Bacon Domain Week!

I am a self professed nerd, geek, dork, what have you; I don't think I will get any argument from anyone, after all I write a blog about bacon for christsake. I was bragging to my girlfriend about how I had a lot of domains as that is some sort of nerd mating ritual maneuver ( I think, I may be too much of a geek to know for sure). Well long story short, she pwn'd me and my paltry number of domains. I only bring this up as it was part of the inspiration for (cue trumpet blaring, or better yet the sound of bacon sizzling here) "Bacon Domain Week!!!

The idea being each day I would register a bunch of new bacon related domains, and then down the road develop each of those domains into a multimillion dollar empire of cash and bacon.. mwhhahahaha! (that's my semi-demonic maniacal laugh, its very impressive in person but does not translate well to the written word, but trust me, it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, or at a minimum, gets strange looks).

Now I could stretch this baby out into a weeks worth of posts, one each day, all sorts of witty bacon comentary on each one providing all 3 of our RSS subscribers endless amounts of entertainment. But.... Its all going into this one post, for two reasons. 1) I'm lazy, you saw the post recently about blogging taking up a lot of time, well I got a window tonight, this is it. 2) There is a certain someone perhaps two someones who stated that if the post is more than a couple paragraphs in length they simply will not read it. And who said the MTV generation has a short attention... what was I talking about again? Well this figures to be too long for the friends with a disdain for words, and guys if you did get this far, I intend to ramble further just jump out now. :)

I should mention that our uber-admin extraordinaire was very helpful in taking time out from more important things to register each of these silly domains, or as he calls them the "tocino dominios".

Monday started out full of hope and I think with the intent of spending some of the 10's of thousandths of cents this blog generates on maybe a hundred bacon domains. Then reality set in, a lot of the really good ideas were already taken. In fact one of my first choices was http://baconisthenewblack.com/ which turns out to be a "baco-blog" already. So I added that to my bacon scented RSS reader and resumed our quest for one hundred bacon domains. I checked my account balance, did some number crunching, projected the ROI from this little whim of internet bacon domain domination, and made the command decision; one domain a day for the work week was probably overkill, but what the heck 5 is a semi round number, as well as the top bacon strip rating here at LoB, so with the goal being set it was into the think tank of bacon grease to come up with the ultimate 5 bacon domains. I would like to say that we achieved success in finding the 5 greatest bacon domains ever thought of, when in reality, we wound up covered in bacon fat and smelling good enough to lick for like 2 weeks. Monday's domain is a pretty good one, possibly one of my favorite from the week allaboutthebacon.com; its descriptive, you know what you are getting right from the domain name. I mean, really isn't it all about the bacon? Just saying.

So on Tuesday, it was feeling lonely in the old shop, lots of empty cubes, former spots filled with the friends and comrades that once worked in our department. I thought about 'tipping the 40' for our friends, but since the very presence of alcohol at work would be a cause for immediate dismissal, I decided to toast them with bacon. As I sat there with some fresh hot "instant bacon" (review coming soon) and thinking about all the people that were missing out on its smokey aroma because they are all now employed over at Tom's space, Tuesday's domain came to me, an applewood smoked domain that represents a little love for the homies, mybaconspace.com. One day it too will be the 2nd largest site of its kind; a bacon social network, where bacoterians can meet, post oddly angled pictures of their favorite bacons, and wonder if they are the only person on the site over the age of sixteen.

Wednesday was push day, like there is a schedule that is followed or something, not sure if it was classic or code flavored like water but didnt have a lot of time to think of domains. Fortunately, while working with this drummer that moonlights as a change management engineer, we were discussing bacon..... I know duh! He mentions "Bacon is awesome!" again I know... duh! Would you believe that baconisawesome.com wasn't registered?!? I didn't...but it is now. Three down and two to go. I was thinking we gotta really nail it on Friday, ya know, save the best for last? Well if my ADD friends by some miracle are still with me, feel free to wander over to /. as its really just more of the same for the next couple of paragraphs.

Thursday, I am not sure what was on my mind. I dunno if it was the Adam Sandler sketch about weight lifting or the fact I was trying to figure out what makes my saliva glands kick into over drive more, bacon or my girlfriend. But I envision either some sort of advice page or perhaps funny situations where the answers to the issue boil down to either bacon or sex. Not sure on the presentation yet, but really are there any two greater forces that can drive ones decisions? Like the old angel on one shoulder and devil on the other, except on one its smokey delicious bacon, and the other, your significant other calling you to bed, or the couch or kitchen counter...... hey I don't judge, whatever your thing is...rock on! Anyway baconorsex.com becomes Thursday's domain, and I can literally hear the uber-admin's eyes rolling right through the gtalk window.

