Bacon poetry

Seen on the facebook:

Kind of charming. It called to mind this delightful piece from McSweeney's. I used to find McSweeney's kind of obnoxious and irritating, but lately I have really enjoyed everything I've read from them. I wonder if I changed or they did.

Salami and Capers tomato sauce

I recently broke into my dwindling reserves (I'll be back in the US for the summer in just over a month now, so I can be less frugal with the pork supply) to try to recreate a pasta sauce that T* and I made way back when. Prior to that occasion, I had never tried cooking salami - it actually seemed like kind of an absurd idea to me. But that time, it turned out quite delicious. From what I could recall, it was basically sauteed salami hunks plus spicy tomato sauce and fresh parsley. But I don't especially like parsley, so I axed that part. I also used tomato paste instead of a can of tomatoes**, because I had a little jar of homemade tomato paste a family friend had made from the tomatoes in her garden that I was looking to use. So basically, I chopped up some salami and sauteed it with garlic, added the tomato paste, some crushed red pepper and oregano (or maybe it's thyme. I mean, it says it's thyme, but it really smells and tastes much more like oregano to me.) and cooked it for awhile. But then it didn't really taste all that amazig, so I added a few handfuls of capers! Capers are also something I do not think of as a thing one cooks, so it kind of made sense, category-wise.

Anyways, it was delicious. But to be honest, the salami was kind of the weakest link. This may be because of the particular salami I used, or because it is somewhat aged at this point. But the take-away lesson for me was actually that plain old tomato paste with some spices and capers is pretty delicious.

*I have decided that the 18th century convention of initials seems more dignified than calling him Better Half or my dude all the time.

**I am getting kind of paranoid about canned tomatoes. I keep hearing these rumors that they're really bad for you.