Baconfest

Quote Monday prefers the written word

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie recently drew a picture of our family:

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So Evie and Sara are apparently pretty happy, Ollie’s in a timeout, and I’m screaming. I’m not sure if I’m screaming in terror, or screaming at Ollie. I guess “screaming” is just how Evie sees me all the time. However, my favorite part is that I’m wearing a Baconfest shirt.

Evie is certainly no stranger to making signs or leaving threatening letters. However, I just happened across two hilarious letters she wrote awhile back, which we saved for posterity of course. I don’t believe I’ve blogged these before. This one is from Feb. 2012:

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Allow me to translate:

No Mom. 2-11 Love Evelyn. I don’t want to hear any more from you. 2012.

Signed and dated.

Just to show you that one’s not a fluke, here’s another from about a year later:

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Mom and Ollie, please don’t yell or bother me. It is Evie who you don’t bother. The End. Today, 19/2013/February.

Although her spelling has gotten a lot better since then, the messages haven’t changed much. She obviously believes in the power of the written word.

I think we have a potential future blogger on our hands…

Baconfest 2013, In Pictures

/ Shane / 1 Comment

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Baconfest 2013, Taste Test

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Of course, the main feature of baconfest is the annual taste test. We had a nice collection of bacons this year. We didn’t get as many sort of rare or local varieties as I would have liked (especially compared to last year), but overall I thought everything was really good. It was a pretty wide range of flavors and appearances.

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Nathan:

Brand Rating (1-10) Comments
Boar’s Head (Smoked)  5  Good crisp – Light
Sobie Meats  6  A lot more tasty fat (by tasty I mean full body) thicker cut but still a crunch.
Nueske’s (Wild Cherrywood Smoked)  4  All the fat was at the end instead of throughout
ThinkGeek Tactical Bacon  2  super thing – nice for crunch but lacked flavor
Trader Joe’s Black Forrest Bacon (dry rubbed)  5  very similar to #1. A good flavor, very light.

Amanda:

Brand Rating (1-10) Comments
Boar’s Head (Smoked)  7  Sweet. Thin. I liked the crispiness
Sobie Meats  2  Very meaty taste is strong. Like fish.
Nueske’s (Wild Cherrywood Smoked)  5  Smokey & salty
ThinkGeek Tactical Bacon  6  Not much flavor. A good breakfast bacon.
Trader Joe’s Black Forrest Bacon (dry rubbed)  7  Taste is very different in a good way. I like how thin it is.

Sara:

Brand Rating (1-10) Comments
Boar’s Head (Smoked)  8  thin (which is nice), no overpowering flavors which is also nice
Sobie Meats  5  blah. has sort of a stale flavor, a little chewy
Nueske’s (Wild Cherrywood Smoked)  7.5  a little sweet, a little salty, tastes liek a delicious campfire
ThinkGeek Tactical Bacon  4  I confess to recognizing this one. Honestly, it tastes like nothing, which is better than I expected. The texture is fine
Trader Joe’s Black Forrest Bacon (dry rubbed)  6  Has a subtly sweet flavor. Not bad, nothing fantastic either. Also, thin in a good way.

2013_04_06_9899Shane:

Brand Rating (1-10) Comments
Boar’s Head (Smoked)  5  average bacon, decent taste, bacon size was a little uneven
Sobie Meats  8  good appearance, just the right amount of fatty, good after taste, a little smokey
Nueske’s (Wild Cherrywood Smoked)  9  great flavor, salty, little fatty
ThinkGeek Tactical Bacon  2  blech
Trader Joe’s Black Forrest Bacon (dry rubbed)  8  good taste, a little different, more tough than I usually like, but it all came together for me

Evie:

Brand Rating (1-10) Comments
Boar’s Head (Smoked)  6  smiley face
Sobie Meats  1  frowny face
Nueske’s (Wild Cherrywood Smoked)  2  unsure face
ThinkGeek Tactical Bacon  10  smiley face
Trader Joe’s Black Forrest Bacon (dry rubbed)  8  smiley face

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Overall Results:

Brand Average Rating Average Rating (with Evie)
Boar’s Head (Smoked)  6.25  6.2
Sobie Meats  5.25  4.4
Nueske’s (Wild Cherrywood Smoked)  6.375  5.5
ThinkGeek Tactical Bacon  3.5  4.8
Trader Joe’s Black Forrest Bacon (dry rubbed)  6.5  6.8

Very, very close this year. I can’t believe that Trader Joe’s bacon has won 2 out of 3 years! That’s crazy. It’s also interesting that the winner didn’t change with the inclusion of Evie’s rankings.

