"Fry Like Bacon"

     It was a very early morning for me today.  Currently it is one thirty-eight mountain standard time

and about twenty minutes ago I woke up from a great nap, that had I not taken my brain may have

started to head in the direction of the title of this blog post.  "Fry Like Bacon."

     I have named this post "Fry Like Bacon" and I love bacon, but alas this post is not going to

actually have any bacon in it.  I know, I know, what a jerk!  Right?  I've uttered a sacred word in the

title that just may have been the grease in your curious wheels that brought you here.  I promise you

one thing though.  This meal had no bacon.  I'm sorry. Even now I'm holding back tears.  Now that I

have apologized we can start to pick up the shattered pieces of crispy bacon withdrawal and press

forward through a window of hope that just may see something new on the horizon.  That's right, I

thought of something new today.

    Something that I have never tried, never thought to try, or have even ever heard of someone else

trying.  Now I'm not claiming that this feat has never been done before, just pointing out that for ME

it was an original idea! The exclamation point is just because I'm excited not because I'm yelling at

you.

    So as I stated before,  I woke up at three a.m. so I could go out and plow snow, throw salt, and do

many other chores while most everyone else was fast asleep dreaming of bacon rainbows and

chocolate rivers.  Maybe that's just what I dream of while I plow.  While pushing snow I began to get

very hungry.  It turns out the bananas that I grabbed on the way out of the house were not so ripe yet,

and the mountain dew I drank was satisfying only in thought before I opened it and started drinking.  I did what you need to do when there is work to be done and no food to be eaten.  I pretended that I

was pushing ice cream across the ground with the snow plow and stacking it at the edge of the

property in a protective ice cream fortress that only hot fudge or a giant toddler could penetrate.  The

time was beginning to drone and drag slowly and the ice cream was starting to just look like snow,

and for the sake of time we will skip ahead in the story...

     I woke up to smells of breakfast!  My wife had done something wonderful in that tiny room at the

front of the apartment, so I excitedly asked, "did you make breakfast!?"  it certainly smelled like

food, good, hearty, American breakfast food was in there.  There had to be some BACON, eggs,  

hash browns, maybe some chicken fried steak.... "No I just made the boys an egg in a window!" was

her reply.  So there's that.  No breakfast, just a half sleepy man and his dreamy imagination elevating

the smell of fried toast with an egg in the middle to the glory of full on breakfast menagerie.

    I'm not one to let disappointment get the better of me, so I popped out of bed, litteraly popped, and

decided that I would follow suit with her idea and make myself an egg in a window.  MMMMMM I

could already smell it was the great thing, and so I could imagine the buttery fried edges of the toast,

the perfectly fried egg that when you cut into it the golden yoke slowly flows out like glorious soul

melting lava.  I opened the refrigerator door to grab an egg and then I saw it.  It was huge, menacing

even.  It looked like something a caveman would use to hit his mate over the head with before he

drug her off to the cave.  Summer sausage.  I had forgotten that we picked this up at the market last

night.  I don't know if it was the caveman analogy or just the remnants of the Mountain Dew doing

things to my mind, but I was struck with an idea that was all new to me.  "I'm going to cut some of

this off and fry it with my egg in a frame" I said aloud to myself.  That's right, I talk to myself.  I also

blog and that's kind of the same thing.

     So I cut a piece about a quarter inch thick, think half the length of your thumbnail up from the

cutting board.  I already had my egg in a frame going in the pan somewhere between medium and

medium hi.  I decided to crank it up to high for a moment when I first dropped the sausage in the pan

just so I could hear it squeal.  No really I wanted to crisp the edges a tiny bit, but it did squeal.  Then

I remembered what my wife told be about bacon the morning before (there's that bacon again).

She said "cook it on a lower heat and it will render the fat out of it and make it crisper."  Not sure if

this is true but it seemed to work with the bacon (bacon) and my wife cooks better than your's, so I

thought I'd try it out.  I turned the heat down.  Something about this seemed like I was doing

something right.  Like that same kind of feeling when you are doing something nice for someone that

could never repay you, only in this case I was just feeding myself.  The sausage was starting to roll

up a little bit, think fried bologna, or Baloney if you don't like the weird spelling.  It didn't smell like

bologna though,  it smelled spicy, smelled like I had cranked the amplifier to eleven, it smelled good.

    It was done!  I plated this curious new idea and sat down at the table.  The first bite was not what I

expected.  I had kept telling myself, "this is gonna be weird, why did you do this?"  Bam!  I was

shocked!  It was so much better than eating summer sausage cold.  This set off a train of thoughts

and questions in my mind.  Why have I never thought to cook this before? It's sausage, most sausage

is cooked.   How many times have I eaten this and had that oily film left behind on the roof of my

mouth because the congealed fat was plastered up there like spackle? WHO CARES!? I had to eat

this now.  I did eat it, like a bear mauling a tourist in Yellow Stone.  I let my wife have a bite,

because I lover her (lover her? that typo made that sound kind of personal) more than any other

human in this world and this was too good to hoard.  Then the Cazman wanted some so I let him

have a bite.  It was starting to look like this was actually something good, not just half baked

concoction of a hungry man that just woke up from a nap.  So I made more.  I am going to post some

pictures below so you can see.

     What can I say about this meal?  It wasn't bacon, but it was good.  If you live somewhere near a

market with some summer sausage give it a shot.  You don't have to eat it cold, you can have it hot.

You don't have to take my word for it, eat it yourself...the eating rainbow!  If you were a kid in the

eighties you should get that.  If not, I'm sorry that you didn't get to be a kid in the eighties.  Until

next time I bid you dreams of bacon rainbows, chocolate rivers, and ice cream fortresses.

On the plate

In the pan

Without the lid