Thank God for Bacon!

Both my wife and daughter have threatened to become vegetarians. This frightens me. I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy. I'm forced to eat pastas and casseroles from time to time for the simple fact that I'd probably starve otherwise, but I know that fairly regularly a chunk of beef, pork or a chicken will find it's way onto the dinner table, satisfying that primal desire for meat. Just a little salt and heat it through. It's close to ecstasy. Men seem to have all kinds of ways of affirming their masculinity; cage fighting, peeing in the woods, wearing their hats inside a restaurant. Personally, I like to eat a good chunk of meat.

I think the potential downfall for my household was The Animal Planet. That and the ladies in my house watching me eat chicken. The simple fact is every baby animal on the Animal Planet looks so cute. When you're accosted with picture after picture of adorable baby pigs and cows it's hard to convince your daughter to snuff out their life and roast it to satisfy your evil blood lust for protein. Would I eat a hippopotamus? Sure I would, but my daughter knows just how cute those baby hippos look and would hold it against me forever. Every little chick looks so frail and helpless when it first emerges from it's shells that the idea of plucking off all it's feathers and throwing it into a 350 degree oven is pretty abhorrent to her. This poses a significant problem for my desire for animal flesh. And I have to admit watching someone tear the sinewy, ligament laced meat from a chicken bone can be a bit unsightly, but how else do you get to all that finger lickin' goodness?

I did a little research. In a 2003 poll conducted by The Vegetarian Resource Group 2.8% of participants said they did not eat meat, poultry or any seafood. That would be 5.7 million people in the U.S. when extrapolated from the 2000 census numbers. Hm, that's quite a few folks. In all the articles I read the number one reason why people are vegetarian is for ethical concerns . It would seem that farmed animals live in crowded and stressful conditions and when they don't produce enough are then slaughtered. Their feed and environment are conditioned to get the best quality from the animals. Kind of sounds like how a lot of businesses operate today. I don't know if vegetarians are sympathetic to the animals or identifying with their situation. Fortunately for me "watching someone eat chicken" wasn't one of the reasons why people become vegetarians. I felt a sliver of hope.

Actually, I'm not too concerned about the vegetarian threat to the culinary condition of my kitchen. I know the secret weapon to the undoing of vegetarians everywhere; bacon. It would seem that as much as the ladies in my house complain about the consumption of meat they can't seem to break the allure of bacon frying in a pan. The smell of bacon cooking is practically an intoxicant in my house. My daughter's favorite meal is spaghetti carbonara, which is spaghetti tossed with as much bacon as you can put in it. In our house we put bacon on salads and on sandwiches. We even wrap it around other pieces of meat to make it taste better! I haven't tried this personally, but I'm willing to bet bacon on ice cream would be tasty. I mean, if bacon can make so many other things taste better, who knows. I'll have to put it to the test.

I do feel pretty safe knowing that bacon has saved my bacon... Unless there is a category of vegetarianism that allows the consumption of bacon I feel certain that our freezer will continue to be stocked with the butchered delicacies that will sate my desire for my favorite source of protein. I have also found that using a knife and fork while eating chicken seems to not gross anyone out, further helping my cause. Particularly chicken wrapped in bacon. Mm,mm... Thank God for bacon!