Archie "mmmm bacon" McPhee

Every holiday season I buy stocking stuffers, and a variety of gifts from Archie McPhee. So I was pleased that a print catalog from them showed up in time for my black Friday shopping needs. Everyone knows, at least I think every one knows that they have a great selection of novelty bacon items (try the mints at your own risk). They have a wide selection of items, but what theme did they pick for their holiday catalog?? mmmmm bacon.

Did you know that they have a blog over there at McPhee's? They do and occasionally Mr. Bacon answers questions. Check it out. How fun must it be to work some place that sells cool bacon items and toys as well as has Mr. Bacon blogging for them?

The Bacon in Bean Town

Earlier this year, my work sent me to Massachusetts for a few days and of course, I was away from home and longing for comfort food - Bacon!

  Now while I partook of some of the local specialties like a lobster roll and clam chowder, I couldn't help but imagine how Bacon could add a level of depth and flavor to these already deliciously decadent dining delights.  

   SO, after working our tails off, I took a little drive and let my inner Bacon guide me.   As irresistible as the Kavorka, the Bacon in me took control of my steering wheel, and as the picture below illustrates, guided me to exactly what I sought.....

..while it wasn't Bacon that I could eat, I knew this deserved some attention on our site. Although, I would have named the place Bacon Liquors ( Bacon lickers :) ), it was a fine establishment with a very friendly and helpful staff. The Northborough location was the one I found.
After my stop here, my bacon hunting desire was fueled even more and off I went.

My web is bacon flavored.

Have you ever used Tinyurl? take a long URL and you make it tiny, been around forever, if you have never used it, then you probably aren't a geek. Well the genius behind bacongeek.com (one of my favorite baconlogs, see how I added bacon to blog there, man I am clever, seriously, this site is awesome it has two of the three elements that define me, bacon and geek, if it had Mountain Dew it would be like the ultimate trifecta, in fact I would begin to wonder if I had some sort of alternate me out there, but I digress.) they have launched a GREAT new site, http://bacn.me/ it is like tinyurl, but it is for bacon, now all those long url's that you wanna send to your favorite bacon friend can be shortened and thereby made sweet, by using http://bacn.me/, cool huh?

There is a post here (http://bacn.me/6a) that explains it way better than what I have done. So if you got a great link to share with us, all I can say is "bacon me".

Pocket Pork from Maxim

That headline may conjure up all sorts of images, especially when I tell you its about porn...well bacon porn.  Don't worry it is SFW, well as safe as Maxim ever is, guess it depends on your work.

A handy dandy "Pocket Pork Calender" with 12 graphic bacon porn images for all your baconlust needs.  You have all the oldies but goodies here, bacon chocolate, deep fried bacon, maple-bacon lollipops, the works.  I suggest laminating it or something as it won't hold up to 12 months of drool.

The picture here is just a scan from the magazine, its not as hi-res as it could be, that is so you will go out and buy and or but up your own copy of the magazine.  

Special shout out to the guys watching the systems through the night so we don't have to, you guys rule, I'll be sending some bacon your way.

Windy City Bacon

In the vein of Sodolak's Steak House in Snook, TX, The Risque Cafe in Chicago is offering up country-fried bacon.  There is an article and picture in the Chicago Sun-Times, the article also mentions Chinaski's Bar, which on the first Monday of every month they have all you can eat bacon... for free.  

I love this quote: "All true religions have to have some monthly faith meeting," says one employee, when asked about the purpose of the bottomless bacon bowl.

So that's where the Church of Bacon is meeting.  If anyone has tried either of these or heads over and checks em out, let us know in the comments.  Chicago is a bit of a drive from SoCal... but when we do our Bacon Across America© road trip you know we will be stopping in.

Sombody gets it, bacon IS the meat.

Too often bacon is relegated to the duty of garnish, and add on to a sandwich to enhance and improve. A job it does well and without any complaints. Sure you got your BLT or B³ the way I do it (substitute bacon for the other two, then you got something), but that gives the lettuce and tomato equal billing. Well we heard from friends that a local sub shop chain "Sub-Contractor" had a little something for the Lords of Bacon, #6 Bacon and Cheese. That isn't the toppings, that IS the sandwich. How friggin awesome! Bacon Jason and I decided to head up the street to the Sub-Contractor closest to the office and see for ourselves. The staff was super friendly and we chatted about bacon, I am not sure if they thought we were nuts or what with the way we were going on about bacon. The people at work have learned to tune us out so we forget sometimes our level of bacon obsession can freak people out when they meet Bacon Jason and I for the first time. In any case, they were friendly, and didn't seem like they would spit in our food even after ordering a "large Farva".

