Bacon!

I make bacon a couple times a month. Every time I make bacon, I think deep thoughts about the nature of bacon--about what it is exactly and how, if you break down its component parts, it has no business being anywhere near as good as it is.

There have been a few people in my life who have had a daily bacon habit--among them my Pap who had two eggs overeasy with well-done bacon and toast for brunch every day. He would likely not have approved of the word "brunch," but since it was his first meal of the day and it was served between 11 and noon, "brunch" seems fair. His bacon was dark and so hard that it would shatter if you poked it with your finger. Not that poking Pap's bacon was in any way recommended, of course.

Cranky (Ex-) Boss Lady was another person in my life with a daily bacon habit, but she preferred hers rare. She would call up the diner down the street from the flower shop and order four slices of bacon "barely cooked." If someone new was manning the phone or the grill, she would go one disturbing step further and say, "When I open the container, I wanna hear a squeal." That was her breakfast most days, with a chocolate frosted doughnut from the grocery store bakery as her "breakfast dessert."  'Cuz breakfast dessert is a thing, apparently.

While I could--and did--eat both Pap's bacon and Cranky's bacon without complaint (it was bacon, after all), I prefer my bacon the way the bacon on the bacon package looks--crisp and evenly colored. Yum.

A couple of months ago, I fried some perfectly crisp bacon for my famous grilled tomato, bacon and Swiss on seeded rye. As Hubby was polishing off his third sandwich, he said, "Is there any extra bacon?"

I snorted. "Extra bacon? What does that even mean?"

O is for Oxymoron