Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Arby’s Chicken Bacon and Swiss Sandwich: FAIL

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 30, 2008
in Bacon
. 7 Comments

A reliable source in the bacon community wanted me to tell you that the #14 at Arby’s is not a good representation of bacon. Before you run out to your local Arby’s to see what the #14 is I will tell you, it’s the Chicken Bacon and Swiss. His biggest complaint was about the bacon and sadly I had to agree with him.

For some reason fast food companies (not just Arby’s) fail when it comes to making bacon. They think that if they put a chewy piece of jerky on a sandwich and call it bacon, we will be happy. This is not that case. When a bacon lover wants bacon on a sandwich, they want pork belly cooked to crispy perfection.

A lot of people blame it on the microwave. They say that fast food places don’t have the equipment or the time to cook it fresh. I tell them that’s a poor excuse, since I have had microwaved bacon that tasted good and not like the crap they serve.

This is the last straw, I am no longer eating fast food bacon. If I see a fast food chain working to make their bacon better I may give it a try again. So if you feel your bacon us up to the challenge let me know and I will give it a taste test.

Remember you’re making bacon for people not dogs. Humans do not like bacon that taste and/or feels more like rawhide.

Bacon Unwrapped is a writing book

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 28, 2008
in Bacon
. 5 Comments

Heather from Bacon Unwrapped is writing a book about bacon and she is asking the bacon nation to answer six questions. If she likes what you have to say, you may make it into the book. Here are the questions and my answers:

1. Do you have a favorite restaurant (diner, hamburger joint, etc) where you like to eat because of the bacon? If so, tell me all about it.
My favorite place to eat bacon would have to be Fat Heads. It’s located in Pittsburgh’s South Side. They have a great selection of beer and their food is out of this world. I usually get the Bacon Cheeseburger, which is about the size of my head. It’s loaded with mayo, lettuce, a thick slice of tomato, and four rashers of crispy bacon. If I am really in the bacon mood I will also get an order of bacon cheese fries. There is nothing better than drinking an IPA and munching on a Bacon Cheeseburger.

2. Do you have any memorable stories that involve bacon?
The most memorable story I can think of off the top of my head is the time I got the Ultimate Bacon Cheeseburger in Las Vegas. In the Mirage Hotel there is a restaurant called the Burger Bar. Every place in Vegas has a gimmick, this one’s happens to be the fact that you construct your own burger. They give you choices of meat, bun, and toppings. On the list of toppings were 4 different kinds of bacon, apple wood, pepper, cinnamon, and jalapeño. So I got all four kinds (16 strips of bacon) on a burger with provolone cheese, the waiter gave me a funny look. Let me just say it was amazing, with every bite I got a taste of something different. I will never forget that burger.

3. Other than eating a piece of bacon on its own, what is your favorite way to eat bacon?
My favorite way to eat bacon is what I call a sea pig. Sea pig is when you wrap bacon around a scallop or shrimp. For some reason bacon makes seafood taste amazing!

4. What is the most unusual use for bacon that you’ve ever encountered?
I would have to say the bacon mints were unusual. I like bacon but I never would of thought to freshen my breath with it.

5. Do you have a really good recipe involving bacon that you are willing to share?
When I was at the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival I met a chef that appreciates bacon as much as I do. His name is Lance Avery; he is the Corporate Executive Chef for Sara Lee. Lance created a Maple-Bacon and Pumpkin Cheesecake that was out of this world. After taking only one bite I ran up to him and said, “You have to give me this recipe, the world must know how good this is”. He gladly said yes, so without anymore rambling here is the recipe.

6. And if you have a bacon-related story that you think is really great but just doesn’t fit into one of the previous categories, feel free to share!
Another great moment in bacon I witnessed was the Bacon Eating Contest at the 1st Annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. It was the best part of the event. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. The smell of bacon, the roaring crowds (ohhhh bacon!), and the steady (some not so steady) eyes of the bacon gladiators waiting to devour 3lbs of (cooked) bacon. It was a sight to see, I can’t wait till next year. Click here to check out the video of it.