Thank Bacon It's Friday! This one seemed a little anti-climactic, but it is very simple. In math when you factor a number several times you say x the nth power, well what if you took bacon to the power of bacon. Yes I realize that bacon is not your normal math or algebraic type of equation, ya know since its not a number and all, and even though you can spell it with some letters, I am not sure there is a mathematical symbol that represents bacon, although I am still not sure that the ~ tilde is not secretly a bacon symbol in disguise. What with math all up in my head on Friday, I know, you all get all mathy on Fridays too right?? No?? Anyway, I was thinking of bacon equations and ways to turn those into domain names and well, they were all long and they sucked. I simply started thinking of bacon dotcom type names a single bacon was of course taken and parked waiting for someone to come along and snatch it up at what I am sure is a fair price...yeah right. Two bacons or baconbacon, also parked. Three bacons or baconbaconbacon redirects to a microwave bacon tray, wow. (Maybe we should review that here? hmmm.) So next up was baconbaconbaconbacon.com thats right 4!!!! bacons, or as I like to think of it as bacon times bacon times bacon to the power of bacon. Damn thats alot of bacon, give me a sec, I need to grab a quick bite of bacon.......... ahhhhh much better! Well that was the last of the domains for (cue trumpet blaring, or better yet the sound of bacon sizzling here) "Bacon Domain Week"!!! I like em all, they make me happy. I barely find time to blog, but I am sure I will find time to develop these babies into some righteous bacon domain website goodness.

Have a suggestion for what would make these tasty bacon domains cool? Leave a comment and let us know, I doubt we will do anything with the suggestions, but we might toast the best ones with some bacon. And I know a few people will be making a certain suggestion, and trust me you can NOT place a domain name into any orifice of ones body.

Ode to Chris and his Bacon

My dear friend Jaime is not fond of my bacon lifestyle, but accepts it. It really is all I talk about some days, it inspired her to write this little poem.

E.coli on my lettuce,
Salmonilla on my tomatoes,
Oh pray, what is next to come?
Parasites on my potatoes?

But alas there is one,
Who makes life so complete;
Not a veggie or a fruit,
But the king of all that is meat.

This is my ode to bacon,
Although I hate it so,
It has captured my friend Chris
In it's marble striped cloak.

He buys his bacon by the pound
And on his plate a mound so high,
For his bacon he has much love,
A great love that money CAN buy.

A love that reaches far beyond taste,
With bacon trinkets and doodads galore;
Bacon toys, bacon floss, bacon this, bacon that;
A bacon carpet even adorns his floor.

An expert in the bacon field,
And a self proclaimed critic of the divine meat.
With his blog about bacon,
He even declared "bacon domain" for this week.

No one can compete with this love for bacon,
And bacoterian is how he defines his race.
So much does he feel akin to this fare,
Not for any other meat could his love misplace.

This is my ode to bacon,
Although I hate it so,
But so much to I care for my dear "Bacon Chris"
That out of much love, my respect for his bacon, I will show.

"How awesome is Niman Ranch" or "Life+blogging=hard"

OK, so it has been over a month since the last post. Not to worry I have not given up on bacon. In fact this week I have declared it the unofficial "bacon domain week", registering a new bacon domain every day this week, more on that later. Life has simply gotten the priority when it comes to posting. I know there are some people that post every day or multiple times a day, boingboing this aint. I want this blog to be about bacon, for the most part, and just bacon. It's not my soapbox to bitch and complain about every little thing, unless it has to do with bacon, nor will I be posting pictures of my cats and how they did the cutest thing and are just like people. I am not one of those self involved bloggers who have little worthwhile to say and even less talent to say it, that posts entry after entry about nothing in general, drops the occasional "F-bomb" to seem edgy and does little more than prove they are a pretentious person posting crap, hoping others will subscribe to it, and adding other people's crap in hopes someone will read theirs in some sort of egocentric cyber-circle jerk. It’s all I can muster to find the time from living life to post about one of the things I enjoy most in life, bacon. I don't profess to have talent or be good at blogging, or even that original, there are others that do this better. But this is my take and life permitting, we will put up reviews of bacon, and bacon related products, and well not too much more than that.

