I Married Into A Bacon Family

     Long before bacon was trendy, my in-laws were coating their turkey with it and nibbling on the burnt edges along with the rest of their Thanksgiving feast.  No everyone loves bacon.  You can get bacon flavored chocolate, bacon flavored peanuts, bacon dips and bacon infused vodka (it's called Bakon and we are currently working on our second bottle, but there are only so many Bloody Maries and screwdrivers you can make in a given year).
     As an official member of the family now, we've taken the family vegetable to a whole new level of understanding.  First off, my husband has researched and, thanks to the Barbeque Pit Boys (check them out on you tube, you won't be sorry), he is fluent in the art of making a bacon blanket to coat any slab of meat.  Of course, we can't use the bacon blanket when we deep fry our turkey, but on other years when the turkey is smoked on the woodfire grill... it's smoked with yummy bacon juices seeping onto the skin.
     But that's just the turkey.  Last year I made the most succulent, delicious stuffing I had ever tasted.  All thanks to bacon grease.  Copious amounts of bacon grease... and butter and onions and garlic.  Along with all good bacon comes onion, garlic and butter.  The heavenly foursome heralded by bacon also goes into the "mashpo", along with sour cream, milk and cheeses.  Isn't it obvious what should go into the gravy?  Especially since we don't cook the bird in the oven, the juices really do need to come from (you guessed it) ... the bacon pan.  And true, the appetizers we share are usually store bought from a freezer, but more often than not they include bacon. Actually, to be fair, I think tomorrow Bill is planning on rib appetizers. But since that's pork, I guess it counts too!  Surely a family that eats this much bacon... must not live until Christmas.  Is that what you are thinking?  Perhaps, but we've happily managed to defy odds thus far so we've got the fridge stocked up with all four pounds of bacon for tomorrow's feast once again.
     But why stop at using bacon on turkey, stuffing, mashpo & apps?  I mean, couldn't we also put bacon into the cranberry sauce?  You know, mix it in with that gelatin stuff?  Why not celebrate Thanksgiving with a green bean casserole sprinkled with bacon bits?  Or put those bacon bits where they really belong... in the dough for the rolls!  I think I might be getting somewhere so while I'm at it, I will suggest bacon in the apple crisp and also to add a little kick to the creamed onions.  I think I'll hold off on the bacon in the sweet potatoes- for some reason that is where I draw the line.
    Seriously, to be a member of this family you really must accept bacon as the love of your life.  Our children respond to "I'll give you piece of bacon" just as they would to "I'll give you a bowl of candy".  They fight over the last crispy piece and, unfortunately, they like "dessert bacon" just as much as the rest of us.  On a side note, yes, we've named a special type of bacon.  It's that bacon that has been coated with yummy brown sugary mapley goodness that all cooks on top of a lucky meat product and then when it's done it's a savory, juicy, crunchy goodness that can best be described as "dessert bacon" although you tend to eat it before any meal has been served, because you are sneaking it off of the bird in the kitchen when no one is looking (maybe that's why Bill likes to carve the turkey...).  Where was I?  Oh, right, I was about to tell a sad story.  So you know how when some people are pregnant they get cute cravings and their husbands have to go out and get it for them in the middle of the night?  Well, Bill and I were totally on board with all of this and ready to go. I was ready to crave, and he was ready to go shopping in the middle of the night.  Well, the cravings never came... but for my first pregnancy I got two aversions. One to Red Bull (long story) and the other to... you guessed it... Bacon.  The sizzling, the smell, it just all grossed me out.  It took me years to recover.  I still cannot embrace actual plain bacon like I used to.  But as Liam gets older, I become more familiar with my old friend (actually not really that old, because I didn't really even eat bacon until I met Bill.  I didn't exactly grow up in a "bacon family".  Oddly, my Jewish mother served me pork chops but never ham or bacon.  I couldn't explain this if I tried).  At any rate, I became more and more comfortable with bacon- on burgers, in quiche and as a stirrer for my coffee (just kidding, but it kind of sounds awesome, doesn't it?).  Until last year when I made my bacon-masterpiece.  The stuffing.

Instilling a love of pork products at an early age.

 

     Truth be told, I am not sure I could replicate last year's stuffing.  I have no idea what brand stuffing it was- I don't think I could research what brand was on sale at our grocery store last November the week before Thanksgiving.  I don't know how much onions, garlic and butter I put in- except that it must have been copious amounts because I remember saucepans full.  If I remember correctly- and tomorrow will be the true test to this- I did not just stop at cutting up bacon and putting it in.  I poured the greasy fat in too.  In some families this would cause gagging.  In some families, there would be blushing and "no thank you's".  In some families bacon might only be covering the bird, nothing more.  But in this family, it's just not enough to crunch up some bacon and put it in the stuffing (and the mashpo, and the cranberry sauce- I think I may try that one tomorrow).  In this family, crunched up bacon isn't enough on its own, you need the grease too.  Because that makes one hell of a stuffing.

