Day 393: BaconFest

College Boy!

     After yesterday's bummer of a challenge, there was only one thing that could lift my spirits. Bacon. Keystone, a mountain town about an hour and a half from me, was holding a festival in honor of the treat America holds so dear, bacon. I first heard about this festival the day before, when my buddy at work invited me to tag along. I'm not sure why I was even surprised to hear about a festival for bacon. It's America, of course there's a BaconFest. American's are bacon fanatics. I've personally seen tattoos that depict entire scenes made up of nothing but bacon. People's love of bacon seems to know no bounds. This love for bacon, is a love that do not share with the rest of America. Don't get me wrong, I love me a club sammich, or maybe a bacon burger every now and then, but my love of bacon doesn't even register in comparison to the other attendees of this festival. The crowd was a blur of bacon. I caught glimpses of bacon t-shirts, pajama bottoms, and two full on bacon tuxedos. Guests were sporting plastic pig snouts and face paintings of bacon strips. I decided to try to immerse myself the best I could in the culture -and to do so- would have to disregard the pains my heart would inevitably tell me once I started eating.

     We hunted for the tastiest treats the festival had to offer, and I was on the lookout for the strangest. We found chocolate dipped bacon strips, bacon wrapped hotdogs, bacon flavored whiskey, and (my favorite) bacon mac and cheese. Tempting smells filled the mountain town and I followed them wherever they went.

Danny eating something good?

     My favorite part of the entire day, must've been the bacon college that the five of us went to. It was a seminar entitled "Bacon Eating 101", but really it was just a small outdoor auditorium a local smokehouse rented to talk about all the flavors of BBQ sauce they carry. They talked about how charitable they were, and about their low prices -yadda yadda yadda. What was cool about it, was they picked two volunteers from the audience to come up on stage and race to make the owners signature meal; a four pound carnivorous creation called the bacon log, and my buddy Danny was chosen to compete. I'm not sure if I was intrigued because it looked appetizing, or just...intimidating. This excessive amount of food was essentially a blanket of weaved bacon strips with pounds and pounds of meats, cheeses, and chili. The contestants prepared the log and rolled it up when finished. Once the owners were done with their sales pitch, they asked the crowd to judge the winner (of an awful stomachache and $25 gift card) by a round of applause. Obviously we went nuts when it was time for Danny's applause, and he won. They smoked the giant pile of meat, and we got to take it home with us (to feed us through December). Afterwards, we all got diplomas from the bacon professor, and I thought that was pretty silly.  
     It was fun, and strange, and pretty tasty. I'd probably do it again.

The Bacon log

College Boy