Day 14: Fake Bacon - A distinct taste of fakoness

Today’s breakfast was simple and quick…toast and jam.  I can hear the cries… how does toast and jam meet the requirements of the “Month of Pork”?  Rest assured, this was no ordinary jam, it was Bacon Marmalade from PC.  I’d never actually used it as marmalade, only like a savoury condiment with sharp cheese and crusty bread, and I’ll admit that it was pretty good.  But this morning, eating it on simple white toast revealed that something was amiss.  I sensed a distinctly fake baconness about it; let’s call it fakonness.  The kind of fakon taste that you might get from fake bacon bits or bacon flavoured chips or even bacon flavoured dog treats.  I turned the jar around and confirmed my suspicions; the list of ingredients included “bacon seasoning”.  For shame President’s Choice, for shame.  You’ve marketed your Black Label line as upscale, but you can shove it up Galen Jr.’s fakon ass as far as I’m concerned.  Just let me finish the jar first.

As has been typical, lunch consisted from leftovers from last night, even the mushrooms and peas that I wasn’t pleased with.  They weren’t bad necessarily, but I’d definitely classify them as a mistake… even still, I ate them.  It made me think of my on-going question of who’s a better chef, fat people or skinny people?  My logic is that a fat chef is probably less discriminating than a thin one, they’ll eat anything; but a fat chef may be that way because they’ll eat everything and have a more experienced palette than a thin chef.  May thin chefs are that way because they don’t know what’d good.  It may be complicated issue, but it doesn’t change the fact that the mushrooms hadn’t improved overnight.  I wouldn’t be eating that mistake a third time; twice was enough.

Queen Margherita Pizza on Queen was my dinner spot.  I’ve eaten at some of the new crop of “best stone oven pizza” joints in Toronto, and I can report back that they’re relatively interchangeable.  I’ve eaten pizza all over Italy, and I will admit that it’s better there, but not because it necessarily tastes better; it’s because it’s prepared without making a fuss about it.  It’s peasant food, and nobody pretends that it’s upscale.  My pizza tonight, a simple off-menu “porky pizza” request with tomato sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto, capicollo and sopressata cost $25.00.  Those who have held court with me know that I’m not thrifty when it comes to food, but let’s not pretend that stone oven pizza justifies such a cost.  Queen Margherita is not alone in this, any other joint riding the stone-oven wave is just as guilty.  Let's be clear - Pizza is not a high class item requiring exhaustive preparation and long involved cooking times…at least that’s not my experience with pizza in in its birthplace; Napoli.

Stone oven pizza in Toronto - real, but not real at the same time