Mmm... Bacon

Everything is better with bacon. It's a well-known fact. The other day we had a bacon smorgasbord where a number of folks here at the office cooked up different varieties of bacon and chowed down. No eggs or toast. Just bacon. I know it's strange, but let's just let that go. So this will not be a restaurant review, but I thought the experience relevant, special (try it in YOUR office!) and important.

I like bacon. Quite a lot, actually. But I'm a bit of a fuss about it. Bacon should be crispy, not chewy. Unfortunately, there are few in the fast-food genre of restaurants that can get the job done (I submit that none of the Big Three can do it, though Caspar might argue Wendy's does it decently). Our baconfest featured three varieties of bacon: regular, turkey, and veggie. The regular turned out soggy. It's probably hard to get it right when you're pressed for time, cooking for a large number of people, and bacon is not your main business. Which is probably also why the chains can't get it right.

But I wanted to focus on the other two varieties. Turkey bacon. Let me be clear. This is nasty crap. I don't know who invented it, or what part of the turkey it comes from, but it tastes like neither turkey nor bacon. More like a Snausage. Didn't help that it wound up soggy too.

Given that I was 0 for 2 on the bacons that actually contained meat, my hopes weren't all that high for veggie bacon. In fact, they were rock bottom, so please keep that in mind as you continue reading. Amazingly, it really wasn't all that bad. It was microwaved and crispy. Didn't taste a lot like bacon, but it had a similarity, and it had a flavor that was surprisingly not horrendous. I asked a few people what was in it, and nobody seemed to know, but all assumed some sort of soy product. I pressed the person who brought it, and she had little more to offer, "Whatever Morningstar Farms puts in there." Kind of like how I'd answer a question about Twinkie ingredients: "um, it's got whatever sun-shiney goodness Hostess puts in there."

What's more unnatural, really, a Twinkie or vegetarian bacon? If Twinkies existed in nature, I don't think anyone would feel the need to re-engineer them. But here we have perfectly natural pork bellies that should be consumed (you know, the way the Eskimos don't waste any of the whale), but someone decided that highly processed soy molded into strips and cooked with radiation would be more "natural." It's crazy-talk, and I'd complain more -- maybe start a "Save a Soybean, eat Bacon" campaign -- but it ain't that bad. So there you have it, my first semi-pro-vegetarian review. But if you ever try it, remember: it'll taste better if you keep the expectations low.