Bacon Party

*Warning: this post contains graphic content--vegetarians should look away.  : )

Some times you come across something that just inspires you. When I saw this on someone's Facebook wall the other day, an idea was born.

One of my husband's favorite TV characters is Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec. Probably for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is Ron's adoration of bacon and steak. Since my husband's birthday was this week I decided to make him a little bacon party for work. 

I had a print of the inspirational poster made at Walmart and then put it in a cheap frame. Then I drew a little bacon shape on my silhouette (I love how easy it is to make up your own shapes, by the way). I stole some of Thing One's construction paper and cut out a couple dozen bacon strips. I hole punched them with a mini punch and made them into a little banner. 

 I did two "bouquets" of bacon in Hickory Smoked and Honey & Maple flavors. If that's not the manliest bouquet ever I don't know what is.

Next I fried up some extra crispy slices of bacon, drained them and broke them in half so that I could

do this:

and turn them into this.

Just look at the beauty of that will you? A perfect food marriage.

This was my first attempt at chocolate covered bacon and I was thrilled with how well they came out. I of course used my best friend: Almond Bark, the best kind of chocolate for beautifully coating things. The white strips also got a dusting of chili powder and a sprinkle of chili flakes because my husband also loves chili chocolate.

Finally, I made one more bacon dish. I didn't stuff them with anything, just plain dates wrapped in bacon. When Thing One tasted one he said, "Mmm, caramely." I love that dates do that when you bake them. Add a salty layer over top. Yum. yum. yum. A few of my husband's co-workers said they could have eaten the whole plate. Me too.

My own personal experience with bacon is that it is always gone before you would have stopped eating it. It is the sole reason to go to a breakfast buffet as far as I'm concerned. But for those at the office with less bacon-eating stamina, I made a couple of non-bacon treats for when they tagged out, and also for the vegetarians, because I'm sensitive like that (never mind that they had to wade through the bacon to get to these). This chocolate popcorn is pretty similar to the popcorn I wrote about at Valentines, except I used chocolate almond bark instead of white, and Coco Dyno-bites (which is the generic version of Coco Pebbles) as the crunchy cereal.

Last but not least was this fruit tray with (vegan) chocolate coconut dip, which I want to tell you more about in a later post, because let's face it we can't talk vegan right now, not here, not now. Not with the smell of three pounds of bacon still hanging in the air. 

This concludes our celebration of bacon. I hope this gives you some ideas for the bacon-lovers in your life... Bacon.

 Thanks for reading!

-Haley