• You’ve done everything else with your iPhone, now you can turn it into a meat thermometer [iGrill]
• The Japanese pose a new threat to butchers: robot ham de-boners [Switched]
• Meat and Xanax: both will have a calming effect on you [Globe and Mail]
• Bacon of the Month Club, Bacon Combo Packs, Bacon Coffee… you see where this is going [Bac'n]
• And finally, some food for thought: it is only through the consumption of meat that humans have achieved so much [NPR]

Maybe it’s just us, but, even by the fevered standards of the Bacon Explosion-era hysteria, there seems to be a rise in bacon reporting of late. Of note:

Avec Eric: Everything is Better with Bacon

Bacon Backlash—or so says the WSJ—but we’re not buying it [WSJ]

There is now a bacon-themed board game: Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure [Archie McPhee]

NPR is getting into the act with their report on NYC’s Bacon Palooza [NPR]

Add bacon to the War on Terror—it was used in an attack on a S.C. mosque [CBS]

And if you’re feeling inspired, it’s DIYB (do it yourself bacon making) [Michael Ruhlman]

Oh, dear reader, how we wish this post were about some story where the actor Kevin Bacon is arrested for some illegal pork transport or the like. Alas, it is not.

Yes, as Grub Street and others have so emphatically pointed out every time it comes up, bacon is a tired trend. All the bacon chewing gum and vegetarian-friendly kosher powders that make everything taste like bacon are an abomination. Some in our stable have even written multiple letters directly to bacon begging it to stop. But it doesn’t stop.

The latest bacon idiocy is a bust of Kevin Bacon made out bacon. Sorry, yes, it’s to help cancer patients. But it doesn’t look a thing like Kevin Bacon.  It does look exactly like Conan O’Brien, however. But that sort of ruins the joke.

People get away with way too much dumb shit just because they say they are raising money for cancer, anyway.

But all of this nonsense is beside the point. Because everyone loves bacon, right? As Jessica Applestone pointed out Primal in Napa this weekend, even vegetarians eat bacon. So, we think bacon is the wedge to start the whole-animal conversation. Give a man a bacon pork jowl and he’ll really be listening to you (if he can hear you over the crunching). So, bring on the busts of Kevin Bacon made out of bacon and sell them on eBay. Go ahead.

Because you can’t stop bacon. Hell, there is even a bacon mania Wikipedia page. How can you hate on any trend that allowed this to be written in Wikipedia?

There is a “clamoring” for the bacon happy hour at Bad Decisions bar in Fells Point which includes a menu that is completely redone with bacon dishes and big bowls of bacon served on the bar (using up to 30 pounds of bacon in a two hour period).^[8]

But despite the gross implications of 30 pounds of bacon being consumed in a Baltimore bar alongside Natty Bos at break-neck speed, the insatiable thirst for bacon is an opportunity. The Wikipedia entry on “bacon mania” references a story in The Stranger subtitled “The End of Our Long Coronary Nightmare” that predicted swine flu would end the bacon explosion. Of course, it did not. And therein lies the strength and power of this foodstuff.

In the interests of globalization we’ve reached across the pond to feature a Briton butcher. Meat fans, please meet Mr. James Morgan of Stilton Butchers. The Morgan family runs a pretty sizable operation over there, 13,500 state-of-the-art sq-feet in Peterborough delivering to the restaurant industry like a UK family of LaFriedas, and direct to consumers via the web and phone straight out of the beautiful countryside in Cambridgeshire county (from where the cheese that is so good crumbled on a filet does not come, fun fact; another fun fact, Stilton Butchers gave away tickets to see the local football club, The Posh).

And if you want to see bacon (and you do, we know you do, we’ve seen the Google search numbers), they’ve got the real stuff. But we admire how they don’t get haughty about it, like some Brits do (they even offer a “streaked bacon” to their customers — and see below where James offers the most decorously magnanimous answer we’ve ever gotten from an Englishman when we’ve asked about American bacon).

Hails from: Peterborough England

Based/ shop located:
Unit 2 Reynolds Industrial Park
Stevern Way Edgerley Drain Road
Peterborough PE1 5EL

Mantra: Quality fresh meat delivered to you door

Favorite cut: Ribeye Steak

Most under-rated cut: Braising Steak

Favourite preparation: French Trim Rack of Lamb

Favourite side dish: Sweet Potato

Best offal: Lambs Liver

Worst offal: Ox Kidney

Favourite meat/beverage pairing: Ribeye Steak and a nice cold Beer

A knife should always be sharp.

The best part of a pig is the shoulder.

The main problem with American bacon is we don’t see it enough in England.

A hamburger should be cooked fully.

You can never have too many spices.

The thing most people don’t realize is that fresh chicken is not always more expensive than frozen, because by the time you take away weight loss from defrosting, the chicken breast will weigh less than when it was frozen.

Everyone should read a book on correctly cooking meat.

The best advice I ever received was, “Never sell something you would not eat yourself.”

The best advice I ever gave was, “Never sell something you would not eat yourself.”

The winner and new heavy-weight brunch champion of the West Village: Wilfie & Nell. The W 4th Street spot, a relative newcomer that just began brunch this winter, would be a serious contender based on the strength of its eye-openers alone.

The traditionalist’s bases are well-covered by a champagne cocktail (with elderflower and orange bitters), the Spicy Bloody Mary (with a drop of Guinness and a splash of McClure’s Pickle juice) and, our new favorite breakfast drink, the Bloody Bull (the same as the aforementioned but with beef bullion). For those of you more into juice in the a.m. there is a Lagunita’s with grapefruit juice and ginger (a beermosa if you will),and the transcendent Breakfast Negroni (Compari, Compano, fresh lime and grapefruit juice).

Now it’s a well known fact, that brunch is a meal best accompanied by HP Sauce, and W&N does right on this score. The menu is not long, but it hits all the right notes — with shrimp and champ (scallion and potato tossed with seared shrimp and bacon crisps — real ones), an Irish back bacon and goat cheese sandwich, potato cake with ham steak and two fried eggs, and a standout corned beef hash and eggs (above) that bares no resemblance to the diner staple. Thick hunks of actual corned beef are mixed with potato wedges with red cabbage on the side and topped with poached eggs.

If you go off the brunch menu you won’t be disappointed either. The Scotch egg might stop your heart, and if that doesn’t do the trick the pigs in the blanket will. These are not sausages wrapped in some flaky puff pastry, no sir; that is an amateur’s blanket. These sausages are wrapped in bacon, thank you.

Courtesy: Republic of Bacon, Maple Leaf Bacon
Agency: john st., Toronto
Creative Directors: Stephen Jurisic, Angus Tucker
Art Director/Illustrator: Patrick Shing
Copywriter: Paul Constantakis

An alert reader who has been to some very dark places (because the All Occasion Bacon Tuxedo is clearly something one picks up in a Vietnamese brothel) sends in this treat for those of you into meat pants or meat jackets, this is the whole shebang: a full meat suit.

The coup de grace is, of course, the bacon bow tie.

Granted it’s just bacon print, but the package does promise a bonus bacon scent. And you know what that does to the ladies, right?  Just look at that call girl in the background — she is about to devour our man on that stone cemetery bench where he lounges, and they’ll writhe together draped in that velour curtain all night long.

Employees Only in the West Village has taken a baby New Zealand lamb chop and done something almost perverse, something that should be illegal in seven states, something that in a just and sane world would have even more people clamoring to squeeze through the hordes to get to its dining room: wrapped that diminutive lamb chop in bacon.