bacon

North and South Recipes for Fried Green Tomatoes

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Growing up on the east coast of Canada, we frugally made the most of the garden harvest each year, right down to the last rock-hard green tomatoes left on the vine at first frost. It wasn’t until I grew up and moved away that I learned a whole chunk of the world has a completely different way to make fried green tomatoes!

Now, there are endless variations on the dish, of course, but I divide the recipes into two camps – northern style and southern style. Up north, it’s all about the bacon fat. Down south, you’re talking a delicious deep-fry delight. But one thing in common to both recipes is the distinctive sharp flavor of unripe tomatoes.
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Virtual Collection: Bacon Bits – Part 2

“Want me to knit you a bacon scarf?” Diane asked, and unwittingly launched my search for arts and crafts with a bacon theme. She said she could probably “fake up” a pattern. Thinking back, I’m not entirely sure whether she planned to knit it from the actual fatty meat product. In which case, er, no…

felted merino wool bacon scarf But this Unsettlingly Real-Looking Felted Bacon Scarf in merino wool is both amusing and completely wearable — at least, in cool weather and possibly not around those of my vegan pals who tend to get queasy at the sight of meat.

By the way, if you just dropped in (hello there!) and you’re wondering what the heck all this pork-related nonsense is about, please do skip back to Virtual Collection: Bacon Bits – Part 1 for the explanation.

It’s as good an explanation as anyone’s likely to come up with… except maybe for Revison3’s Lil Internet Superstar:

But enough of that.
We’ve got loftier ambitions for our pork products!

Bacon in Art and Crafts

bacon placemat - instructables.com

(I’m pretty sure that Bacon in Art is an actual Library of Congress catalog heading. Okay, maybe not, but I do remember filing something under Pigs in Art back in my summer-job-in-library days. And yes, it was filed correctly.)

Bacon, when raw, lends itself to weaving and shaping. Cook it and it holds its shape. What better craft material?

notmartha.org bacon bowlsInstructables.com teaches you how to make your own fashion-forward bacon placemats, the inspiration for NotMartha.org’s famous bacon baskets and breadless BLT.

Or you can deconstruct your bacon for a home science experiment by making bacon soap (bacon-shaped soap molds not included), though the 2-week wait — to cure the added lye so it won’t burn your skin — may discourage all but the keenest of patient crafters from trying it.
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