Perfect Bacon

We have both been horribly remiss about blogging as of late. Troy has a good excuse: he was recently assigned to a large acquisition/merger/integration project that has brought him nearly weekly to the garden spots of the UK, Chessington and Bracknell (read with heavy sarcasm). In all seriousness, he has been spending the better part of each week for the last two months working in England and, if not there, Germany. I, however, do not really have a good excuse for falling lax on my writing. It's been a funny time of year -- it's the so-called morte saison (dead season) when everyone is away, but somehow there always seems to be something going on. Tant pis for the blog, I guess.

At any rate, Troy rather unexpectedly got a few days off, so of course we had to take advantage of this windfall with a quick trip to the lovely wine region of Bourgogne (Burgundy) in mid-eastern France. This is the time when I normally promise a full post on said trip, which might happen (and well should given that we took about 400 pictures!), but we have gotten so higgledy-piggledy with our posts that who knows what will come next: the finale to our March Normandy trip? A good post about our anniversary getaway to London? A throwback to last summer's lovely aventure provençal?

As the future is uncertain, I'll close this little post with the comforting and quotidien: Breakfast. Many moons ago when Troy and I were newlyweds, I attempted to make that most banal of breakfast staples, bacon. This was quite early in my culinary 'career' and the results were a smoky, blackened mess. Novice husband that he was, Troy responded severely, going on about 'smoke damage to the apartment' and 'ruining all his clothes' etcetera. I in turn responded with dig-in-your-heels-stubborness and declared that if he was so talented in the arts of bacon-cookery then he could darn-well handle those duties from here on out....a declaration that stuck for the last five years running. However, every now and again I get the hankering for a nice, crispy piece of bacon when Troy is not around to whip up a batch for me. So, swallowing my considerable pride, I asked him to instruct me in the ways of bacon-making. I took his tips to heart and while he was out for a run (and getting lost in the Bois de la Cambre/Forêt des Soignes, which is another story for another day) I tried my hand at bacon-makery this morning. The results, as evidenced by these pics, were bliss.