Saving My Bacon

We all have foods we love. I love a lot of foods. Seriously, read any of my posts. My Instagram feed is literally nothing but food and my friend’s babies because she doesn’t post pictures anywhere else. Almost everyone I follow on there are chefs. My posts are nothing but food. When asked my favorite cuisine, I just freeze. I could not even begin to tell you a favorite. I love so many foods. I love mostly savory foods, but I also occassionally like a little sweetness, such as crepes filled with cream cheese and fruit or pie filling.

I love, love, love cheese. I have had very few cheeses or cheese dishes or cheese sauces that I have not liked. I love to just eat chunks of havarti on pita crackers. I love a good gooey grilled cheese sandwhich. I love Alfredo sauce on just about anything. I have been known to buy the refrigerated version and just eat it on freshly baked breadsticks. I even love me some not so healthy Velveeta, either in a mac ‘n cheese situation or as a dip. I’m not a snob about my love of cheese, though a good baked brie is also awesome!

During quarantine, I find myself craving whatever I don’t have in the food department. For example, we ran out of orange juice and had like 10 days until our next grocery trip. I promise you, I thought about orange juice every morning. I don’t generally have orange juice more than once a week, if that. As soon as you tell me I cannot have it, I am like a child waiting for Christmas morning. This is why dieting has never worked well for me.

I dream up all the different foods I want the next time I get to order groceries for the entire time between shopping trips, which is currently 10-14 days based on recommendations of our local health officials. I usually forget one or two of them when I actually order and am then tragically disappointed for another 10-14 days. And the cycle continues.

One of the hardest items for us to get at a reasonable price because of how we are limiting our shopping is cured meat. I love my local grocery store, but they do not carry a large selection of these. Our favorite meat shop does not have online ordering, and I won’t brave actually going into a store, especially one that has such limited room to manuever away from other customers. Our current schedule is to hit our local grocery every 10-14 days and only do delivery from Aldi every other time for things the local guys don’t carry, as we want to support our local businesses. So this further limits availability.

However, on our last grocery run, we managed to pick up some bacon. I don’t know if this is the case everywhere, but the price of bacon has substantially increased. (Given the uncertain times, I am also being very frugal about our spending.) But we decided to splurge a bit and get a pound of bacon. It’s been 10 days, and that bacon has not yet been opened. I want the bacon. Trust me, I want the bacon. However, now the bacon is special. I can’t waste the bacon on a rushed weekday breakfast before we all disperse to our devices to work/school from home. No, the bacon has to be savored. I have to pick just the right moment for the bacon.