The Return of Turkey Bacon
At breakfast on day one of the training I just attended in Minneapolis there was turkey bacon. Turkey bacon? What is turkey bacon, you ask? I don’t know. That’s why the return of turkey bacon is so disturbing.
Turkey bacon looks like real bacon. There are reddish brown parts and whitish tan parts, just like real old fashioned pork bacon. But then, turkey bacon is so much more. Turkey bacon, this turkey bacon anyway, has the consistency of hard rubber. Essentially it is a thin strip of bacon shaped and colored rubber. Think Beggin’ Strips just like Rover eats for treats.
I love bacon. I love crispy pork bacon. I love the way taunting a Jew with a piece of bacon makes them scurry like a vampire looking for darkness (I am not ashamed to exploit stereotypes; my apologies to all the vampires reading this). I love a nice crispy nearly burnt piece of bacon that has had so much of the moisture sucked out of it that it dissolves in your mouth. Mmmmmmm bacon.
Turkey bacon, however, is none of that. It looks like bacon. It even kind of smells like, well no, it has no smell. No smell that I can remember. But it looks so much like bacon. I guess this is a similar concept to eating soap that smells delicious or tanning oil (not that I have done either. Often).
The Hyatt Regency did a great job with the variety and quality of the food they provided at the conference but the turkey bacon… How could they. The only other down side Hyatt's food was the barely identifiable desert products but that is a dissertation for another time.
So the hypothesis, although I don’t think any of us considered it, was that turkey bacon came and went and we had seen the last of it. Not so.
I was one of the first in the feed line. I am reasonably polite and have been going late or at least taking my time to get in line but I had no snack this morning so when they said eat I went running. Running is a little off as a description. I definitely neither took my time nor waited for everyone else.
The had the chafing dishes with hinged dome lids so every time you opened one the food, unless there was red sauce dripping down the front of the pan, was almost always a surprise, if not a mystery (which reminds me, there were an awful lot of breaded baked substances that might have been fish or might have been chicken; I tended to stay away; again an exploration for some other time). So this final meal was turning into Let’s Make a Deal.
Behind dome number one? Ta da! Steaming water. Maybe they hadn’t put everything out yet. Behind dome number two? TURKEY BACON! Turkey bacon: the bane of my existence this trip.
But it was so seductive. It looks JUST LIKE BACON (do I sound a little obsessed with bacon?) and the look of bacon is so seductive that I could smell the nonexistent pork bacon smell. The memory of the smell got my mouth to watering. On the one hand I had tried the turkey bacon the other day and it was about as appetizing as the tongue of a multipurpose running shoe (not that I have eaten one but I can imagine). On the other hand it just looked and mentally smelled like bacon and by then I was nearly drooling.
Well, what will it hurt? I took a few slices. I will be brave and I will eat this turkey bacon by God. So I did. I picked up my first piece and, well, it just wasn’t as crispy as it looked. It looked like it should have just snapped but it bent. So I tore it in half. Food that is not bread or cheese should not tear. I put it in my mouth. It was the same. Damn you turkey bacon. Damn you.
And then it dawned on me. As I sat there with a rubbery piece of bacon colored turkey in my mouth, my taste buds completely disgusted with me, my mouth drying faster than a dead body shriveling in the desert, this turkey bacon is recycled. This is the turkey bacon from the other morning. The turkey bacon, beyond being a non-breast cancer discussion, was pretty much a turn off for everybody. This must be the turkey bacon from then. Food recycling.
I wonder at the nutritional summary, sans cooking.
Turkey bacon is wrong. If you do not believe me go out and buy yourself a sheet. You can always hang on to it and use it as a gasket if you don’t like it.
Turkey bacon looks like real bacon. There are reddish brown parts and whitish tan parts, just like real old fashioned pork bacon. But then, turkey bacon is so much more. Turkey bacon, this turkey bacon anyway, has the consistency of hard rubber. Essentially it is a thin strip of bacon shaped and colored rubber. Think Beggin’ Strips just like Rover eats for treats.
I love bacon. I love crispy pork bacon. I love the way taunting a Jew with a piece of bacon makes them scurry like a vampire looking for darkness (I am not ashamed to exploit stereotypes; my apologies to all the vampires reading this). I love a nice crispy nearly burnt piece of bacon that has had so much of the moisture sucked out of it that it dissolves in your mouth. Mmmmmmm bacon.
Turkey bacon, however, is none of that. It looks like bacon. It even kind of smells like, well no, it has no smell. No smell that I can remember. But it looks so much like bacon. I guess this is a similar concept to eating soap that smells delicious or tanning oil (not that I have done either. Often).
The Hyatt Regency did a great job with the variety and quality of the food they provided at the conference but the turkey bacon… How could they. The only other down side Hyatt's food was the barely identifiable desert products but that is a dissertation for another time.
So the hypothesis, although I don’t think any of us considered it, was that turkey bacon came and went and we had seen the last of it. Not so.
I was one of the first in the feed line. I am reasonably polite and have been going late or at least taking my time to get in line but I had no snack this morning so when they said eat I went running. Running is a little off as a description. I definitely neither took my time nor waited for everyone else.
The had the chafing dishes with hinged dome lids so every time you opened one the food, unless there was red sauce dripping down the front of the pan, was almost always a surprise, if not a mystery (which reminds me, there were an awful lot of breaded baked substances that might have been fish or might have been chicken; I tended to stay away; again an exploration for some other time). So this final meal was turning into Let’s Make a Deal.
Behind dome number one? Ta da! Steaming water. Maybe they hadn’t put everything out yet. Behind dome number two? TURKEY BACON! Turkey bacon: the bane of my existence this trip.
But it was so seductive. It looks JUST LIKE BACON (do I sound a little obsessed with bacon?) and the look of bacon is so seductive that I could smell the nonexistent pork bacon smell. The memory of the smell got my mouth to watering. On the one hand I had tried the turkey bacon the other day and it was about as appetizing as the tongue of a multipurpose running shoe (not that I have eaten one but I can imagine). On the other hand it just looked and mentally smelled like bacon and by then I was nearly drooling.
Well, what will it hurt? I took a few slices. I will be brave and I will eat this turkey bacon by God. So I did. I picked up my first piece and, well, it just wasn’t as crispy as it looked. It looked like it should have just snapped but it bent. So I tore it in half. Food that is not bread or cheese should not tear. I put it in my mouth. It was the same. Damn you turkey bacon. Damn you.
And then it dawned on me. As I sat there with a rubbery piece of bacon colored turkey in my mouth, my taste buds completely disgusted with me, my mouth drying faster than a dead body shriveling in the desert, this turkey bacon is recycled. This is the turkey bacon from the other morning. The turkey bacon, beyond being a non-breast cancer discussion, was pretty much a turn off for everybody. This must be the turkey bacon from then. Food recycling.
I wonder at the nutritional summary, sans cooking.
Turkey bacon is wrong. If you do not believe me go out and buy yourself a sheet. You can always hang on to it and use it as a gasket if you don’t like it.
posted by Bearded Jon at
6:05 PM
