Bacon for your Thoughts

I've been trying to backtrack on all the significant items I've made in the last few weeks and I've happily realized that I've kept a pretty decent pace of baking given my current schedule. The weekend after Vals I went up to my family's house in the suburbs. Sometimes it's nice to get away from the city, be on 'suburb time' as my friends and I call it (when everything is closed by 8pm and you are wrecked, tired, and ready for bed by 10pm...even though it feels like 3 in the morning) and revel in the perks of home. Even better was that my parents were on vacation so we had the house to ourselves.

Knowing that there would be a treasure trove of ingredients for me to sift through and work with, I planned on baking something while I was home. I ended up making two types of brownies, one the basic 'so-good-I'll-hit-you-in-the-head-with-a-hammer-to-get-the-last-one' type, and the other a more exploratory wander into the realm of unusual; peanut butter-bacon brownies. I tried several of the pbb variety to really get a handle on the flavor. I fried the bacon until it was quite crispy, but still the experience of encountering something salty, smoky, and chewy in a brownie can throw you for a loop. I liked it. I think the saltiness balanced out the uber-chocolateness of the brownies.  

Bacon has had quite a resurgence in popularity in 2008 and I can only see it continuing as we grow deeper into 2009.  Chocolate with bacon, bread with bacon, peanut butter with bacon, the list goes on.  I'd like to think my approach is novel - as does everyone, I'm sure - but my grandfather, 'Grampie,' who lived with my family and my grandmother until they both passed when I was in junior high and high school, had a consistent regimen of peanut butter and bacon sandwiches (on buttered white bread, no less) at least once a week.  At the time I thought it was a disgusting combination, but now I see that he and my grandmother were on to something.  Perhaps it was the influence of the depression era that flavored the foods they learned to love; making the best, tastiest dish with what they had available and through that finding flavor combinations that were previously uncharted, but logical once given a chance.

So give those avant garde bakers and chefs a chance.  Try their mustard doughnuts and tomato frostings and onion cakes.  Eat a sandwich you think might have emerged from the imagination of a 5 year old.  And try my brownies; you'll be surprised.