You may have thought I was kidding when I referred to "the bacon blanket".
I assure you, I was not kidding.

The Grocery Store Switch

     We pulled into the grocery store parking lot all in good moods.  Liam was going to get the popcorn for his classroom, Josh was going to get the carrots.  We also needed diced tomatoes and juice.  It was going to be a short, cheap trip.
     But I forgot about the "Grocery Store Switch".  With the "Grocery Store Switch", nothing is ever really easy.  Nope, the "Grocery Store Switch" insures that any trip to a grocery store (or any store for that matter) will end in embarrassment and humiliation because no matter how sweet we are all being to one another, no matter how controlled the kids are behaving, no matter how exemplary our family looks when we enter the store... there is a 100% chance that conditions will deteriorate and it will all end in disaster.  What's the "Grocery Store Switch"?  I'm convinced that when we enter the store, the kids sense that it's time to break down.  it's their safe place to sit on the floor, touch everything and try my patience.
     Just in case I ever consider going back to a grocery store with the kids, here's a list of reasons why I shouldn't that I'm recording for my own self-preservation...

(1) I believe that if you break something, you need to buy it so it's very hard for me to reconcile this with the fruits that fall onto the floor, bruised and rolling under a refrigerator unit. 
(2) Kids like to touch everything because they like textures... they like bumpy avocados and smooth cardboard boxes, cool glass jars and soft bags of marshmallows.  This all makes sense to me... but that doesn't make it any easier to keep up with arranging the boxes that are knocked over, re-stacking the vegetables and fixing all of the other jars & boxes on the shelves we pass.
(3) Liam likes to help.  He insists on pushing the cart.  I would like to make a formal, public apology to anyone who happens to be walking in his path.  I'm trying my best to help him avoid obstacles (you).
(4) I hate public restrooms. 
(5) Monkey-see-monkey-do... not that I'm comparing my kids to monkeys but when one sees the other do something immature and ridiculous, the other one seems to want to copy him.  So I guess I'll just go ahead and admit it, they're a couple of monkeys running up and down the aisles, giggling.
(6) The games and helping don't work... for more than five minutes.  I can give any jobs to them- from coupon scavenger hunts and shopping lists with cute pictures to putting things in the cart and stacking items on the check-out conveyor belt.  I imagine that in the future I'll have them look for the better sale on unit prices.  None of this will work... for longer than five minutes.
(7) I prefer to not look like a screaming lunatic in public.  And yet tonight when both boys left the first set of sliding doors, I found myself screaming out in a panicked shrieky voice, "LIAM! JOSHUA!" and running away from my $139.62 worth of groceries to go get them.
(8) There's no such thing as a quick trip to the grocery store.  When you only need popcorn, tomatoes, juice & carrots but you come up with $139.62 more than that... it's far from simple.
(9) Grocery carts are not comfortable for children no matter how you look at it. Wire mesh with a plastic sheet doesn't really sound like a nice place to sit for 45 minutes. Josh technically fits into the basket so we will spend a good amount of time maneuvering his legs into the leg holes while he clips his finger into the seatbelt. Once Liam has knocked over a stack of oranges and run into 3 pedestrians, I tell him he can't push the cart anymore and then his body becomes completely limp and he claims to be "exhausted" and so I need to lift him into the cart.  I feel that it's necessary to lift him into the cart because once (when Bill was supervising the children, not me, I can't take credit for this one) Liam tried to climb into the cart and ended up toppling the whole cart over- groceries & Josh in all.  Once Liam is safely snug in the cart, he proceeds to stack all the cans (which means they will all be dented) and then, as more and more groceries are added to the cart, becomes too squished and needs to get out which is when he decides it's a brilliant mode of transportation to be under the cart- which I claim to be a horrible idea and it all ends with him pushing the cart again because, honestly, this is about self-preservation and he's actually less harmful pushing the cart into strangers than crunching up all of our pasta and pretzels with his lanky legs.
(10) I never remember to make lists and when I do, I never remember to look at them.  So instead, I efficiently sweep every aisle looking for inspiration purchases and then, once we get to the milk & cheese aisle, I inevitably remember something we need in produce but no bother, that's right near the check out counter... but then I remember I forgot to get two bags of those Santita chips that only cost $2... and then someone has to go to the bathroom again and by this point I. Am. Done.

     We usually end up with a time-out sentence which is filled out in the car when everyone is so stunned by the horrific experience that they wouldn't want to talk anyway.  By the time we get to the house, the so-called Grocery Store Switch is turned off and the boys are being sweet, carrying in bags of groceries (Josh gets the $2 chips because in addition to being cheap, they're also quite light).  The grocery switch is turned off and it's time to make Spaghettios because we're late for dinner, which means we'll be late for baths, which means we'll be really late for bedtime, which means I'll have less time to grade my kids' spelling papers stunned in front of the television.  And this is why I should never ever take my kids to the grocery store.



This is me, in a frenzy, trying to take a picture of two cute kids with mini carts while
 pushing my own big cart and walking backwards.

Liam is not picking his nose... I don't think.