bacon

Babies know from birth that bacon is delicious, FACT

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I was frying up some bacon yesterday and apparently the smell is somehow inherently delicious.  I don’t know how Evie would know the smell of bacon or know that it is something that she wanted!  She was just sobbing and sobbing, “Baaacon!  Baaacon!” and demanding “bacon” on her “plate” in the “big girl chair”.  On one hand it was quite funny on the other hand it was very sad because I too know the want of bacon when you don’t have any.  I was kind of thinking about grabbing the video camera for bacon posterity and then Sara said, “You’re thinking about recording this, aren’t you?”

So, the other day Sara sat me down for a Zombie Intervention.  “Shane” she said, “You know that zombies aren’t really going to attack, right?”  This was a funny thing to say since she had just given me the Zombie Survival Guide for my birthday.  I told her that of course I didn’t really believe that and it was a big joke and I am astounded that after all of this time she couldn’t tell the difference.  She seemed to accept that, so I think it bought me some more time to really get my zombie plans in place.  I mean, I know i might not be zombies per say, it could be velociraptors for example.  Anyway, she said that she was sure that some readers of this blog wouldn’t be able to tell if I were joking or not.  So what do you think, gentle reader? Vote in the comments.

I’m only half way through the Survival Guide, but so far it has been pretty good.  The only downside is that it presents only one type of zombies and says that is the only type.  So if you depend only on this text and it ends up being fast zombies or voodoo zombies or comet zombies, you will be in trouble.  Anyhoo, it has opened my eyes to a couple of interesting points, for example, consider holing up in a school.  They are often on lock down (at least inner city schools) and you will have access to both food from the cafeteria and first aid supplies from the nurses’ office.  So I am now thinking about abandoning my house (as I’ve said, it is indefensible) and moving to one of the schools down the street.  In addition to the benefits of schools, it also has a fenced in back yard with like 12 foot fences which could potentially allow for a secure vegetable garden of some sort.  “You see” Sara said, “This is when I start to think you take this too seriously.”  “I’m doing this for you!” I replied.  Oh well, when the dead start to rise, we’ll see who gets the last laugh…

In other me news, I have been quite the handy man about the house lately.  I’ve put up coat hangers and shelves including wall anchors, replaced 3 very high light bulbs, replaced a light switch and even repaired our broken, all-set-for-the-trash coat rack with some cement.  I even had to make two different trips to the hardware store.  Carpenter, electrician, mason…you want it, I got it.  In fact, the garbage disposal was clogged and I was a little disappointed that the trick I read about on the Internet cleared it out, because I was all set to take apart the pipe and add plumber to my resume.  Oh well, all’s well that ends well.

Bacon Salt – Aces 10

/ Shane / 4 Comments

As reported earlier, there exists a seasoning (or magical fairy dust) that can add bacon flavoring to anything.  Proving what a good idea it is to include statements like “So, if you are looking for an early Christmas present for me, look no further” in your blog, I received said Bacon Salt as a Christmas present from (who else?) NBH.  Just to jog your memory, these guys started a company with the winnings they earned from America’s Funniest Home Videos, which is clearly the best way to start a company.

I actually received a number of items: Original, Hickory flavored, Peppered and a jar of “Baconnaise”, which is obviously bacon flavored mayonnaise.  I also received a bumper sticker.

I decided to try the orginal flavor first to get a baseline.  It sort of smelled like bacos rather than real bacon, but I’m okay with that.  I guess it has to since it is vegtarian friendly (Rachael, you can try it next time you are here)  I decided to try it on bean soup seeing as that has bacon in it already.  Fantastic.  I don’t know that it tasted more bacon-y per say, but it hands down tasted more delicious-y.  Absolute improvement.

The next night we had burgers.  Naturally I wanted to add some Bacon Salt as part of my normal burger seasonings.  Sara wouldn’t let me  and insisted I season them normally and then add Bacon Salt on mine at the end if I so wanted.  Clearly that just isn’t the same, but anyway I decided it was the perfect time to try out the Baconnaise.  Another success!  The bacon flavor was kind of mild, but there was no doubt that the flavor of the burger was improved.

I guess, in general, that is the only downside to this stuff; you really need to pour it on to get good bacon flavoring.  Now maybe I’m just a bacon maniac, but I would assume that anybody that would go so far as to buy this stuff probably is as well.  However, that is a small price to pay for bacon deliciousness on every piece of food you consume.

