chuckro | Meat

We normally shop at the Pathmark that's four blocks from our apartment, but there's a Shoprite about 15 minutes away that typically has a nicer selection of produce, and has a better bakery and meat department. (The fish counter is a toss-up--Shoprite has a bigger selection, but the fish at Pathmark has been consistently better.)

Among yesterday's many chores was a trip to Shoprite to find exciting things to feed to the gaming group (and ourselves). Which is how we ended up having tuna steak, seaweed salad and vegetable gyoza for dinner last night. And why the gaming group will be getting a beautiful boneless leg of lamb tonight, and a veal roast in a week or two.

But the most interesting of the meat purchases was a half-pound of Canadian bacon. I hadn't had it in years--I feel like it was a staple of diners and fast-food breakfast sandwiches in my youth, and then vanished from my perception. (I'm also not entirely sure why it's called that. Do they not have standard bacon in Canada?) I also hadn't seen it in a supermarket before, since I started buying groceries for myself, so I opted to snatch it up.

...It was surprisingly underwhelming.

On one hand, it's a much meatier cut, so the resulting bacon isn't particularly greasy. It's also a thick cut, and I usually prefer thick-cut bacon. But it looks like you're eating a very thin pork chop, and the flavor ends up being more like ham than bacon because of the lack of fat. You couldn't really use it for bacon-based dishes, and you really need to cut it up, rather than it being finger food.

So sure, it was tasty, but it didn't scratch the bacon itch. For all the trouble, I'd rather be eating bacon.