Nostalgia and Food

As I am beginning to cook more and more, I realize certain foods make me feel nostalgic.  A perfect example is the Maw-Maw Soup I featured a few posts back, “A Warm and Fuzzy Moment”.  Certain foods just bring back memories.  Sometimes it’s not just the food itself, but the way that it is prepared…like Bacon for instance.

How many of you still fry your bacon out in a pan?  Go on, raise your hands, you know who you are.  We each have our own special pan.  The pan you know you can only comfortably fit 5 pieces of bacon in at a time, but you manage to squeeze one more in to speed things along.  This method tends to get tiring just standing there.  Frankly, it’s boring.  You have to watch the bacon to make sure it doesn’t burn on one side.  Then you have to flip it over without it sliding off the fork you are using to flip it.  Heaven forbid one of those pesky fry bubbles pops out on you.  Those little things hurt.  I almost feel like we should wear welding masks and gloves for frying bacon.  But, you know why we do it?  Because, our parents did it, our grandparents did it, and it just feels right doing it.  It makes you feel as if you really did slave over a hot stove.  Let’s face it, it reminds you of the times you woke up to find your parent or grandparent standing over the stove frying out some bacon.  You knew it was bacon before you made it in the kitchen by the sound and delightful smell.  You knew someone loved you enough to take their time to cook the bacon.  You knew that this was going to be an amazing breakfast…

With all of that being said, and with the changing times, there has to come a different way.  It needs to be a streamlined way to prepare the bacon.  I am sure a ton of people already do this, but this was my first time doing it.  I have always stood over the stove, my back-hurting, my forearms screaming for mercy, and the bacon slipping off of my fork as I turn it.  It was time to try something new.  I decided to cook my bacon in the oven.  So simple, and my forearms thanked me.  Granted, Cinder (our cat) didn’t thank me.  She is always used to getting the first little bit of the first batch that’s done while we are waiting on all the other batches to get done.  With this method, she had to wait.  She loves her bacon (and french fries), and will meow until you have placed her several pieces of crispy bacon in her bowl. 

Just so you can please your cats and dogs…here is the method I used.  Might be good to sprinkle black pepper over the bacon before putting it in the oven.  Then you could have Black Pepper Bacon….YUM!

Oven Bacon

• Cooling Racks (I used cooling racks that I cool my cookies on because I don’t have any pans that resembled the rack look.)
• 1 or 2 Baking Sheets with edges
• 1 package of Bacon (I always use lower sodium bacon.)
• Cooking spray
• Aluminum foil

Preheat oven to 450°.  Line each baking sheet with aluminum foil for easy breezy clean-up.  Then place a cooling rack on each pan.  Spray the racks with the cooking spray so the bacon will release once done.  Place each strip of bacon, side by side, on the cooling rack in a single layer.  Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the bacon reaches its desired crispiness. 

*My cooling racks have legs on them so they were elevated above the pan.  This allowed them to cook all around, and I did not need to flip them.  Judge your bacon as you are cooking it to see if you need to flip yours.

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