I was going to ask for suggestions on what to try it on next, but as I thought about it I realized, virtually anything!  It would be much easier to list the things you SHOULDN’T eat it on.  The possibilities are endless and my supply should last me a long, long time.

Bacon Scarf

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I meant to get this out before Christmas in case anybody needed a gift for me, but I didn’t get around to it.  However, given my impending birthday, you may still have time to make me up a bacon scarf.

Link courtesy some Norwegian.

Thanksgiving update is in there somewhere

/ Shane / 1 Comment

So, I haven’t really given a life update in a while, so I’m going to throw a bunch of stuff in here.

The Saturday a week before Thanksgiving, we participated in a parenting first: taking our child to the emergency room.  It wasn’t really an emergency per say, but Evie was showing a lot of signs of an ear infection which she had just gotten over (so we thought) and we were supposed to leave that day for a week of vacation.  I thought this was a rite of passage because when I was little we had to go to the emergency room like a million times (mostly due to ear infections), but Sara said they didn’t go very often when she was little.  Anyway, it took a while but everybody was nice and it wasn’t the horror story I was envisioning.  The doctor said the ears were a little pink but she couldn’t say for certain that she had an ear infection.  Luckily they gave us the antibiotic anyway since her eardrum ruptured less than 24 hours later!  They also gave us a handy sheet with information on it such as how to say some of the tougher medical words (in FECT shun in case you were wondering).  The second antibiotic gave her bad diarrhea for a week (“thanks dad!” – future Evie) but seemed to clear things up.  However, at her follow up it looks like there still may be a problem, we were referred to an Ear Nose and Throat doctor.  The result of that appointment was yet another round of antibiotics and the possibility of tubes in her ears come January.  Everyone in my family has ear trouble.  Apparently we have small ear canals which makes fluid sit longer which is a breeding ground for bacteria.  So it looks like she has a legacy to live up to, unfortunately! 😦  

So we went to MI where I deposited Sara and Evie for the week before coming back to work (hence the temporary bachelor-hood).  I thought I would have lots of time to relax, but I had quite a list of things to do, so it went pretty fast.  I did catch up on a lot of sleep though.  While she was gone, Sara got her haircut really short and donated it to Beautiful Lengths.  She’s super cute. 🙂

I caught back up to them at my mom’s house where everybody (including Sara’s family) came for Thanksgiving.  Good times, good eats, and Evie learned a new religion:

We also managed to hit up my dad’s, where Sara collected many sticks and pine cones which can be hard to come by in Chicago, and Science Central.  Science Central suffered an unfair comparison since we had just recently been to the Please Touch Museum, but it was actually a pretty good time.  We spent longer there than we expected to.

Evie tried her first taste of bacon, which was a momentous occasion!  She liked it of course.  She also tried something else:

You probably can’t tell from this picture, but she really liked that as well.

Although she is still sleeping through the night, she has had some setbacks after vacation.  She has woken up once a couple of nights and also seems to have decided that 4 a.m. is a pretty good time to get up.  Although we don’t let her get out of her crib until 5:30, sometimes she just stays awake and plays or cries.  Which means I am back to sleeping on the floor sometimes.  Hopefully we are done with that and back on track though after just a few nights.  Last night she slept until 5:30 (whoever thought I would be happy to “sleep in” until 5:30?!)

She knows well over 200 words now and she’s making 3 word sentences.  She is especially into Christmas words at the moment like pistmas tree, santa, snowman, angel, reindeer, snowflake, sled, etc.  She can recognize about 6 colors; blue, green, pink, orange, purple and brown but she doesn’t always get those right.  She can “read” (i.e. recognize) about 6 written words; stop, zoo, Evie, mommy, daddy and taxi.  That part is the most amazing to me.  I know that she’s not really reading per say, but it still seems like you aught not to be able to recognize words by 16 months.  The doctor said she is speaking somewhere between a 2 year old and a 3 year old level.  

I try not to brag about my daughter or get too excited about things, especially since I don’t have any frame of reference about how much a kid is supposed to be doing, but I suppose writting all of that on my blog is bragging a *little* bit. 🙂

Bacon Worship

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Just when I am getting comfortable with my new Flying Spaghetti Monster religion, along comes a new religion based on Bacon!  This is no fly-by-night operation either, they have a great URL, a bible and even a political party.

What do they do for communion?  Might I suggest deep fried bacon?

Links courtesy of Tony Vegas and InteractiveReader, respectively.