I hope I make it into the book. If you would like to be in the book, just leave a comment on Heather’s blog post located here.

Chocolate-Covered Bacon is now for Sale

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 24, 2008
in Bacon
. 5 Comments

A few weeks ago I told you about a company that was playing around with the idea of selling chocolate-covered bacon. Well today I am going to tell you about a company that is actually selling it in their store. The store is named Marini’s Candies and they are located in Santa Cruz. The picture above is a photo of it in their display case.

I would like to thank Benjamin Thomas for bringing this Serious Eats story to my attention. Rumor has it there is a store in Pittsburgh that is selling this too. If you live in the Burgh and know where let me know ASAP.

Scrap Iron Chef’s Bacon with Alton Brown

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 23, 2008
in Bacon
. 3 Comments

If you’re a fan of bacon chances are you watch Food Network. My favorite show is “Good Eats” since Alton Brown shows you how easy it is to make good food. Plus, the nerd in me loves it when he talks about the science of making food.

On one of the shows Alton made Scrap Iron Chef’s Bacon, you can view the recipe here. This is something I always wanted to do, make my own MrBaconpants bacon (not sure what flavor it would be yet). Below is the show broken up into two videos.

Let me know what your favorite Good Eats episode is or your favorite food related show.

Weebl’s Awesome Pork Video

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 19, 2008
in Bacon
. 1 Comment

Heather from BaconUnwrapped.com posted this little gem to her blog last week. If you want to watch it replay forever so the bacon party never stops, check it on the Weebl’s website. Also be sure to check out Blue Monster Fire for the latest webcomic starring Mr. Baconpants.

Eating Bacon is Healthier than Eating Ice Cream

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 18, 2008
in Bacon
. 4 Comments

Back in 2002 the popular men’s magazine FHM published a graphic that showed 37.5 pieces of bacon (112 grams of fat), equaled one pint of Ben and Jerry’s peanut butter cup ice cream. To most people this was not a big deal and the just chuckled about it. To a bacon lover this is ammo in the fight to prove that eating bacon is a good choice.

Ever since I started my blog people have been saying to me, “You better check your cholesterol” or “You’re going to get a heart attack”!

I politely tell them I have weighed the risks, and feel that bacon consumption is worth the possible effect on my health down the road. For most people this is enough, but a few will still push the issue. Well with the information found in the graphic above I can say, “Do you eat ice cream”? When they say yes I will inform them that eating a pint of ice cream has the same amount of fat at 37.5 pieces of bacon.

It would take me about 2 weeks (if I ate about 2-3 pieces every day) to eat that much bacon. I am sure my body can process that just fine. But if they ate that ice cream in one sitting I am sure that would do more damage (I don’t know for sure since I am not a doctor).

People who insist on telling bacon lovers that bacon is not “healthy”, need to take a second look at the foods they eat. I am sure we all have something we enjoy that could be bad for us. My food is bacon (and the occasional pint of ice cream)… what’s yours?

Pass the Pigs: a game for bacon lovers

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 16, 2008
in Bacon
. 1 Comment

A commenter brought a game to my attention that sounds like a perfect match for bacon lovers. It’s called “Pass the Pigs”. The object of the game is to be the first player to score 100 points by rolling little pigs as dice. You score points depending on how the pigs land and you can keep rolling until you roll a losing combination. You can also stop your turn at anytime if you don’t want to press your luck.

Scoring with one pig:
Lazy Pig - The pig is lying on its side - 0 Points
Razorback - The pig is lying on its back - 5 Points
Trotter - The pig is standing on all fours - 5 Points
Snouter - The pig is leaning on its pig noise - 10 Points
Leaning Jowler - The pig is resting on its snout, ear and one foot - 15 Points

Scoring with two pigs:
Sider – Both pigs lying on the same side - 1 Point
Double Razorback - The pigs are both lying on their backs - 20 Points
Double Trotter - The pigs are both standing on all fours - 20 Points
Double Snouter - The pigs are both leaning on their pig noises - 40 Points
Double Leaning Jowler - The pigs are both resting between snout, ear and one foot each - 60 Points
Mixed Combo - A combination not mentioned above is the sum of the single pigs score
Pig Out – Both pigs lying on opposite sides. You loose all the points you accumulated that round and the pigs get pass to the next player.
Oinker (or Makin’ Bacon) - If both pigs are touching in any way, then you lose all the points you accumulated during the game and you pass the pigs to the next player.
Piggyback - If one pig lands completely resting on top of the other then you are out of the game.

