Breathe Deep The Bacony Air

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August 14, 2015 by T. Gregory Argall

I like bacon.

That’s not really a secret. To those that know me, this isn’t some great revelation. Not like when I told them about organizing the betting pools for the tiddly-winks cage matches in Kindergarten. No, wait, I haven’t told them about that yet.
Never mind.

Anyway. Bacon, the candy of the meat world.

People think I’m obsessed with bacon. I’m not. You know who’s obsessed with bacon? Jim Gaffigan is obsessed with bacon. I don’t have a bacon obsession, I just have a deep appreciation for all that bacon can bring to my life.

 

My appreciation of bacon has brought many wonderful things into my life. My daughter made bacon cupcakes for me. She sought out a recipe and made me a jar candied bacon jam, which brought toast into the realm of ecstasy. Friends have presented me with all manner of bacon-themed gifts and products. Bacon t-shirt. Bacon-scented car air freshener, bacon candy canes, bacon-flavoured toothpaste, bacon note paper. bacon dental floss.
Everything but baconnaisse, because mayonnaise is an affront to the laws of nature and I will not tolerate the sullying of bacon by condoning its affiliation with mayonnaise.

Earlier this week, my son came home and presented me with a bottle of Bacon Soda, which is not at all similar to baking soda, no matter how lazily you pronounce it. I was curious and intrigued. With cautious enthusiasm, I accepted the bottled beverage.

 

This drink is manufactured by a company called “Lester’s Fixins” which, partnered with “Melba’s Fixins” (apparently Lester’s wife, or possibly just Lester in drag) make a wide variety of food-flavour based sodas. A brief glimpse of their website suggests that the Research & Development team at Lester and Melba’s farm spends a lot of time smoking weed and thus constantly have the munchies. Also, they’re not very good at math. The website shows all fourteen of the eleven flavours they offer.
(Count ’em yourself.)

The bottle was chilled, so when I popped the cap, a swirl of frosted air wafted up from the neck of the bottle. I held the bottle under my mouth and inhaled the wafty frosted air like a succubus stealing the soul of a sleeping kitten, because that’s what you’re supposed to do with frosted bottle air; don’t judge me.

Not surprisingly, the air tasted like bacon. Not just an artificial bacon flavour, as the label suggested, but a deep, rich sense of bacon sizzling in a frying pan with deliciously greasy smoke rising to the ceiling. It was impressive, as mouthfuls of air go.

I paused, then took a sip of the amber beverage, and that’s when it got interesting.

As the soda poured out of the bottle, it pushed a wave of air ahead of it and as that air breezed over my taste buds it deposited the same rich bacony flavour. But this time it was even more intense. The air wasn’t wafting, it was was being pushed by the physics of flowing liquid. It was air moving with a purpose, and that purpose was to fill my senses with a paradoxically cooling sensation of bacon.
Then the soda itself hit my tongue and it held no flavour at all. It was coloured water with mild carbonation. It tasted like… absence.
Then came the swallow, bringing with it a lingering aftertaste that suffused my mouth with the glorious flavour of even more bacon.

Overall, it was an odd sensation. The drink was a splash of cool water, bracketed at either end by a profound sense of bacon. It was parenthetically flavoured, which is not something I have experienced before.

I quite enjoyed it. Although I would recommend consuming it in small amounts, to avoid being overwhelmed by by the flavour.

Try to be nice to each other.

tga