Bacon: A Love Story

For the better part of my junior year of college, I was smitten with a young man who was a vegetarian. One evening as we sat in a diner studying over coffee I asked if ever missed eating meat, such as when the smell of bacon cooking wafted across a room. And he replied:

"Oh, yuck. Bacon is nasty."

Although he spurned my interest in favor of someone else, I should have known then and there that it would never work.

My veggie box recently contained collard greens, which made my heart sink when I first saw them. I like most kinds of greens, but a few years ago I was sharing a veggie subscription with friends and eventually had to drop out after an seemingly endless series of collard greens. They kept appearing week after week in the dark heart of winter. But after my initial dismay, I realized that I was using a flawed approach. I have discovered the correct attitude to have when faced with collard greens: they are an excuse to eat bacon.

My method for this was to chiffonade the greens and then sautée bacon until crispy. I pulled out the bacon bits to drain on a paper towel, added some finely chopped onion and (here's the kicker) braised the greens. In bacon fat.

I might be okay with collards showing up in the box again.