A Tale Of Bacon

I’ve been meaning to share a few things here on my blog, but then things have come up or a new recipe caught my eye and got some attention.  I keep a running list of blog-topics and recipes to share, mostly so that I don’t repeat myself, but also to help me remember what pictures and recipe I have waiting in the queue to be shared.  For example, the first thing I wanted to share was about bacon. Bacon- who doesn’t love bacon!?  Imagine what would happen if you found that you couldn’t eat bacon.  That was me a few months ago.  For years now I’ve been battling migraines on and off, and I always wondered if I did something to trigger them- they have to be caused by something, don’t they?  One of my first suspicions was food.  If my migraines were being caused by something I ate, that should be easy to remedy, so I started keeping track of what I ate.  It didn’t take long to notice that my headaches would occur first in the afternoon most frequently.  And always after lunch- but sometimes after dinner as well.  Upon examining packaging and reading labels- I found a common thread- Sodium Nitrite.

Sodium nitrite is a preservative used in sausages, hot dogs, luncheon meat, bacon, and hams. (And I’m sure many other things.)  I stared in horror at the website that I’d found that said that nitrites were known to cause migraines in some people.  So I quit eating anything with it in it, just like that.  No lunch meats for me, no bacon, no sausage, etc.  If I really want to eat sausage or a hot dog, I need to find one that is preservative free.  There are some out there, and in fact, Kosher products so far all seem to be nitrite free, so those are okay for me to eat (albeit a bit pricey).   But since I stopped eating these products over 2 months ago, I’ve been blessedly headache and migraine free.  It’s wonderful!  But I’ve missed bacon.  Oh, have I missed the bacon.  And then one day last week, at my small-town local grocer, a package of bacon practically leapt off the shelf and into my cart. “All-Natural” “Nitrate and Nitrate Free.”  Ah! Bacon that I could eat! But how would it taste… Absolutely wonderful.  It was still smokey and salty and fill of bacony goodness, and I could eat it without fear of a migraine.

All this is to tell you the easiest way to cook bacon, and I am so glad I found it.  I used to hate cooking bacon, getting spattered with grease as I flipped the slices over in the frying pan or on the griddle.  But guess what? Bacon can be cooked in the oven.  Preheat your oven to 350º, and get out your large sheet pan. (Two if you’re making a lot of bacon.) Lay the slices of bacon out onto your baking sheet- making sure that they don’t touch or overlap in any way.  Then simply pop them in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes.  Remove the bacon then to a paper-towel lined plate to let them drain, and you have effortless bacon.  No flipping necessary- the bacon takes care of that itself while in the oven.  If you use more than one baking sheet you may want to rotate the pans during baking, but other than that, it’s the easiest bacon ever.

And now that I’ve completely got you all craving some crispy baked bacon, why don’t you head on over to Garden Notes and see what my garden is up to.  Yesterday I found something completely new to me, and I can’t wait to see what comes of it!