We both got the #6 and grabbed some napkins to mop up our drool. There was a list of toppings you could add just as you would any sub sandwich, I went for some lettuce for color, and I am still nervous about tomatoes so I opted for olives. The iPhone doesn't do a macro focus too well so the picture here is pretty crappy. You ever eat some place where the food is decent but the service is so bad you won't go back? The service here was AWESOME and I may go back for food again. I feel bad for the review I am about to give because the staff was so great, but honesty is always best I feel. The bacon in the sandwich was too crisp, I mean like extra crispy, what you might use as pizza topping. Not bad, but very, very crispy. The sandwiches were crunchy, not sure that is a good thing. Perhaps if the bacon were a little less on the crispy side this would be a very repeatable sandwich. But as it stands, we both felt like once was enough. We left a little disappointed but with a belly full of extra crispy #6 and a hope of someday finding the ultimate bacon sandwich.

BLT = Bacon Lovers Talk

Those crazy kids over at Oscar Mayer have put together a little social networking that launches today. Bacon Talk has been up for a while with some blog posting, and today they launch their "community" section. Think bacon-centric facebook/myspace but with less evil and more bacon. I am not a huge fan of social networking sites, but since this is a niche one and that niche is bacon, I am giving it a try. Come on by and sign up, its free, and add me as a friend if you like, my user name is "Bacon_Chris". See you there!

Costco - Thats a lot of bacon!

While walking through Costco at lunch the other day, my friend Dennis and I came upon a cooler filled with hundreds of pounds of bacon. Literally this thing was probably 8 feet long and a couple of feet deep, completely filled with these double packs of bacon. He stopped me from climbing in and rolling around in it, which is probably a good thing as I want to be able to go back and get some of this to review. Its four pounds for just under $11 so its a very affordable bacon, but if it is only as good as the price, I have to go through four pounds of the stuff. Oh the sacrifice... OK I'll do it.

Boss Hog Style Bacon

You didn't think we ordered JUST jerky from Baconfreak.com did you? Of course not, we went with the Boss Hog Style Bacon - Hickory Smoked Brown Sugar Cured bacon because it just sounded so damn good. Turns out we picked a popular one, as I was writing this I noticed over on baconfreak that this very bacon is featured in the latest edition of Maxim magazine. Congrats to them for getting the attention they deserve.

If you take a look at the picture you will see this is some meaty bacon. It smells fantastic from the time you open the package and after you cook it up. My house smelled like someone was cooking bacon over a campfire once I was done cooking this up. The downside of that is the scent lingered well after I had eaten all the bacon, and was making me hungry for more. This is a great wake to the smell of bacon type of bacon, if you are lucky enough to have someone cook this for you to wake you up, you are in for a great day indeed. This bacon did not suffer from the usual shrinkage you get from average bacon, it will never shout "I was in the pool!"

This is the first of the many bacons available at baconfreak.com, and if this is any indication of what the other bacons are like, I am going to LOVE reviewing each and every one they have. This was full of flavor, very meaty, and a great stand alone bacon. Not too salty, and a great sweet smokey flavor make this one of the best bacons we have tried so far here at LoB. We noticed from the packaging that it was shipped from Moorpark, CA. This is literally around the corner from where Bacon Jason and I live, I wonder if they have like a factory store where you can walk up and get bacon, that would be awesome. In any case it means a very fast turn around on shipping, so that is a bonus.

Boss Hog receives the first of what I expect to be many great reviews, four and a half strips!

Bacon the Fresh & Easy way

I love food, especially bacon. That being said it is no wonder I enjoy cruising the aisles of the grocery store and checking out new things to put bacon on, etc. There is a fairly new chain of stores called fresh & easy and there is one opening this week in my neighborhood. Not much happens in my neighborhood so this store opening is not only the most exciting thing in a while, but also the source of much anticipation. Yes, excited and anticipating a grocery store opening, I very well might be old.

In today's mail I spied a flier from the new fresh & easy with details of the grand opening etc. As I open it up, what do I see? A turkey covered with bacon! I knew the anticipation wasn't for naught. But wait as I look closer, its not just a serving suggestion, they are selling turkeys pre-wrapped with smoked bacon for Thanksgiving! I haven't even been there yet and I love this store! Once they open I will have to go and check their bacon section and write it up here. Hopefully it will be worth the wait.

UPDATE: Fresh and easy website has been updated to include the current ad with the turkey, also of note, bacon wrapped sausages!!