International Bacon Day

Bacon Day is always the Saturday before Labor Day.  This holiday was founded in 2000 by three graduate students in Massachusetts who started a blog and celebrated that first bacon day cooking and eating this most perfect meat. Since then, the holiday has spread all over the United States and Canada. The celebrants at International Bacon Day social gatherings like to chant "bacon is a vegetable!"

As Americans literally pig out, bacon is more popular than ever, and the price of bacon has risen at more than three times the rate of inflation since 2008, the most of any meat. Supply and demand-- it still takes nine months to make a pig.  Despite the soaring prices, bacon sales climbed 9.5 percent to a record $4 billion in 2013.  If you've bought a pound lately, you had sticker shock.

Yes, we had bacon this morning with blueberry pancakes.  However, John will tell you that bacon gets doled out in two-slice increments in this house.  Since the average serving in America is four pieces, we can feel somewhat virtuous, even though the only good reason to eat bacon is simply because it tastes good.

It's cloudy in Seattle and getting ready to rain. For once I'm glad on a holiday weekend, because the garden is parched for a drink and it gives me a reason to putter around inside and play my ukulele.  I've been practicing two Irish jigs, so John will probably find chores in the far corner of the basement.