What's a Nice Jewish Boy Doing, Cooking Bacon?

So pictured here, obviously enough is a rasher of cooked bacon in one of my favorite heavy iron skillets. It’s part of the prep, going into a 3-cheese mac n cheese dish courtesy of Poole’s Diner in North Carolina. Ya know all that (true) stuff people are saying these days about Southern cooking actually being much healthier than people think? Well, this ain’t the poster child for that notion. But I digress.

Bacon plays a significant role, obviously in southern cuisine, so also on our menu. Which is interesting since I grew up in a kosher home and even when we ate seafood (mostly shrimp and crab) outside the home, we never ate pork. Ever. It was like this whole deeper, more serious level of Purgatory reserved for really bad Jewish behavior. Fast forward: Years later, living in Israel, cooking bacon. Go figure. I gotta lot to ask forgiveness for on Yom Kippur. But I did anyway.

The mac n cheese is kickass, by the way. Although I prefer the version with shrimp. Just sayin’.