Waiting…….

Tim's fantastic bacon

March is a cruel month, right before that cruelest month. Grocery stores are full of all the out-of-season, purchased-from-somewhere-else strawberries, asparagus, green beans. It’s so hard to resist them, and love those root vegetables when something green is what you crave. I’ve been trying to follow a mildly cocina povere or cocina pobre –  whatever language you cook in — using very little meat and lots of roots and dark greens. Sometimes it works beautifully — say with fantastic home-cured bacon from my friend Charlotte’s husband, Tim, which I used to flavor a salad of dark green lentils and walnuts. The bacon is so powerfully evocative of bacon I ate when I was young that just a few shavings give the lentils a smoky goodness.  My son loves BLTs, and this bacon would be perfect. Not that it’s going to last until tomato season. Maybe next will be a satisfying minestrone with just a touch of bacon. Or seared scallops with bacon. Or… What do you like with great bacon?