Perfection Not Required
Popularity Not Expected
When we change what we eat, it’s a major catastrophe for many of our friends and relatives. How can you possibly have Thanksgiving without turkey? Christmas without a ham? Bacon with Sunday breakfast.
Our traditions are planted deep in our psyches. I can call up the memory of my Grandma Wood’s house as fresh as yesterday, just on the basis of food. On Sunday mornings, Grandpa would make breakfast; bacon and eggs. And I can still smell the mingled scents of bacon and freshly brewed coffee that would wake my uncle Lennie and I, (only a month apart in age, so we grew up more like cousins) on Sundays. Now, the smell of freshly brewed coffee can sweep me back there without the bacon.
Of course the smell of bacon isn’t actually the scent of cooking meat, it’s the seasonings; hickory smoke, maple syrup, brown sugar, a little garlic and onion. We can recreate the flavor with just those ingredients, without the piggy. We can put them on mushrooms or tofu or baked potatoes or 1000 things.