So as for life getting in the way of blogging, here is the low down. Bacon Jason has been out of commission with a rare but completely NOT made up disease called baconmysitisis. This relatively unknown disease is almost identical to appendicitis, so much so in fact that if it reaches the critical stage, you gotta get your appendix taken out before it ruptures. Basically the difference being that unlike appendicitis where little is known about the onset of the disease, baconmysitisis is brought on by a bacoterian not eating enough bacon. Once it has set in it mimics appendicitis exactly, so much so that most doctors would be unable to distinguish any difference, and you still gotta get the appendix out. Bacon Jason had this rare disease and underwent surgery to have his appendix removed and is going to make a full recovery, look for some posts soon from him. Get well my brother. I on the other hand have been baconing it up like always and in fact life has been so good, I have a new girlfriend. I know what you are thinking, must be a vegetarian and doesn't like his bacon ways, hence no posts. Rest assured she too enjoys the bacon, and while this is not a blog about my love life, I will make just this one comment. Early on in our courtship we met for breakfast. I am not saying it was a test, but I was curious to see if she was a bacon or sausage girl, she ordered bacon, big thumbs up. But here is the cool thing, she has the last bite of bacon on her plate, she picks it up and feeds it to me, without me asking or saying a word, just feeds me her last piece of bacon. I didn't realize there was a way to make the best of all meats taste even sweeter, but that will do it. So, I am sure you are thinking the same thing I was... "Keeper" :)

My roommate and I recently had a housewarming party and our honorary "LoB" Bacon Charles shows up with not one but two types of bacon. They happen to be two of the bacons that are on our "IFR" list (intended for review) Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon, both uncured and dry-cured. This is not to discount the wonderful gift of bacon and Code Red that Josh and Apryl brought, but this review is about the Niman Ranch bacon. This high end bacon, and you can tell its “high end” because it comes in a 12 oz. package as opposed to the standard 1 pound variety, is available at Trader Joe’s as well as online.

Now I have to be honest I didn’t know the difference between uncured and cured bacon until I looked it up, and to be honest I was concerned that the uncured bacon would somehow be less bacon-y for some reason. Well I am pleased to tell you that uncured bacon is very bacon-y and this particular brand is fantastic. For this review I used the "LoB approved" bake method. Others have described this method exactly as if they had watched me prepare bacon in my kitchen, even down to the rotation detail, if I had just searched the internet before all the trial and error sessions, I would have had a lot more perfect bacon. (Just double checked the link and I see that Tony also has a plug for the Niman Ranch bacon, let that be a sign to you doubters.) Back to the bacon, from the moment I opened the packages, yes packageS, this is to be a side by side comparison, the smoky aroma hit me. This is some of the best smelling bacon since the weight of heaven post. The uncured pack seems to be somewhat thicker slices, and also a bit meatier; this could just be a slight variation of the package and is probably not an intended standard. Over all both packages are quite meatier than your average grocery store brand of bacon and I believe that is an intended standard. I did not do any pre or post measuring, but the uncured slices did seem to shrink just a slight bit more than the dry-cured but not enough to warrant wasting time with tape measures or rulers, my house smelled of freshly baked bacon!! I remember thinking, this is what our summer cabin would smell like back when I was a kid and mom would make breakfast for everyone, I paused for a moment to remember how good that was and how long it had been since I had smelled something that reminded me of home, it also reminded me I was hungry for bacon, moving onward.

I went with the dry-cured first for my taste tests, and it did not disappoint, this is delicious, thick meaty bacon. This is the type of stuff that will spoil you, and make you unable to eat cheap bacon if you can help it. I baked up these batches to the “just past chewy but not yet crispy” state, a very small window of about 90 seconds you have to pull the bacon before you go crispy, not an easy thing to get right, but these strips were on the money. The package states you need just one bite to know this is no ordinary bacon, and it is so refreshing to see truth in advertising. This is great bacon, so much so that I took a few more bites after that first one.

Next up was the uncured bacon, it looked and smelled delicious, and man did it taste good. A big difference is that the uncured has no sodium nitrates added to the meat. If you are on a low sodium thing, I would love to say this is right for you, but a quick package check shows it is merely 5mg less sodium per serving than the dry-cured, both still are prepared with salt, yummy yummy salt, sorry I forgot you are on a low sodium thing, maybe this isn’t the best reading material then. This bacon rocked, equally as tasty as the dry cured, just a slight taste difference, so slight that if I had not known it was uncured before preparing it, I don’t think I would have noticed. The smoky flavor wrapped these strips in a fluffy blanket of yummy just like the dry-cured. I recommend picking up some of this bacon and trying it yourself, you will not be sorry. I can’t wait to try the maple and chipotle flavors as well.

Both the dry-cured and uncured varieties of Niman Ranch Applewood Smoked Center cut Bacon receive 4½ out of 5 strips!