Chocolate and Bacon

Esther just made toasted coconut cupcakes with a chocolate-bacon buttercream frosting, topped with toasted coconut and a piece of perfectly cooked bacon. I don't get it.

Maybe you are up to speed with the new bacon craze. Candied bacon, chocolate bacon, bacon ice cream, bacon pudding, bacon doughnuts, and probably way more than I've heard of. I must begin by asking the obvious question. Who in the world started this? Hopefully it was discovered by a starving man. You know, the kind of guy that set out to camp by himself for the weekend, got lost in the woods and had to survive for seven days on the meager provisions that he had packed in his backpack. I imagine him reaching the point when he has nothing left to eat but a few leftover scraps of bacon that had melted into one of the last ill-fated marshmallows which had originally been intended for campfire smores. I can see the disappointment on his face as he notices that his main course has been ruined by his dessert, and his dessert ruined by his main course. He may even have decided to pass on this miserable last supper, until the hunger won out that is. He grimaces, takes a tentative bite and his face does the classic transformation from expecting something awful to a tiny, glimmering hint of hope to the dawning of full blown enjoyment, tinted slightly by a garnish of surprise. Of course this man would have to be rescued, and in his prime-time news interview, he tells the world that he had survived on marshmallow-bacon and it was surprisingly good. The bacon community would never be the same.

I doubt it happened that way. More than likely, it was discovered by one of those freaky people that think cooking is a hobby and the scientific method is to be applied to the world of food. I assume the thought process goes as follows:

Current facts- Bacon is good. Chocolate is good.
Question- Since bacon is good and chocolate is good, would chocolate bacon be good?
Hypothesis- Chocolate bacon would be good.
Experiment-
1) fry bacon
2)melt chocolate
3)dunk fried bacon in melted chocolate
4)let chocolate cool
5)try chocolate bacon (for description of facial expression during initial test, please read paragraph from earlier)
6)repeat steps 1-4 and have about 100 other people try chocolate bacon
Theory- Chocolate bacon is good. Therefore, bacon should be blended with all good things to make them better.

I'm sure that many of the culinary delights that have brightened my life were discovered in this way. But I have to ask, what is the dietary laboratory going to come up with next? White Chocolate Covered Hotdogs? Sushi Smoothies? Buffalo Flavored Breakfast Cereal? Tofu Pad Thai?

Maybe this is a pointless rant about weird people trying weird stuff in the kitchen. Or, maybe it strikes a nerve because in a big family like ours, we sometimes feel like God's Test Kitchen. What happens if you put a "night owl" with a "morning person"? What do you get when you put a practical thinker right in front of a deep conceptual thinker? How would it look if let a guy have five boys, (my prayers began to sound a lot like the pharisee from the Gospels, "Thank you Lord that you have not made me like the pathetic saps that have girls"), then throw him a girl. Would the house explode if you put four girls in the same room (for the record, the answer is yes. No chocolate covered bacon in that experiment). What happens if you fill the kitchen with a bunch of cool blooded Germans and a bunch of hot blooded Irish. In short, with 14 people living in the house, the pantry is full of possibility.

OK, so the bacon flavored cupcakes are good. Great in fact. Likewise, I love most of the dishes that God has created with the ingredients that He's thrown into my house. Believe me, your life might not always make sense, but neither does Chocolate Bacon. Sometimes it's best to just let God cook, sit down at the table, try everything he puts before you, and be prepared to be pleasantly surprised.