If you want to see all the rules, Hasbro has a PDF of the rulebook on their website, you can check it out here.

Videos of the 3G iPhone Hype Machine

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 14, 2008
in Technology
. 0 Comments

Since the new 3G iPhone came out last Friday (July 11th), twitter and just about every tech blog was buzzing about it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new iPhone and hope to get one in a few months, but the coverage was getting out of hand. In the middle of all this iPhone hysteria were some pretty entertaining videos.

I have embedded both of them here in this post, so if you’re in a feed reader you will have to visit the site to see them. The first video is from the “Will it Blend?” viral marketing campaign for Blendtec blenders. Blendtec’s PR people really understand how to market online.

The second video is a live news broadcast, where an annoying reporter gets his ass handed to him on the air for making fun of iPhone fanboys (Fanboys 1, Reporters 0).

If you find any out of the ordinary iPhone coverage, let me know. If you are looking for real iPhone news then check out CrunchGear.com, a blog I freelance for.

By 2010, Hitachi plans to create a 5TB HD

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 10, 2008
in Technology
. 2 Comments

Ever since the Macbook Air came out, everyone has been talking about how solid-state disks are the future. The hard drive specialists at Hitachi, located in Japan, think otherwise. They are continuing to push HD technology to the limits of storage capacity.

They have reported that they would like to see a 3.5-inch hard drive on the market that can hold 5TB by 2010. They say they can achieve this by tweaking the methods they already use for 1TB drives.

Hitachi says that when the drives come out in 2010, two of them will have the same storage capacity as the human brain. I never knew there was a 10TB drive in my head.

When I read things like this I start to think about all the information we are going to accumulate before we die. Since we will have 10TB of space, just think about how many videos, mp3s, and photos, we can save. Your hard drive will be like your own personal historian.

How cool will it be to see the life your ancestors lived, though their eyes and ears? Also, if that information was networked to the internet it would never stop affecting people. That means in a strange way, peoples ideas and lessons learned would be immortal. We will not just have the detailed history of famous (important) people, but the history of everyone.

People don’t realize it, but our history is now a multimedia experience. Gone are the days of stone tablets, parchment, and books; we now have video, sounds, and images. Future generations are going to know so much about the past that maybe then we will stop repeating it.

Alright I am done with the heavy thinking, now to get back to my bacon. I wonder what my future generations are going to think about my bacon addiction?

Wolf Parade and Ratatat

Published
by
Jason Mosley
on July 8, 2008
in Variety
. 3 Comments

Today the new Ratatat CD named “LP3” came out. After playing the hell out of their “Classics” CD I was really excited to hear what ear candy they had in store this time. If you don’t know, Ratatat is a two man instrumental band that blends guitar melody with alien keyboards. The music makes you want to day dream and create your own stories to the soundtrack. So I took a ride to the store to pick it up.

While I was at the store I noticed another CD I heard about, Wolf Parade’s “At Mount Zoomer”. After picking it up to better inspect the artwork, I saw it was only $7.99. For that price I figured it was worth the risk and took it up to the register with Ratatat.

After listening to both these CDs I am really impressed with Ratatat again. I never got the chance to listen to their first album (many people say it’s their best) but the 2nd and 3rd sound good to me. Wolf Parade was a pleasant surprise. Out of the two this one will be the one I’ll listen to the most. It’s slow, but hidden away are some real pop hooks and energy. I can’t put my finger in it but there is something special about this CD.

Ratatat “LP3” – Mirando

Wolf Parade “At Mount Zoomer” – Language City

Above are a few MP3 samples for you to check out. If you enjoy them, be sure to support the band and buy their Album.