Schaller & Weber Natural Hardwood Double-Smoked Bacon Revisited
When I checked out at the Crossroads Market in Fremont, and the clerk looked at my basket, I felt compelled to say, "I didn't come in here to just buy meat and candy. It just turned out that way." The basket was full of Polish chocolates, German chocolates, Turkish apricot candy, Hungarian cured beef and sausage, and, of course, bacon. More Koloszvári for the family holiday gathering, and another pound of Schaller & Weber for personal use.
When I took the first bite of the Schaller & Weber, I felt a creeping realization that suddenly washed over me like a revelation and left me, for a moment, too awed to speak. And of course, looking back, this should have been obvious--like most great revelations that truly shake the foundations of our world. But what I realized was this: the bacon was -different-. Very different from the last time I'd tasted it. Still brilliant, but not as firm, not so meaty, more fatty, more buttery, with a smoke taste that was still rich, but not so strong. I would never have guessed they were the same bacon.
And then we say, of course. These are not factory produced bacons. These are not molded and shaped with hydraulic presses, injected with chlorine-and-sodium embalming fluid and then centripetally de-flavored so they may be re-flavored with factory-standard Taste(tm). These are different bacons, smoked over different fires, from different animals, and if a family resemblance runs from one to another, like a high cheek-bone or a tendency for the eyebrows to grow together in a great hedge over the nose, well, that is neither the beginning nor the end of the story. And so I look back over my bacon-tasting odyssey, and I realize, though my supply of frozen bacon dwindles, that I am not nearing the end. I have barely begun. I can never hope to capture more than one moment, one tiny point in a vast matrix of chance and skill (and even, perhaps, outright malice), that stretches from the birth of a tiny piglet somewhere, through every porcine vicissitude of the animal's life, through the slaughter, whether graceful or clumsy, and thence through the hands of any number of craftsmen, some conscientious, others indifferent, and so on through the chaos of the smoke, the wild fluctuations of climate while shipping, and so on, right up to my own moment of inattention that may allow it to cook just past perfection in the skillet, and so through the vagaries and inexactness of language to this page, where it flutters like a candle-flame of meaning before a gale of happenstance.
This task is too great for one lifetime. Indeed, it is a task without end, a shadow of the one great task we all face, the task of making meaning of the chaotic world around us. As in that great undertaking, we are bound to fail, and yet compelled to try.
Quantitative ratings:
Smokiness: 7
Meatiness: 5
Firmness: 4
Salt: 5
Qualitative ratings:
Deliciousness: 9
Did the dog get any? No. But I ran one of her biscuits around the pan to impart a little essence of bacon to the treat.
When I took the first bite of the Schaller & Weber, I felt a creeping realization that suddenly washed over me like a revelation and left me, for a moment, too awed to speak. And of course, looking back, this should have been obvious--like most great revelations that truly shake the foundations of our world. But what I realized was this: the bacon was -different-. Very different from the last time I'd tasted it. Still brilliant, but not as firm, not so meaty, more fatty, more buttery, with a smoke taste that was still rich, but not so strong. I would never have guessed they were the same bacon.
And then we say, of course. These are not factory produced bacons. These are not molded and shaped with hydraulic presses, injected with chlorine-and-sodium embalming fluid and then centripetally de-flavored so they may be re-flavored with factory-standard Taste(tm). These are different bacons, smoked over different fires, from different animals, and if a family resemblance runs from one to another, like a high cheek-bone or a tendency for the eyebrows to grow together in a great hedge over the nose, well, that is neither the beginning nor the end of the story. And so I look back over my bacon-tasting odyssey, and I realize, though my supply of frozen bacon dwindles, that I am not nearing the end. I have barely begun. I can never hope to capture more than one moment, one tiny point in a vast matrix of chance and skill (and even, perhaps, outright malice), that stretches from the birth of a tiny piglet somewhere, through every porcine vicissitude of the animal's life, through the slaughter, whether graceful or clumsy, and thence through the hands of any number of craftsmen, some conscientious, others indifferent, and so on through the chaos of the smoke, the wild fluctuations of climate while shipping, and so on, right up to my own moment of inattention that may allow it to cook just past perfection in the skillet, and so through the vagaries and inexactness of language to this page, where it flutters like a candle-flame of meaning before a gale of happenstance.
This task is too great for one lifetime. Indeed, it is a task without end, a shadow of the one great task we all face, the task of making meaning of the chaotic world around us. As in that great undertaking, we are bound to fail, and yet compelled to try.
Quantitative ratings:
Smokiness: 7
Meatiness: 5
Firmness: 4
Salt: 5
Qualitative ratings:
Deliciousness: 9
Did the dog get any? No. But I ran one of her biscuits around the pan to impart a little essence of bacon to the treat.