my best buddy, bacon

when i was no longer living under my parents roof i went veggie.  i did not buy birkenstocks.  i just gave up the dreaded meat i was coerced into eating while residing with the parental units.  i was vegetarian for a total of eight months.  one afternoon i went to a diner with friends.  while perusing the menu my eyes kept gravitating toward the letters B L T.  it was as if there was a neon sign lighting up the option.  the waitress arrived to take our order and when she turned to me my mind relayed, "portobello burger with sweet potato fries." but my mouth projected, "a BLT on wheat with onion rings, please."  i could have taken it back, if my brain had not then been chanting....  "make that three!  make that three!"

i fell off the bacon bandwagon and became a bacontarian.  but bacon really is a gateway meat.  one minute you're eating a harmless BLT [which let's face it.. is a vegetarian sandwich with a slice of guilt. or three.] and before you know it you're devouring a rack of ribs.  once again i was a full fledged carnivore. but this time it was on my own terms.  and my terms seem to include: 
sneaking pork products into recipes that do not call for ingredients of the pork variety.

"let's have something healthy for dinner tonight."
"ok.  i'll make fish and some fresh vegetables."
[looks down at plate]
"um, shannon...  the fish is wrapped in bacon."
"so?"
"yeah, i think that sort of kills the 'healthy' concept."
"really?"  [does not compute.  does not compute.]

so call me surprised when upon serving my daughter her first strip of bacon she turned her nose up at its salty, crispy, deliciousness.  i actually began to calculate dates and times because i had a fleeting moment of thinking she wasn't my child.  there is NO WAY that someone i passed my DNA to was not going to like bacon.  that would a supreme genetic anomaly.

but before you panic as i did... i recently put bacon on delilah's plate once again.  [because i'm a pusher and i refused to accept that she may not like bacon] low and behold...  she . l . o . v . e . d . it.  "mo bacon, peez. mo bacon peez." perhaps she has finally reached the point of taste bud maturation.

it is now my hypothesis that there is a bacon taste bud.
and out of my 8,000 taste receptors, at least 6,897 of them are bacon buds.