbiased opinion, mayo is gross. It’s stupid. It’s the cat of condiments. Why anybody likes it, I don’t know. Anyway, since mayo is commonly used on BLTs, I stopped making them.

Until now. What a simple switch I made, that made a world of difference. Cream Cheese! Yes, replace your stupid mayo with beautiful, creamy, um…Cream Cheese! It tastes waaayyy better and is only slightly more unhealthy.

I guess this post is a less about bacon and more about how I don’t like mayonnaise, but anyway, here’s a bad video I made about my BLT.

Oh, man! I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I guess I’ve just been out there enjoying bacon too much to update my blog. I hope to remedy that, as I’ve bought a four-pound package of bacon at Costco, and I’m looking to experiment!

First up is the Bacon Cupcake. You’ll see why I call it that soon. The essence of it is a bacon-wrapped beef patty loaded with your choice of toppings.

First, line a cupcake pan with strips of bacon sufficient to cover the bottom of the cup and long enough to fold over and make the casing. Add a mini-beaf patty.

Add your choice of toppings. In this one, I’ve added a sliced mushroom, red onions and a heap of shredded cheddar. (I forgot to add the dill pickle slice. Oh, well.)

Wrap it up and bake it! For mine, I baked it at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

There’s no need to grease the pan or anything like that. The meatcake should slide right out.

Ta-da!

Variations:

The beauty of the Bacon Cupcake is the seemingly infinite ways you can customize it. Just about any meat and topping combination could work. I’d love to try the next one with a scallop instead of beef. What you wrap inside the bacon is only limited by your imagination: jalapenos, spicy horseradish, velveeta, salmon…And since most cupcake pans have twelve spots, you can try a bunch of different ideas at once.

This recipe can also be adapted for the grill quite easily. Just make sure your bacon is weaved well enough to hold all the innards in place as it’s cooked.

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been enjoying bacon whenever possible. It’s always on my mind and, on lazy Sundays, we start our day by frying up a package of sweet pig meat!

It’s bothered me (just a little) that we dump out the bacon grease after cooking. I’ve wondered how many ways we can incorporate bacon grease into daily cooking. It seems if you can find a stable way to keep it ‘fresh’ (in the fridge, maybe?), you could use it to grease all your pans.
A couple of things I’ve tried is pan-roasting raw peanuts in bacon grease and making popcorn with bacon grease. See, kids. A long time ago, before microwaves, we made popcorn on the stove. A big pot, a little oil and a handful of popcorn kernels and you’re in business. When my wife unwittingly bought bacon and popcorn on the same grocery trip, the idea was born!

The process is pretty simple:

Bacon grease at room temperature. Mmmmm!

Take a spoonful of bacon grease and melt it in a pot. (Bacon grease tends to burn at a high heat, so start the pan on medium-low and slowly work the heat up.)

The heat test for popcorn is simple: drop one kernel in the bottom of the pot. When it pops, drop the popcorn in.

There it goes! If you've never made stove top popcorn, you're really missing out.

A word of advice: As fun as it is to watch the popcorn pop, it’s very important to place the lid on the pot. If you leave the lid off, say, to take photos or something, you run the risk of a hot, grease-soaked popcorn popping out of the pot, ricocheting off your cheek, under your glasses and into your eye, burning your cheek and eyeball along the way with the afore-mentioned hot bacon grease. It’s not fun

Grease-splattered glasses.

Finally, when the popping slows, take it off the heat, dump the corn into a bowl and enjoy! But, don’t expect a stront bacon flavor. I had to salt my popcorn to bring out a slight bacony flavor. Your mileage may vary.

Yay!

Until now.

I’m not real sure why it’s taken me so long to think about this. All those wasted years of choosing one or the other. The salty meat is a perfect complement to sweet, tender melons. (Yeah, I meant it to sound that way.)

The whole thing is as simple as crumbling bacon over ice-cold watermelon.

Here’s the recipe:

1) Crumble bacon over ice-cold watermelon.

2) Eat it.

3) Beg my forgiveness for ever doubting me in the first place.

Not to self: use fresh bacon next time.

The Iowa Bacon Board (YES!!!) hosts the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. http://blueribbonbaconfestival.com/

583 pounds of bacon were consumed in all sorts of ways. Here’s a few selections from the schedule of events:

10:00 am – Doors Open, Blazing Bacon Bloodies are Served, 1^st Course is Served, Sign In for Bacon Eating Contest Begins (Sign In Closes at 2:30 pm), DJ Patrick Porto Sets the Mood

11:45 am – Second Seminar entitled, “Why Everything is So Much Better with Bacon” by Jonathan A. Campbell, MS with the Iowa State Meat Laboratory (This Lecture Will Be Repeated at 1:45 pm)

12:30 pm – Third Seminar entitled, “Templeton Rye Whiskey – An Iowa Classic” by Scott Bush, President of Templeton Rye

1:00 pm – Parade of Bacon Explosions by the BBQ Addicts, creators of the Bacon Explosion

3:15 pm – Bacon Eating Contest Begins (!)

photo by Philip Luedtke – http://philogyny.net/

4:00 pm – The After-Party Begins at High Life Lounge and El Bait Shop

Thinking of going next year? You’ll have to be on the ball cause this year they sold out of tickets.

In 25 minutes.