I suppose you might think it’s just practical but it
amazes me that I’ve never seen unsliced bacon – no bacon steaks,
no bacon roasts, no bacon fingers or croquets. How is it in a world
which calls two almost completely unrelated foods “clam chowder,”
do we have uniformity on the issue of preparing pork belly? We live
in a country in which people that voted for Pat Robertson are living
next door to people who voted for Jerry Brown, and we consider “thick
slice” a radical departure in the area of breakfast meat.
It’s not as if we lack the imagination. I was
surprised when someone told me about scallops. What they serve you in
a restaurant is rarely a true scallop. Someone just takes some
common white fish and cuts it down to little button shapes. (I had
always wondered how the little guys swam around) Why no such
innovation with bacon? Oh, I hear you! “Bacon bits!” you say.
But bacon bits are just slices crumbled up. If you don’t believe
me, spend a night at a salad bar matching them up like a jigsaw
puzzle (it’s more fun than it sounds and a great conversation
starter).
Could it be that there is something THEY’re not
telling us? (I’ve always loved the THEY concept. Isn’t it
exciting that there maybe a people sufficiently motivated to pull
themselves away from Baywatch re-runs in order to create dubious
conspiracies of minutia and mind control?) Maybe things just aren’t
the way we think they are at the slaughterhouse.
They say that pigs are highly intelligent. I’ll admit
that I’ve not been exposed to pigs a great deal. There wasn’t
much of an opportunity to see pigs in the neighborhood I was raised
(unless you believe what Mrs. Harris said about her ex-husband) but
from what little I’ve observed, I’ve seen no sign of brilliance
among these illuminati of the barnyard. I’ll buy that dolphins are
smart, living in the sea, swallowing shrimp at will, befriending
mermaids and bopping sharks on the nose. I can believe that
chimpanzees are savvy, making neat tree houses, eating high fiber
fruits and leaves, staying out of reach of lions and making fun of
Tarzan
but what do we see of the pig? Does sleeping in mud and
eating excessive amounts of garbage in order to raise cholesterol and
fat content sufficient to invite slaughter sound like an enlightened
lifestyle choice?
This is where THEY come in!
THEY don’t want you to know but I’ve figured it all
out. Historians, politicians, zoologists, practitioners of animal
husbandry (yes, I laugh when I hear that too) and several grocers
have successfully (for the most part) hidden the fact that at one
time, the pig competed with humankind for mastery of the planet.
At that time, pigs were a slim, clean, warrior species.
They wrote poetry and dressed in tasteful linen robes and open toed
sandals. Their prowess with the multi-blade sword was admired,
feared and copied. For centuries the issue was in doubt. The pig
armies would march out for honorable combat as we humans sneaked
around behind them, toilet papered their rock gardens and painted
rude mustaches on their sculpture. We might be speaking grunt today
if it weren’t for the swine traitor Poq Ye Pyhigue who revealed to
us the secret word of pig submission, Sooooouuwweeeeee! What, you
think a simple word could never have such power? C’mon, what did
you think the movie Babe was REALLY about?
A once mighty people, now live in squalor, consume
refuse and follow calmly on that last long mile to their
extermination. Their only hope, that high cholesterol may take a few
of us with them. Reaching the abattoir they are allowed to hold for
the only time in their lives the weapon of their people, the
multi-blade sword. In a tradition since copied by the samurai class
in Japan, the noble pig commits hari-kari leaving his belly in
several long even strips.
Perhaps it’s better that people not know the truth.
Our breakfast plates are salty enough, without tears of remorse,
regret and recrimination. We dare not attempt liberation. The
backlash would once again threaten our very existence. There’s an
entire wing of the pentagon dedicated to contingencies in case pigs
someday develop immunity to the farmer’s call.
Like a red and white flag of defiance, the bacon strip
waves and curls at the bottom of my skillet. No steak, roast or
kabob could express so well, no scallop could define in such certain
terms, the dignity and tragedy that is the porcine karma.
Hey, what would you call a bacon scallop? Would you
want to eat a pig belly button?
This was a column I wrote in August
of 2001. Since that time, I’ve seen more variety in bacon
products. Why might that be?
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