The internet is going bacon crazy – rejoice ye lovers of smoked pork products, rejoice!



Alright, when I say, “the internet”, what I actually mean is that I’ve found two or three idiots who take their love of cured rashers of pig a little bit further than is necessarily healthy. First up is Mike Nelson of the Rifftrax blog, whose Bacon Stupidity Month means that for the whole of the February he will eat nothing but… you guessed it, bacon. What a hero!

Can you imagine how brilliant this will be? It’s the sort of thing that my ten-year-old self would not only endorse, but heartily imitate – until my mum got sick of the stench of rendered pig fat coating every surface of the house. He says:

For the entire month of February, 2009, I, Michael J. Nelson will eat nothing but bacon. Nothing, my friends, but bacon.

Why? Because bacon is nature’s finest and most nourishing food. Also, because several doubters on the RiffTrax staff had the unmitigated gall to insult bacon by making the outrageous claim that, as good as it is, no one could eat very much of it and live. I can and will. Therefore I will spend the month proving it.


The fact that he has to eat wimpy American bacon, rather than meaty Gloucestershire Old Spot gear or salty Italian pancetta, just makes his quest even more heroic. I salute him.



Secondly, the Guardian is featuring something called a Bacon Explosion (above). Not, thankfully, a pork-fuelled incendiary device, but a ludicrous – though some (ie me) would say inspired – creation made up of bacon, sausage meat, crispy bacon (vital difference in terms of texture) and barbecue sauce. Looking a bit like a Swiss roll, but a million times better, the Explosion is put on a barbecue and cooked to within an inch of its life – and then devoured. The paper says:


Jason Day, a barbecue fanatic from Kansas City, says that he never intended to set the internet aflame. But when he and fellow barbecuer Aaron Chronister came up with the Bacon Explosion, they did just that. "Apparently we hit on something that people are extremely passionate about," says Day of their creation, which involves 2lb of bacon, 2lb of sausage, and a lavish helping of barbecue sauce. The recipe came about after a challenge from a bacon enthusiast - what could barbecuers do with the pork product? - and soon the pair were weaving raw rashers into a mat, covering this with a layer of sausage meat, piling on crispy fried bacon bits, adding barbecue sauce, and fashioning the lot into the ultimate meat-lover's version of a swiss roll. Then they smoked it. At 5,000 calories and 500g of fat the result is, quite literally, not for the faint-hearted.


And then finally, there’s this, “chicken-fried bacon”. Oh sweet Lord.



I love you bacon, I love you America.

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