Bacon Explosion!

Forget the fact that it's almost been a week since my last post. This is significantly more important:

Bacon Explosion!

Yes - this is it. It's what we've all been waiting for... the bacon explosion. There could be few things better than this, and I fully intend to have one on my birthday. The only thing better than the bacon explosion? The bacon explosion plus fancy italian cold cuts and cheeses!

OMG it gets better!

Now, I'll probably leave out the veggies, and go a little light on the sauce, and use something other than velveeta (provolone is the cheese I usually think of when I dream about cheese, but I should probably use mozzarella for superior melting properties). I'll also use something other than that awful fake capicola ham - that's effing gross. Also add thyme - thyme goes great with bacon!

Anyway, this is going to be my birthday "cake." I can't imagine candles will work but if they do, it would be extra awesome.

So, sorry about waiting this long to update but there's not much interesting stuff going on and I've become rather busy with the rest of life. I'm hoping this doesn't become a trend - I like updating this frequently and discussing the experiences and the things that I'm learning. I just haven't had much time for anything new and interesting, and there's not much left for me to learn about this that I haven't already researched (okay, that's probably a lie, but at this point it's just going to be repeats of what I've already read).

There have been two interesting things this past week though. One of them involves cooking :) I love to slow cook things, and chicken is such a sucker for slow cooking because a "slow-cooked" chicken only has to braise for about 45 minutes before the meat is falling off the bone. So naturally I braised a few chicken parts just last night and had a great dinner and breakfast (letting it sit in the braising liquid all night was a really, really good idea). The braising liquid was super garlicky and awesome besides - with shallots and onions and wine and basil and bacon.... It had a TON of flavor with just a few ingredients. I'll add the recipe some other time, because it's worth sharing if not simply for how easy it was to make.

The other interesting thing involves almost meeting a vegan in the library at UW. There was some sickly skinny looking hipster walking around the library trying to get people to sign a petition for more vegan options in the cafeterias on campus. I wanted to tell him that they should actually have at least one meatetarian option before I support adding more vegan options, but I've gotten pretty good at holding my tongue. Anyway, I was working on some homework with a homework buddy when he came by... I had to look at him in the face when he asked me and I almost blew up - I felt the bloodlust rising up inside me and I almost ripped his head off and ate him right there - herbivores taste best after all. Okay not really - but I did feel a definite adrenaline response because I was about to start going off on him... it would have been bad. Time for a tangent...

I don't hate vegetarians - in fact, I have some very good vegetarian friends. I respect the fact that they think it is healthier, and the fact that they feel less cruel by not needing to kill animals to survive. I respect even more that they aren't pushy about it, and will even eat meat of they have to in order to be polite. But there is something about some vegetarians that I do hate - I hate when they devote their lives or even a small portion of their time to something that in the grand scheme doesn't really matter. There are a ton of causes you could give your time to - helping unwed mothers, counseling the old and dying, caring for homeless children, feeding the hungry, etc. - and if you choose to waste your time devoting your life to helping animals instead of people, I can't get past the fact that I think there's something wrong with you. I apologize for being so blunt about this, but I cannot be any other way about it. If you care about animals so much more than people that you waste time on a cause supporting animals rather than supporting people, I can't help but be opposed to you.

Anyway, after glaring at him for about 2 and a half seconds, I responded to his stupid question with, "no." But my study-buddy can't help but sign and support things (even though she is not a vegetarian). So the hipster gave her free PETA literature and a DVD featuring (among other similar stars) Justin Bieber. After we finished studying, she gave me the literature and DVD - I assume for the comedic value of it. I read it, and walked away from it with several thoughts. First of all, they had a lot of quotes from celebrities. Second, there were a lot of awful looking pictures. And last, the whole pamphlet made me feel like I was being treated like a 12-year-old girl.

I talked with a sympathetic vegetarian friend of mine about the literature, and insisted that I found it humorous, mostly because of the childishness of it. In my opinion, it didn't look like it was designed for critically thinking college students you would be likely to find in a library at one of the top universities in the country. It looked like it was (literally) designed for young girls who love animals. Now, I can appreciate an argument from emotion, but that shouldn't be the entire argument. I tried to explain to her that people expected to think, like those you would find at a library at UW, would be unlikely to take seriously the strawman arguments and the appeals to "authorities" (like anyone from Grey's Anatomy - the show, not the medical tome) and the barrage of emotion employed by this pamphlet. I assumed that even if they agreed with the points of the literature, they ought to feel insulted by the tone and methods of it. She insisted that it was an effective and well-designed pamphlet. I suppose she may be correct, but if I were to release a pamphlet about the meatetarian diet (unless I intended it to be a joke) I wouldn't intentionally target teenyboppers and then hand it out in a library full of college age people.

Maybe this is because I overestimate the average college student though... Who's to say?

This has gone on long enough. Birthday next weekend! Bacon explosion! WooHoo!