At the ballfield tonight, exercising the dog, my neighbor Jeannie whipped out some treats for Hooper and her dog Joplin. She mentioned they were homemade. Instead of saying “take your homemade, organic, fair trade dog treats and your sixties-icon-named-after dog and get the hell out of here, hippie”, I said “oh really? That sounds like a good idea, all-natural and all”. Still not totally convinced this was anything I wanted to get involved in, I went home and did as she instructed, and Googled “homemade dog treats”. After perusing a few that seemed like more trouble than they were worth, I stumbled across these little babies, called Bacon Bites.

In other words, bacon cookies. Imagine my delight!

And so I convinced Brenda when she got home that BLTs were on the menu tonight, and the extra bacon could go into the treats (OK, OK, there’s never extra bacon when I make BLTs, but I thought this was a way to divert some of the fat to another stomach). And so, this guy who doesn’t bake, who doesn’t really like cookies at all, poured bacon fat and crumbled crispy bacon into a bowl with flour and egg (and garlic powder!) and actually rolled it out and cut it into little cookie nips. They are baking right now, at three twenty five, for thirty five to forty minutes. I am baking cookies for my dog. I am fucking insane. What’s sadder is that I fully plan to sample the cookies, and I’m not a little scared that I will actually like them and start fighting with Hooper over them. I mean, they’re bacon cookies, after all. Bacon… COOKIES! Am I wrong!?

Just before I started rolling out the dough, I walked over to Hooper with the dough (who was nicely draped over his bed, by the way) and let him have a sniff; two whiffs and he opened wide and tried to take the whole glob. So, I think he’s gonna like ‘em.

Now I read the fine print, and I understand that there is acually no bacon whatsoever in this product—which makes it a vegetarian bacon product! Are you feelin’ me yet?

The website features various pictures of high-fat, high-salt foods, with the promise of even greater gastronomical goodness, made possible by bacon (flavored) salt. And I’m telling you this, right now: I’m in. I’m all in.

*How to Make Bacon Soap*

My sister jokes that if they made bacon candy, I’d be the top consumer of the stuff, and that’s probably true. Apparently, my affinity for bacon has made its way around the office and so when my co-worker came across this little gem of baco-utility, she felt compelled to pass the tip along. The email subject line was “Since you like meat”. ‘Nuff said.

In reality, while I’m pretty sure I could easily come up with enough bacon grease to make a batch or two, the idea of lathering up with the transformed grease is not exactly appetizing. Regardless, I thought it was an interesting article.