Sunday morning

Most Sunday mornings start fairly late for me...especially if I indulged in a wee dram or two the previous evening. As time has progressed, however, I'm finding that I begrudge the restful, wasted time spent lounging in bed. Especially given that this time is also spent warding off the cats, both of whom are reminding me that the food doesn't pour itself into the bowl. Mikey is usually content to thump down beside me, using my back to ricochet into a comfortable position, there to wait for me to get up. Julian, however,believes in a much more "paws on" type of approach. His favorite method of getting your attention is the tried and true "cat snot sneeze to the face", which is just as disgusting as it sounds. He is the only cat I know that can sneeze on demand.  If that fails, he thinks that a whack in the face with a (sometimes) soft paw will do the trick. This might work on Gayle, but the only result he gets from this is an attempt at reminding him which of us is at the top of the food chain around here.

This morning I poured a cup of coffee, and decided that a taste of the home cured bacon Gayle brought down from Kentucky would be just the thing.  I had set it out to thaw, it having been in the freezer.  So I opened the ziplock bag, and discovered that it really was slab bacon...a chunk about 3 inches thick.  No worries, I whipped out a knife and start cutting some rashers.  The first one was even, not too thick, and looked like something any store would have been proud to display.  By the time I got to number 4, it was looking like something that came out on the losing side of a bar room knife fight.  How in the hell did Gayle get the last batch cut so well?

Anyway, into the electric skillet they went.  I busied myself frying up a couple of eggs to go with, and a slice of toast (can't let any of the good stuff get away...you just gotta sop it up!).  The bacon's frying, the cats are creeping into the kitchen like ninjas, hoping a: I don't see them, and b: I drop something for them to eat. I cloud up and rain all over these plans as I detect them, as cats underfoot don't go well with hot skillets, in my opinion. Finally, the bacon's out of the pan, the eggs are done (with just a touch of lace...damn griddle got too hot), and I'm plopping down at the table to enjoy the fruits of my labor.  The cats are lined up, strategically placed to catch anything that might hit the floor, and I tuck in.

When dealing with homemade, salt cured bacon, a word of advice.  Rinse the salt off the bacon prior to cooking.  If you don't, then what you have is the seasoning and flavoring ingredient for about 10 pots of green beans.  This morning's delicious looking breakfast treat was the salt equivalent of the first time I ever made salsa, and didn't know that you were supposed to remove the seeds from the hot peppers prior to dumping them into the sauce. Ah, well, I'm sure that Gayle had told me about this...who knew I was supposed to listen and remember?

I gamely plowed my way through two slices before giving it up.  Both the boys indicated that they would be more than happy to take the remainder off my hands, but I don't think that it would be any better for them than it was for me. so they're off sulking right now.  Me, I'm getting ready to do some laundry, waiting for my blood pressure to subside a bit prior to heading out to update the servers at a couple of our clinics.