Bacon

ethelbags. Enjoy.

Bacon butty with cheap bacon grilled to a crisp and fried runny egg, an absolute joy as a treat. Tastes so good it must be bad.

We have a good local butcher and buy bacon in large packs. It is beautifully cured and doesn't shrink in the pan - and works out very favourably compared to supermarket prices.

All this talk of bacon (the vegetarian's downfall ...) reminds me of my first ever foray into on-line shopping, way back in the nineties... I bought green back bacon from Jack Scaife - then a family concern, long since sold to a larger corporation.

Jack's daughters worked in the family firm, and had persuaded him to let them set up on-line trading. Oh the trepidation as I typed in my card number... but the stuff arrived, was beautiful, and now that I can't get about anyway, I am happy to order everything I want or need from on-line suppliers. Except, oddly, bacon - which I can get from a local Farm Butcher - as we come full circle!

I've been a vegetarian for over thirty years.

As far as I know I have suffered no ill effects whatsoever. I eat eggs, cheese and quorn products for protein.

I would like to be a vegan really but that's just too complicated.

grandma2213, my feeling is that if a food is delicious in a non-sugary way, it must be good for me . There are good evolutionary reasons we like high fat foods I'm talking about easy to obtain high fat foods of course, like meat and other animal products; vegetable fats may be good too but in an evolutionary sense they were much harder to obtain in any quantity.

There are also, of course, good evolutionary reasons why sweet foods are so attractive to our taste buds. The trouble now is that sweetness is too easy. Historically, it was much rarer in the human diet.

Anyway, enough blether. I'm having a bacon butty for lunch on my gorgeous homemade bread. ??

I love bacon- and yet... A friend recently posted a picture of pigs being fattened for bacon in Danemark, and it was so shocking it's put me off totally. 100s of pigs lying on their side in oblong narrow metal wire cages, several rows on top of each other - how can this still be possible in this day and age in Europe???

I agree granjura - it's why I never buy Danish bacon.

Can't understand why the Danes tolerate such conditions.

granjura that is why all the meat I buy is organic. Organic meat, by definition, has to meet the highest animal welfare standards.

Don't touch Danish bacon, but please granjura dont let that horror stop you enjoying properly raised British bacon.

Absolutely. DD1 used to be vegetarian for many years- and bacon 'turned her back' - but they only buy meat from their local butcher which he can source and guarantee husbandry. We had several types of best of British bacon over Christmas, as well as a freerange turkey, and great beef too.

Bags what about the fact that we like a salty taste too? And we do. Think of the sales of crisps, savoury biscuits etc. Not mention butter which, without a bit of salt, would taste like - just grease.

No. Never buy Danish bacon!

French or Swiss butter does not contain salt- and it certainly tastes of ... butter - and not just 'grease' I can assure you. Mind you, I also like salted British butter- but just sayin'.

Everything in moderation has been our excuse for anything we want. Seems to work. If you have no other issues, hickory smoked bacon is lovely, and you can generally get it at Lidl.

We need some salt, jings. In fact it's so essential in the correct quantities that it used to be currency, reflecting it's value to humans. Like sugar/sweet food, it used to be much more difficult to obtain. So, yeah, there'll be an evolutionary reason for our love of salty things too.

Now that we can get these essentials easily, we just have to adapt to the new conditions. It'll take a while but why worry when people are living longer, dying of fewer diseases and things are generally improving for human beings? (Yes, I know there are still huge problems but they're not as huge as they were).

I think I will settle down in front of the tv this evening with a bacon butty and a large glass of wine contemplating the fact that by so doing I may be shortening my life by a few hours.

M0nica - Love it . We won't miss a few hours we never had!