BREAKIN' BACON: AMERICAN IDOL TWEETS BACON LOVE

Good news, baconeers: Crystal Bowersox, the American Idol contestant that SHOULDA won (no offense, Lee) is one of us. Witness this tweet of a few hours ago:

I Can't Believe It's Not Bacon: HICKORY INCENSE

If there's a smell anywhere near as enthralling as the aroma of frying bacon, it is the scent of pork being cured through the magical power of smoke. If you agree, do yourself a favor and drive--or fly, hitchhike, whatever you need to do--to a little town in central Wisconsin called Wittenberg. Despite a pretty teeny population (about 1,100 if everyone's home that day), there's a decent number of attractions to hold your interest. There are charming murals adoring scores of town buildings. Diane's Restaurant serves up some of the best hot java to ever fill a mug.

And, of course, there's Nueske's.

Nueske's is the mecca of cured meats. Bacon's the star attraction, to be sure, but there's also sausages, smoked turkey, and ham tempting enough to bring a vegan to his knees. You could lose hours on end wandering through the shop, marveling at the stunning array of meats and gourmet foodstuffs--and oh, the smell. Just wandering through for a 30-minute stretch is enough to infuse your clothes and hair with the rich, earthy scent of applewood smoke. We think Heaven's atmosphere is air pumped directly from the inside of the shop, it's that tantalizing.

Unfortunately, you can't just go to the household products aisle at Target and pick up a Glade Plug-In that smells like bacon. Oh, but wouldn't it be marvelous if you could turn the key in your front door and open it to be greeted by the tantalizing odor of wood-smoked bacon? That's what we were hoping for when we procured the insanely adorable little incense burner pictured here (procured from Albuquerque-based Inciensio de Santa Fe), and a ton of little bricks of natural hickory wood. We've been in love with this company for about a decade now. Instead of the dirty-hippie smell of the chemical-laden cheapo stick incense favored by stoned college kids, these incenses smell like pinion, cedar, juniper, mesquite and--of course--hickory. We logged onto the site and ordered a bigass box of hickory cones. We figured that if we were lucky, flaming those bad boys up would create a reasonable bacon smokehouse facsimile. If not: oh, well--we'd still enjoy the fireplace-like smell of burning wood.

When we inhaled the first wisps of smoke, we exhaled disappointment. The smell was lovely, to be sure, but not very evocative of a bacon smokehouse. But then, when the incense nubs burned down and the smoke cleared, a marvelous thing happened. The campfire smell morphed into the aroma of lingering hickory smoke--just like a smokehouse! Oh, happy occasion--we've discovered a way to have the smell of bacon in our lives 24/7, even when we haven't touched the oven in days!

We've been so delighted by the bacony smell permeating the BDJ barracks that we're going to be needing another box o' hickory bricks. We're thinking of ordering more burners for other rooms (wouldn't this steam engine look fabulous in the lavatory?) so the smell of bacony smoke never leaves our happy nostrils.

Rasher Review: BACON BURGER AT THE COUSINS

BDJ Labs ventured out last night for dinner--this time, to The Cousins, a new restaurant not very far from our place--and of course, we had to order stuff with bacon on it. The menu said our beef-bacon sammich would be adorned with three strips o' bacon, so that's what we were expecting--instead, we got about SIX. Pay attention, Wendy's, because this is what a bacon burger SHOULD look like. Nice, thick bacon slices--full length, not the sad, thin, truncated rashers atop the Baconator--to create a 1/2-inch layer of pork crowning the beef patty. For a measly $9--not too terribly much more than a Wendy's Baconator value meal--we were treated to a hearty 1/2-lb. Angus burger with a satisfying amount of bacon, and a huge pile of steak fries on the side. It's not quite Kuma's, but it was pretty darned good for a small bit o' cash and a short walk from home. If you're on Chicago's North side, go support this humble little restaurant, and applaud them for giving such good bacon.

BACONEWS: Bacon and bloggers, sittin' in a tree...

