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Medicaid for unemployed workers? That's communism! Socialism! And they might find they like it! Link

Bacon? Bacon!

Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog.
By DAMON DARLIN

FOR a nation seeking unity, a recipe has swept the Internet that seems to unite conservatives and liberals, gun owners and foodies, carnivores and ... well, not vegetarians and health fanatics.

Certainly not the vegetarians and health fanatics.

This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.” The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say a diverse collection of well over 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating, or sometimes scolding, its excessiveness. A fresh audience could be ready to discover it on Super Bowl Sunday.

Where once homegrown recipes were disseminated in Ann Landers columns or Junior League cookbooks, new media have changed — and greatly accelerated — the path to popularity. Few recipes have cruised down this path as fast or as far as the Bacon Explosion, and this turns out to be no accident. One of its inventors works as an Internet marketer, and had a sophisticated understanding of how the latest tools of promotion could be applied to a four-pound roll of pork.

The Bacon Explosion was born shortly before Christmas in Roeland Park, Kan., in Jason Day’s kitchen. He and Aaron Chronister, who anchor a barbecue team called Burnt Finger BBQ, were discussing a challenge from a bacon lover they received on their Twitter text-messaging service: What could the barbecuers do with bacon? More

Recipe Bacon Explosion

A Venetian Bath of Wine and Spice

The Minimalist
A Venetian Bath of Wine and Spice
By MARK BITTMAN

THIS is a column about luck, not skill — or at least not mine. Having become enamored of Peasant, on Elizabeth Street, I discovered that the chef, Frank DeCarlo, also ran the newer Bacaro. (Bacaro is the name given to a Venetian bar serving what are called cicchetti but are better known elsewhere as tapas — or small plates, or snacks.)

The first time I ate at Bacaro I was struck — even dumbstruck — by one particular dish. It’s a marinated rib-eye, and part of the luck came in ordering it in the first place, since I’m not big on marinating meat that tastes fine just by itself. This, however, was clearly an ancient recipe — you could taste the sweet spices and the rich red wine immediately — and an unusual one. More

Recipe: Really Old-Fashioned Marinated Rib-Eye

Office

My office is going under the sander today. I've been moving junk sice o' dark hundred.