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Cracklin, my favorite food (not to be confused with the song posted by S. Stratodrive called “Crackin,” which is amazing).

We had a nice time at JazzFest, although in my dotage I’ve grown fonder of the food and less inclined to stand in crowds to hear bands perform. There are some fun photos in the set, including many of my good friend Nehemiah, who lived and worked at the ranch with me for a summer and who just returned from his second tour in Iraq, this time in Ramadi embedded with the Iraqi Police.

But the most essential photo is this one, of a single piece of cracklin, which is certainly the great food of human history. It is like a fried cross-section of a pig’s skin, with a world of fat underneath, and it’s an intoxicating, alluring, repellant ecstasy of unhealthy deliciousness.

I see that many online like bacon, and I do too; but bacon is to cracklin what a bottle rocket is to the Big Bang. If you tried to make a meme out of cracklin, it would envelop the universe and bury all matter and energy in its essence. Evidently, FDA rules make it rarer than it used to be, and this has become the only political problem about which I feel pure revolutionary fervor.

I was introduced to cracklins over the Christmas holiday. That and hog’s head cheese. Both of which are damn good. Rediculously good. Toe-curlin’ good. Actually consider just giving up and buying a pair of oversized overalls and drinking beer for breakfast good. Thank goodness we don’t have either readily available in Central Texas.

 I don’t think I have ever gotten over the thought of the ridiculous amount of fat and calories in a cracklin to be able to enjoy it.  Actually, thinking about it makes my stomach hurt.  Now Hog’s Head Cheese on the other hand is a different story.  I used to look forward to going to my grandma’s for breakfast because I knew she either had a huge box of fruit loops or grits and hog’s head cheese.  Both are my fav so she never went wrong.  Gram was the shit!