What's Bacon Got to Do With It?

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My sweet husband only gets his favorite breakfast on the weekends.  It's not my favorite, but he loves it and I love to make him smile, so I figure over the course of 16 years I've made over 800 bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches.  A nice deli sandwich bun, lightly spread with canola margarine and broiled to a lovely light brown...topped with a hard fried egg covered with shredded cheddar cheese (melted, of course)...finished off with crispy strips of bacon.  Man's favorite food.

Bacon has risen to rock-star status over the last couple of years.  Bacon doughnuts, bacon flavored lip gloss, pork belly this and that all over the Food Network.  So wouldn't you think there would be some quality control?  This is what drives me crazy.

My sister-in-law uses the "dump it all in the pan and it'll work itself out" strategy.  I like to prepare the bacon in the microwave - it's super crispy, not greasy, and I feel it's somewhat healthier, somehow.  But in order for me to achieve bacon perfection, I need to be able to get the dang stuff out of the package in nice, neat little strips.  I've tried every brand...expensive, on-sale, store brand, out of the butcher's case...and still I find skinny little strips mixed in with super thick strips.  Either they won't come apart in the first place, or they don't cook evenly, and my husband's perfect breakfast is spoiled by the expletives coming out of the kitchen.

What would happen to all of us in our businesses if sometimes we did things consistently and sometimes we just cut things a little skinny?  What if the 16 oz. package really didn't hold a pound of bacon?  The latest bacon incident - fresh in my mind because it was just this morning - got me thinking about the parallels.  If there's no quality control in bacon, what's next?  There are whole restaurants focused on bacon - there's one here in Boise.  Wonder if they feel my pain?

I guess the only thing to do is raise my own bacon.  No, that won't work.  I know me. And I could never convince the neighbors it was a bulldog.  What do you feed live bacon anyway?