Get your investment broker on the phone and get yourself ahead of the pack before the masses tune into bacon mania.
The preferred pork cut is everywhere these days and showing no signs of slowing down. If you don't have a broker, this is the time to get one and instruct that person to get you a pigpen.
This trend first really registered on my radar when Donna Fier of Calgary appeared on the Food Network Recipe to Riches. Her Pancake Breakfast Cookie ingredient list is headlined by bacon bits and backed up by butter, sugar, buttermilk, maple syrup and vanilla.
Sonya Walos of Whistler deserves thanks for putting me onto Recipe to Riches, as my main interest in the show was her gluten-free chocolate chip cookie.
Since the debut of the Pancake Breakfast Cookie I have been paying attention to other dessert surprises featuring bacon.
Burger King is testing the Bacon Sundae in Nashville, Tennessee. The Bacon Sundae is a simple mix of ice cream, caramel and bacon. If the Bacon Sundae doesn't spread across the kingdom, I'll be very surprised. The early reports I have seen on this meaty dessert are mostly positive.
Next exhibit: the bacon milkshake from Jack in the Box. Technically, there is no bacon in the shake. The star ingredient is bacon-flavoured syrup and the rest of the cast includes whipping cream, vanilla ice cream and a bright red maraschino cherry. At 773 calories per 16 fluid ounce shake, this tasty treat has got to be filled with flavour along with the 40 grams of fat and 319 milligrams of sodium it packs!
Over at republicofbacon.com there is a list of the top 25 dessert recipes featuring bacon.
At this site the creators insist bacon is the vegetable of the Gods. The pages include the latest bacon recipes, videos, pictures and bacon humour.
The site has recipes for chocolate-covered bacon, bacon toffee, bacon peanut brittle, bacon brownies, caramel bacon donuts, chocolate bacon cupcakes and while the list goes on I just have to slip in bacon cheesecake. My mom loves making cheesecake so I wonder how she will respond when I request she consider whipping up a bacon cheesecake the next time we get an invite to Sunday evening dinner at her house?
This reminds me that my folks have a big yard backing onto a forested area. They could quietly stash away a few porkers and nobody would know. I'm thinking of asking them if they want to partner with me on a little swine sty in their backyard.
I hear the sound of money and it starts with oink.
Top Chef dinner
Jimmy Stewart, Whistler's best-known sous chef was in the spotlight Monday evening and not just because he survived another week on Top Chef Canada. As he has been doing on Mondays since he made his debut on the reality TV show Top Chef Canada he created menu items for the diners at the Bearfoot Bistro where he works.
This week the restaurant clientele included a group of 16 food writers invited for dinner at the bistro.
While he was working hard in the kitchen to serve up Canadian inspired black cod and venison dishes, the food writers were treated to the restaurant's whole experience from using a sabre to open a bottle of champagne to sipping vodka in the ice room, which is kept at a constant temperature well below the freezing mark.
The writers ate a five-course dinner complete with wine pairings while Stewart and the cheftestants slogged through restaurant wars on television.
Stewart made it through the episode, but the captain of his restaurant wars team didn't.
After the show, the writers had many questions for the sous chef, most of which he ducked because he didn't want to risk violating the one million dollar agreement he signed promising he wouldn't reveal key information about the program he participated in back in the fall.
He did answer one question though that brought on nervous laughter and shocked inward breathes.
"What we really want to know is who hooked up with who on the show?" asked one reporter.
Full disclosure: I was the one who asked the probing question.
"Actually, nobody," replied Stewart. "Everybody on the show was in a relationship at the time."
After he cleared that up, Stewart told the group that the editing of the show made it seem like he didn't really get along with Liz Rivasplata from Toronto. As often happens with these shows the relationship between the two was made to look more acrid than it was in reality.
He told us he stays in communication with many of the people who were on Top Chef Canada with him.
As he does every week, Stewart said next week's show is going to be a good one.
