Black Pig Birthday

My spouse specializes in weirdly appropriate presents. For example, I got a Brunton hand-compass for one anniversary. (The geologist's field tool has a ruby pivot, and it was our Ruby anniversary, you see.) Christmas one year I found a package of wooden-stick Q-tips under the tree. You had to be me in the drought of such usefully inflexible swabs to know why I was awash in tears of gratitude.

This year for my birthday, I opened a chilly wrapped gift to find a package of thick-sliced bacon. Black Pig Bacon, to be specific.

Bacon is ambrosial, in my opinion, pretty tasty even at its most mundane. But if all you've ever had is the domestic product of a huge pig farm, where the animals are penned and fed with garbage, and the meat is wet-cured with liquid smoke, you have no idea how much more tasty bacon can be!

I knew what I had to do with this meat-gift. I would candy it and then share with friends... I went onto Food.com and found a spicy bacon-candying recipe, and added some extra spice to the basic brown-sugar-and-cayenne rub.

Ten minutes to rub and pan the bacon, and thirty to cook it, and I will be ready to sit down to a pig-party with my spouse and a few friends.

Life is sweet!