Ollie’s ballot was exactly what you would think Ollie’s ballet would be, each one signed with an “O” to be sure there was no hanky panky.

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I would like to talk for a minute about the Tactical Bacon from ThinkGeek.

Even though it lost pretty badly, everyone was very impressed with the TacBac. This can of bacon has been sitting in my pantry for more than THREE YEARS. Sara was so disgusted by the idea of it, that she couldn’t even look at the can. And given all that, i would put it up against any of the “precooked” bacons on the market. It was remarkable, and certainly worth eating in the case of a zombie apocalypse. In fact, you’ll notice Evie gave it a full 10! I think this is probably because she doesn’t like strong tastes and it has a pretty muted flavor, but nonetheless, if anybody can give old bacon from a can a 10, I think we’ve got a winner. (Full disclosure, I did drop the slices in the bacon grease from one of the other bacons to better disguise it.)

Baconfest 2013

/ Shane / Leave a comment

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Ah, spring is in the air, and that means a young man’s mind turns to thoughts of bacon.

Our turn to host once again, and I think the food went pretty well. I kept feeling guilty, like I didn’t spend enough time planning things out. I think this was a combination of, 1) this is year 3, so we kind of know what we’re doing, 2) I spread out a lot of the planning over the course of the last year, and 3) we did some recipes that we have made before, which shouldn’t be viewed as a bad thing, since we know they are good recipes.

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The Menu

Breakfast

Piggy-shaped Pancakes

Bacon Taste Test

Lunch

Bacon-Cheddar Swirl Buns

Smokey Bacon and Corn Chowder Soup

“Bacon and Eggs” pretzels

Dinner

Kale with Bacon and Cannellini Beans

Dark Chocolate Chunk and Bacon Cookies

Snack

Roasted Chickpeas and Bacon

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There were no heart attacks, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s a win!

The bacon can get a little overwhelming, but I didn’t think it did this year. I’m always on the lookout for “bacon related” recipes that don’t actually involve bacon, such as the “bacon and egg” pretzels and the piggy-shaped pancakes (harder to come by than you might think). Also, our recipes that did involve bacon also involved a lot of other healthy(ish) ingredients. I think this was the first year that I didn’t really feel like a bloated pig (no pun intended) at the end of the day.

The day was broken up with music class and swim class, and Oliver in particular had a hard time leaving the festivities. However, these seemed like minor distractions and didn’t take away from the hours and hours spent watching Evie’s puppet shows and plays. We didn’t have any bacon related activities this year (no Kevin Bacon movie), which is maybe kind of a bummer in retrospect, but we were pretty busy all day so I don’t know when we would have fit it in.

And not one person commented on our matching shirts while we were out and about! This is especially strange to me since I practically always get a comment when I’m wearing one of my baconfest shirts around.

I must admit that we did not actually eat the roasted chickpeas and bacon until the following day. The idea was to eat them that night while we played a couple of rounds of Pandemic, but, as usual for the evening of baconfest, nobody was hungry. So we ended up making it for lunch the next day. The good news is, we did manage to keep the swine flu from taking over the world (to say nothing of the bacteria-resistant chlamydia!). I think I’d take a game of Pandemic over watching a movie any day. Lots of fun!

Baconfest is always a fantastic time, an excellent tradition, and full of delicious, bacony goodness. Evie is absolutely convinced that it is a national holiday, right up there with Easter and Christmas. I have to admit, I probably enjoy it more than a lot of other holidays!

Quote Monday learns a bad word

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Ollie: “My eyes are tired, but I’m not tired!” – said every kid everywhere

Evie: “Is ‘woooooo doggy!’ a bad word?”

Sara: “Can I take credit for looking continuously decent in every picture?” – not a big head on this one…

::Evie, making ‘bacon and egg’ pretzels for Baconfest::
Evie: “Look, it’s genes!”

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I think she meant chromosomes, but hey, still pretty impressive!

Evie: “Are two of the three kings named Orly and Tar?” – We three kings of Orly and Tar…