Swine Fever! or, the Dunollie Bacon Project

Makin' Bacon

Never let an opportunity for a tasteless joke pass you by, as I said to the man with no tongue recently. So it is that in these times of porcine woe, my housemates and I have decided to make bacon, and dub the project Swine Fever!

Sam objects, arguing that this makes us a hostage to fortune; what if innumerable people die of swine flu? We will be left with insensitive bacon, he reasons. He’s right to worry; callous charcuterie is itself a major health risk, and in 1932 a particularly blunt pastrami condemned the world to years of war by informing Hitler that he was a schmuck with a shit moustache. The rest, of course, is History Channelâ„¢.

However, iconoclasts such as we can ill afford such introspection. We could no more make timid bacon than we could scrub the entertaining mould from our shower curtain. Transgressing the boundaries is what we do, and if the boundaries of charcuterial naming are next, then so be it. I also believe that naming our foodstuff after a viral pandemic will limit the amount of it we are asked to give away.

Having pledged our commitment to the cause, though, it didn’t take long for schisms to emerge, the first being the eternal question: streaky or back? I argue that streaky is bacon’s natural form, the majestically even distribution of fat providing the ideal combination of heavenly flavour and artery-clogging terror. Contrarian that he is, Sam again objects, claiming that back bacon, its arid expanses of chewy, tasteless flesh tagged with an insulting vestigial reminder of streaky heaven, is the superior option. This is because he is unable to think about things objectively.

I will be documenting our Bacon’s Progress as it moves from the Fridge of Curing to the Celestial Pan. The journey will be long and painstaking, and yea though our bacon may walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I believe absolution awaits. Oh, and lots of godawful pig-related puns, as if you hadn’t had enough of those recently.

The world may have swine flu, but we have the cure.

Eh? Eh? Geddit?

Yeah.

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