40 Days and 40 Nights ... Without Bacon

Shortly before my birthday (February 28, for those of you who need to mark your calendars for next year), I arrived home from work to find a package covered in "contents perishable" labels. Curious, I opened it and dug through several layers of ice packs and space-aged looking cushioning to find:

...four pounds of bacon. Four POUNDS. Of Bacon. Courtesy of one of my oldest friends, via Zingerman's mail order outfit.

And I had a conflicted response. Part of me was all:
And another part was all "OMG. Four pounds of bacon? And I leave for Italy in a little over a week."

So I put the bacon -- all four pounds of it -- in the freezer. And there it sat -- all four pounds of it -- until yesterday.

Yep. I had four pounds of bacon frozen in my house and I managed not to eat it for two. Whole. Months.

But there's more. On my birthday, struggling back from an Oscar night hangover of epic proportions, I had a bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich with a slice of tomato from the deli downstairs. And then I got smote with the flu that had been circling our department all winter, and I didn't eat much of anything except Jell-O for the next few days.

And then I went to Naples, and spent 6 days pretty much eating everything that didn't have a historical marker on it. I ate pizzas and pastas and prosciuttos and bracchiole and gelatti and gnocchi and an unprecedented (even for me) number of fried things. I ate zabaglione with strawberries and a croissant (or four) every morning for breakfast.

And I drank beer and wine and capuccino and a great deal of blood orange juice. And some water. And it was not until I was on the Naples to Paris flight that made up the first leg of my trip home, accepting a Heineken from the Air France stewardess, that I realized I hadn't had a soda since the corresponding Paris to Naples flight a week earlier.

Which is not as big a deal for me as it would be for most people. I love Coke, but I've been trying to hold myself back to one a week during the work week and one if I hit a movie or something on the weekend for a long time now.

A bigger deal was the simultaneous realization that I hadn't had any bacon* since I'd left the U.S. In fact, I had been bacon free since that breakfast sandwich on my birthday.

(*ok, I had pancetta once, but we're sticking to the absolutely strictest definition of good ole' American style bacony bacon here)

Intrigued by the idea that I could go -- at that point -- two weeks without bacon and not even notice it, I decided to see if I could push it further. I decided to take advantage of the fact that my trip had overlapped with the beginning of Lent and see if I could make it through to Easter without bacon.

(Remember Josh Hartnett? Whatever happened to him? I don't think I've heard anything about him since The Black Dahlia. If that killed his career, I'd have to call it justifiable homicide)

Anyway, long story short (too late!): I did it. I did not eat a single piece of bacon until the day after Easter.

And the odd part is, it was almost easy. I say almost because there were a few times when temptation reared its smoky, cured head: at Meridian Pint, for example, I desperately wanted the burger with the bacon and the blue cheese. But I didn't have it. I had the plain old ordinary burger instead.

And sometimes making lunch, I'd throw together a spinach salad with some dried cranberries and some blue cheese and I'd think "doesn't this usually have protein in it?" and I'd realize "oh, yeah. It usually has bacon in it." And I'd be a little sad, when eating that salad, that it was not "finished" in some way.

And once in awhile, I'd look at a menu at a restaurant and my eyes would be drawn to things that were wrapped in bacon, or stuffed with bacon, or "studded with tantalizing bits" of bacon. And I'd automatically think "well, I'm having that, of course," and then I'd realize that I wasn't, and that I'd have to look at the menu again and pick something else.

And I did, and it was usually delicious, which made me wonder. . .how often do I choose bacon not because it's really what I want, but because that's what I do? How often do I eat bacon as bacon, and how often do I eat it as a habit?

Sunday night, I pulled one of the four pounds of bacon out of the freezer. I prepped two slices of it the next morning, and put it and some spinach and some dried cranberries and some blue cheese to a salad container and took it to work for lunch. The salad was good, though I think I picked the wrong sort of bacon to compliment it -- I'd gone with a thick cut smoked version, and the other flavors probably needed a subtler bacon so they could express themselves too. And when I walked back into my house last night, I was overwhelmed by the smoky, bacony smell. It was somehow too much after all this time.

I mean. . .I still love bacon. In fact, I think that once I'm back on the bacon horse for more than a day, I may actually love and appreciate bacon more than I ever have before, because I'd gotten to a point where I was taking bacon for granted.

But I think taking a break from it has made me more conscious of how I love bacon. I don't think I'll ever go back to loving bacon indiscriminately, but I think I'll appreciate good bacon all the more when I have it, and when it's in a context where it can be its best, savory self, and not just thrown into something for the sake of having bacon.