SOTD: Bacon. And rambling.

No, it didn't come out of a bottle. Which is a shame. Who wouldn't want a really good bacon perfume? I fried it in a pan, the traditional way. We had bacon and pancakes for Labor Day breakfast-for-dinner.

We ate whatever we darn well pleased this weekend, and last weekend, on the principle of making up for our lost vacation. We've resolved that we're going to cut that out and start eating some semblance of a decent diet next week. Though probably not Tuesday. You can't combine going back to work and going on a diet, right? Right.

I'm trying to get myself into a good slow-sewing habit, maybe half an hour every other day. This weekend my half hour was threading the serger with a new color. It's embarrassing that that takes half an hour, but there it is. As a bonus activity, I preshrunk the fabric for a pajama top, and found the pajama top pattern. Next I'll press the fabric. Tum te tum te tum. Bitty step by bitty step.

I just ordered Women in Clothes (Heti/Julavits/Shapton/associate editor Mann--I previously incorrectly attributed the whole thing to Mann), due out on Wednesday. I don't know much about it, but I really like the idea of what little I've read. I'll let you know how it is when I get it.

It occurs to me that it would be logical to add a page up there next to "new to perfume?" and "fume scout" and all that, for all these books about women and clothes that I keep reading. Maybe I will. Eventually. It could happen.

Um.

I guess that is all.

Smell Series: Pork

We just made the neighborhood smell like bacon. I say "we"--Himself did all the brain work and most of the work work, but I'm sure that I could be charged as an accessory. The result was those four glorious chunks of smoked pork that you see on the left. We admired them, shredded them, put the results into zippy bags and stashed them, gloating, in the fridge. We'll be serving (some) of the result at our annual 4th of July party tomorrow (well, today by the time I post this post), and eating the rest ourselves in greasy gluttony.

Yum. Also guilt. Also yum. Did I mention the guilt?

Pigs are supposed to be some of the most intelligent animals--social, friendly, smarter than dogs. I feel bad that they're raised as food animals. If someone proposed a law making it illegal to kill pigs, I'd vote for it. In other words, my moral system is sieve-full of holes. Because there are few smells that I love more than the smell of bacon. And the smell of pulled pork is one of those few. And I don't just smell, I eat. Eagerly.

As a minor effort to reconcile this conflict, I have been looking for sources of humanely raised pork. If I'm going to eat bacon, I'd prefer that the bacon got some enjoyment out of life, and didn't see what was coming. We recently heard a farmer speak about his oak forest and his roaming acorn-eating heritage-breed pigs. That sounds like the right, if probably alarmingly expensive, pork to be eating.

I've always wondered what motivates the people who draw those signs with the happy dancing pigs for barbecue restaurants in the American South. (Or not just the American South - I just saw a photo of discoing pigs at a restaurant in Blackpool.) Is it whistling-in-the-graveyard guilt? It's not as if steak restaurants show happy cows in tie and tails, and chicken restaurants rarely picture poultry that seem happy about the process. Do we feel guiltier about eating pork, and is that what drives us to make dark jokes about happy pigs?

Barbecue. Bacon. Guilt. Was Eve really tempted by an apple, or was it a crisply charred bit of pig?

Image: By Himself.

SOTD: None. And seasonal shifts. And poultry skin.

I seem to have suddenly--and temporarily, I'm sure--lost interest in perfume. I theorize that this is day length--it's cold, but days are getting longer, so I'm being reprogrammed to want warm-weather perfumes, but I don't want them yet. It's just a theory.

Actually, I am craving scents, but they're not scents that my collection offers me. I want the brown-butter dusty scent of the cepes note in Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose, but without the sweet tuberose. And I want the scent of garlic. And crispy chicken or duck skin. And bacon. I want smoky meat instead of smoky sweetness or just plain smoky smoke.

Salt, smoke, butter, and crisp fat. I don't think that the perfume world has anything for me right now.

But I still want to buy perfume. Badly. I want to select it, and click the Buy button, and wait for the package to come, and have the unwrapping ceremony. But I don't want to wear it.

My brain is confused.

Image: By Evan Swigart. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Scentless Saturday. And travelling bacon.

We're spending the holiday weekend in pursuit of bacon.

OK, not really. Bacon is available in most cities; we didn't have to get on a plane to find some. But we are trying out Portland for the very first time, and we ate bacon with every meal on Saturday.

Fried chicken and cheese and bacon on a biscuit at the Saturday farmer's market at the university. Plus a crepe with cheese and bacon and onions. Plus a Nutella crepe.

No, the Nutella crepe didn't involve bacon, though that wouldn't be all that unthinkable, considering "lunch" - a maple bacon doughnut from Voodoo doughnuts.

At dinner at Park Kitchen the bacon was tempura-fried and served along with tempura green beans. Then many very good non- bacon things followed, but that would be Off Topic.

Mm, bacon.

(Also, a disclaimer: I'm blogging from my phone. (OK, I chose the pictures and set up the empty draft post before I left. A bacon encounter seemed likely. The other two pictures are of butter and a duck. Where was I? Oh, yeah.) So please forgive any deficiencies in editing.)

Updated to add Himself's take on our bacon adventures. And on the whole trip.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Bacon Fat

OK, no, there is no perfume named Bacon Fat. As far as I know. (I just checked Demeter, to see, because if one exists, I must have it.)

But the day got away from me without my choosing a perfume, and this evening I'm doing some advance cooking for a party. Including a panful of bacon. (For crumbles.) And you know how the bacon microfog gets on everything, including the cook's shirt. So, yes, I am bacon scented.

Mmmm. Bacon.

(The photo? A chocolate bacon cupcake. No, it's not what I'm cooking, but if I had a recipe...)

Photo: By It's Holly. Wikimedia Commons.