Sunday, August 17, 2008

I wouldn't expect it to be!

I'm inordinately fond of bacon and eggs for brekky of a weekend; during the week there's never enough time between awakening and the trek to the office.

I've finally perfected the technique for poaching the eggs, and I mean proper poaching, in hot water with a dash of malt vinegar, not that cheating method in the microwave oven. In truth I have no use for a microwave oven; nothing cooked in the microwave tastes worth the savings in effort.

I've become used to the idea that one must salt ones bacon these days. Sigh.

We've been trying out various sources of bacon, mainly because I find they cut the bacon too thin here in the US. I suppose they do that because most people seem to prefer their bacon cooked to a crisp and, whilst there's nothing wrong with crispy bacon in moderation, I much prefer the bacon to bend. Yeah, I know I'm a picky bastard but after all, I'm the one eating it!

On top of that, the trend seems to be toward low fat bacon. Uh huh. Why not also offer low oxygen air or low moisture water? The whole point of bacon is the flavour and you get that from the fat! Indeed, one of my criteria for choosing which bacon to buy is the appearance of the fat. I prefer steak on the same principle; give me a nice marbling any day.

We did find one cut of bacon that I really liked but there was a downside to it. Ain't it always the way? Never in life is anything perfect. The imperfection in this case is that it's only available in a 2 pound pack and that's way more bacon than I can eat in a single weekend. Actually, it's more bacon than I can eat in two weekends and by the third weekend what's left over is looking pretty sorry for itself. The result of undersalting.

A few weeks ago the local supermarket finally branched out into selling bacon at the deli. It came as quite the surprise the first time I checked out the deli locally, almost six years ago, and discovered that they didn't sell bacon. From which you can surmise that it's a common commodity back in Melbourne supermarket delis.

An oversight they've since corrected. They have a few different cuts including one that's just perfect and on top of that one can walk up and order ten rashers if that's what one wants.

Of course, Friday night, there was no one in attendance at the deli and after pressing that damn buzzer until my ears were ringing I gave up and went to the prepackaged bacon. The two pound pack was tempting but below it was another pack with less bacon and quite a smaller price tag but the right thickness and marvellous looking fat. So I gave it a try.

Quite tasty!

Emblazoned on the pack are the words 'This is not a low calorie food'. I should bloody well hope not!

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