You Smell Like Bacon

Serious Eats included this meaty number in a round up.

I cooked a pound of bacon, and allowed it to cool before storing in the fridge. Oscar was completely wowed by how our place smelled. I liked the smell, too, and was looking forward to eating the bacon later that week with sandwiches, salads and eggs.

It seemed like I was trying to relax as much as possible that night. Eating bacon was a source of comfort. I had a big first day the next morning, starting work on a project that would last a few months. I was dreading an early start the next day. I wanted time to take a bath, read the papers, make and drink coffee and eat breakfast. I set my alarm for 6  a.m., with the goal of leaving no later than 7 a.m.

The next morning, Oscar shook me and asked, "What time is it?" I jumped out of bed and started howling. It was 7:08 a.m. This was awful, and I was starting to panic and sweat thinking about being late for my first day. I quickly realized I wouldn't even be able to take a bath or shower, given how late I already was. As I moved around, I realized my hair really smelled like bacon. A lot. Sure, that's a nice smell for home, but not something I wanted to share at the office. As I sped down 101, I kept getting bacon whiffs.

The folks on my new project probably thought I was weird that first day. Rather than expose them to my bacony smells, I would lean way back whenever someone greeted me or came close. I didn't nod my head yes or no in a meeting, for fear it would trigger puffs of bacon smells from my long hair. Just gave loud mmmm-hmmms instead. I'm not sure if anyone actually noticed the bacon smells I brought that first day. No way I was going to pipe up and ask.

When I told friends about it, the husband's eyes bugged out and he asked in a semi-shocked tone, "What do you mean, you smelled like bacon from the night before?!" He had pictured Oscar slathering bacon on me, in some sort of sex play. Uh, no.

 

Comments

[cookiecrumb]

Yeah, they noticed.
A million years ago, Cranky and I cooked our first roast beef together, and immediately afterward I went to a night class.
A classmate sniffed in my general direction and declared, "You smell like a hamburger!"
I was horrified.
I said, "No, I smell like roast beef."

[Mary]

So I feared, so I feared.

[Tea]

You just made them extra hungry for lunch!

[Sarah]

When I was in college one of the dining halls experimented with a wok bar, where you could gather up your ingredients at a buffet table and cook them yourself in one of half a dozen woks. The whole procedure was set up in the main dining area.

Anybody want to guess why this was a short-lived experiment? The main dining area was NOT set up to ventilate the output from half a dozen woks. Where did the lovely smells go? On you, and on all of your fellow diners. It got to the point where, unless you were going to actually wok your own food, you avoided that dining hall on Tuesday nights!

Even now my partner and I refer to post-dinner stinky clothing as smelling like wok bar - even if what we really smell like is pot roast. :)