X352: X-cess, X-treme and Definitely Not Lean

Xcellent! Create a bacon basket. For those who still eat meat, even occasionally, this is my idea of perfect form and function – coupled with fierce flavor opportunities. Whether it is for a salad like the illustrated variation on breadless BLT or for eggs (served poached, baked or scrambled) or for baked beans or a rice dish or or or or . . . .

I love bacon and miss it with my vegetarian cooking. I consider it a treat. Recently I was treated to a home cooked bacon and egg breakfast by a neighbor. I have been painting his living room after doing a space plan and he has treated me to breakfasts out and to this home cooked version. I love breakfast and adore bacon.

I wrote this year about a family tradition based on Lord of the Rings Eggs featuring bacon rings in muffin tins. But, this bacon basket has got to be one of my favorites ever. The directions included all of the trial and error the food blogger went through to achieve the various results shown here. It is good to take the leap for the complete directions at Not Martha and for the different alternatives she tried. The little baskets are probably more in keeping with my pledge of Enough. The pictures are wonderful.

Obviously, using bacon with a thicker slice that is cut more uniformly is preferable for these uses. Oh, and I didn’t spell it out, but I should say that it is always best to use meat from farms, fed real food rather than a factory farm with chemicals, forced diets and miserable living conditions. This image with the crying pig from a French publication really struck me. Sorry I can’t place the source or even translate what the hell it is saying. Any French lurkers are invited to fill me in on this cultural image.

This bacon mat shown here is described in an instructable. For a variation on this big swath of woven bacon, take pieces of bacon and cut each strip in half lengthwise and in half widthwise. Weave several of these together for a more individual sized bacon mat.

Again, the theme of enough bumps into excess. Centuries of behaviors don’t flip overnight and learning how to do better is filled with compromise. I believe voluntary simplicity will always have this frisson, just like these interwoven strips criss-crossing each other. Yes, she stuffed philosophy into a meat dish.