From msnbc.com: Trying to Create Online Buzz? Just Add Bacon 

Sadly, this item doesn't contain much bacon, other than a mention of our beloved Bacon Hot Sauce. However, it does bring up a good topic: bloggers whoring themselves for free product. While we're frankly disgusted by bloggers that are willing to speak glowingly of products they don't necessarily believe in to get free stuff (we know of one mommy blogger who has a kitchen full of sparkling new appliances and didn't pay a dime for any of them), we are more than willing to review and spout fabulously compliment-laden copy about products we do support and enjoy. Hand-crafted bacon? Send it along--we'll eat it and, odds are, we'll love it. Then, we can write nice things. If you send us crap, we'll write that it's crap. In conclusion, if you stand behind your bacon product and believe that it's truly awesome, then you by all means should send it to us for trying and writing about--we would love to tell our readers about it and share the awesome with them.

Drop us a line here for more information.

Breakin' bacon: BACONFEST DINNER AT CHALKBOARD

You're looking at the first course of the first satellite dinner hosted by Baconfest Chicago. Tickets for last night's event sold out lightning fast, so BFC had to schedule a second, which is tonight. In case you're one of those lucky people, I am loathe to reveal the entire menu or offer a detailed review for fear of ruining the surprise and delight that Gil Langois of Chalkboard has in store. If you didn't get a ticket, fear not--two more dinners are scheduled in the coming weeks.

I will tell you that my personal highlight last night was this opening dish--a plank of Nueske's bacon leaning against a perfectly roasted scallop, accompanied by preserved watermelon, vanilla mayo and candied Kalamata olives. Normally I hate olives (I refer to them as "the devil's eyeballs"), but dining companion Jenni Grover Prokopy and I agreed that they were tiny little nuggets of awesomeness. From the first sip of Prosecco, to the bacon-laden dessert, the entire menu was perfect--not a wrong note anywhere. We'll leave the details at that--no more spoilers.

Now that we're recovering from our bacon hangover, two things occur to us:
1. Bacon really is the king of all meats. It doesn't take a culinary genius of Langois' caliber to figure out that we've been severely limiting bacon by relegating it to the role of breakfast side dish and sandwich topping for so very long. This plucky little meat product has more tricks up its sleeve than the world's best magician.
2. Pork belly needs to be recognized as a perfectly acceptable cut of meat. I shouldn't have to schlep to a weekend farmer's market, settle for a frozen hunk at a butcher, or beg a hunk off a kindly local chef to cook it up. Fresh pork belly should be available EVERYWHERE, because it should be enjoyed by EVERYONE.

Test #304: Bacon + LAUGHING COW CHEESE

The subject

What exactly is the reason the bovine on the package of Laughing Cow cheese is so tickled? We at BDJ Labs know why. "Ha  ha!" the cow is thinking to herself. "I've conned people into buying these pasty white flavorless wedges of crap! Ha ha moo! They think it's CHEESE! Moo-wah-ha-ha!"

The Laughing Cow wedges shouldn't even be CALLED cheese--it's an insult to dairy products everywhere. We figured the horrid little triangles of blergh could only be improved by wrapping them with bacon and subjecting them to a couple minutes in a hot oven. So, that's exactly what we did...

The results
Nope. Still sucked.

The conclusion: Bacon + Laughing Cow "cheese" = udderly disgusting

Pretty pork: BACON IRON-ONS

The Renegade Craft Fair is in Chicago this weekend, bringing a crap-ton of silkscreened t-shirts, handmade pillows, silkscreened t-shirts, knitted goods, felt dolls, silkscreened t-shirts, whimsical toys, and silkscreened t-shirts to the Windy City. Baconeers in attendance saw many pork-emblazoned items on display. Makes sense--creative minds are fueled by bacon, after all. Keen-eyed Chicago writer Maura Hernandez spotted these nifty bacon-strip iron-ons in the Diffraction Fiber booth. We at BDJ will definitely be ordering some of these babies--our lab coats could use some decoration (besides the grease spots, that is).

Have you seen any nifty handmade bacon goods? Alert us by dropping a line to BDJlabs@gmail.com.