On Saturday, pork aficionados will meet up in Des Moines, Iowa, for the fifth annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, billed as America's "premier" bacon celebration.
The event, which sold out all 4,000 tickets in 25 minutes, offers something to make every swine lover swoon: unlimited bacon samples, a bacon-eating contest, educational lectures, a bacon-themed songwriting contest and crowning of a new bacon queen. Organizers plan to serve up about three tons of the fatty strips.
They're also prepared for a bit of oinking from outsiders.
A group of vegetarian doctors has been skewering Iowans over the event for months. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, says he wants to publicize the flip side of bacon.
He says the PCRM plans to hand out fliers with warnings about how bacon "rotting in your mouth" potentially has various health risks, including cancer and diabetes.
"With so much attention focused on this most unhealthful food, we want to make sure our message is there," says Dr. Barnard.
Article here, via Doug Mataconis. Speaking of bacon, one of our local butchers, Schmidt's, has made a raspberry chipotle bacon. It's an interesting blend of flavors, and the raspberry is only hinted in the taste. But I'm not particular to the bacon's gritty heat. I don't mind the heat, but the grit took something away from the bacon in my humble opinion.