Epiphany

I came to a realization today while we were cooking supper.  We had one of my favorites, twice baked potatoes.  It is hard to beat and I routinely eat way more than I should.  Then I lay around like a lump.

What came to my mind, or rather I finally put one and one (or two and two) together, is the importance of bacon in a civilized society.  One of the main and most important ingredients in the twice baked potatoes is bacon.  My family loves bacon.  Who doesn't, right?  

This recipe calls for cooked bacon to be broken up and placed in the cooked potatoes.  They are always wanting to eat the bacon before it is put in the dish.  As a result we usually cook a bit extra to snack on.  Tonight we had a situation where the snack bacon was not in sufficient quantity to allow all the kids to have a pre-supper bacon snack.  A fight ensued, which caused me to realize a few things.

Bacon might be the best food ever created for the use of man.  I mean, you can't go wrong when you add bacon to a dish, whatever it might be.  You can eat it alone, or with, well, anything.  Just look at what it does to lettuce and tomatoes.  You don't need a load of ranch dressing to make them palatable.  Just add bacon and put it on slightly toasted bread and you have something really special.  Something more than the sum of its parts.  

Think about how happy bacon makes you, or how unhappy you are when you don't have bacon.  My kids were upset just because there wasn't enough for them all to have more than one piece, and a fight broke out over who gets the most.  "You already had one.  He took my bacon.  Don't hit me, I didn't take your bacon."  And that is the toned down version of what happened.  

But if you think about it, that is the same thing that happens around the world.  Think about how up tight the vegetarians of the world are.  Maybe they wouldn't call everyone who eats bacon nasty names, or look down their noses at us.  Tofu bacon just isn't the same and doesn't satisfy the primal urge for the real thing.  I don't blame them, I guess, for being pissed at the world.  There is no substitute for sliced pork belly.  

And the religions of the world the prohibit eating pork.  How well would we get along if they could just eat some bacon.  No more IEDs, suicide killers, or terrorism at all.  Just eat a pound of bacon and all you feel like doing is laying on the couch and watching Idol or Housewives of Hollywood.  You leave everyone alone and everybody is happy.  

El Toro Negro