Before Bacon Was Trendy…

Of all the current food trends, bacon is probably my favorite. I didn’t even realize it was a fad until one of my friends asked the question, “Was this before bacon was trendy?”

We were discussing keeping bacon grease in a coffee can to use for cooking (how else do you make collard greens tasty?), and her use of the term “trendy” struck me as odd. My grandmother saved bacon grease, and she was not what I would consider trendsetting. That’s what’s so unusual about this bacon fad – it’s been served up on breakfast tables and beyond for centuries.

But it is, indeed, a trend. When you look around, bacon is everywhere. There’s the Baconalia menu at Denny’s. Chocolate-coated bacon in the impulse-buy, I mean, checkout line at Whole Foods. Bacon popcorn. The surprisingly vegetarian and kosher bacon salt. A food truck called BaconMania (two-in-one food fad!). Bacon and peanut butter cookies. Chicago even hosts a bacon festival. Vegetarians call it their gateway meat – who can blame them?

However, the bacon craze isn’t limited to food. You can find bacon bandages, dental floss, soap and even a bacon tuxedo from the geniuses at Archie McPhee’s. Who wouldn’t want a bacon air freshener to give their car that savory scent of freshly fried pork?

You can even keep up with the latest in bacon news by reading one of the thousands of bacon-themed blogs such as Bacon Today, which serves up fresh bacon-related content daily. After all, someone has to report on the people who recreate Van Gogh paintings out of America’s favorite breakfast meat.

As a lover of bacon long before it was cool, I prefer to stick with the classics, though that doesn’t mean I limit bacon to a morning meal. One of my favorite recipes on this website is green bean bundles wrapped in bacon. It’s a more elegant version of how my grandmother used to include strips of bacon in her Crock Pot of green beans. As a kid, this was the only way I’d eat them.

Turns out, she was just ahead of the curve.