Generous wife brought home bacon for hubby

Nothing says Merry Christmas quite like the smell of Cajun-spiced, hickory-smoked bacon.

Or thick-cut, Applewood-smoked bacon.

Or even a slice – or two or three or eight – of Carlton Farms’ essentially fatless but still intensely flavored Canadian bacon.

Thanks to years of generosity from my lovely wife, I have been able to enjoy – and clog my arteries with – the most delectable gift I’ve ever received, no fewer than a dozen times each year.

Yes, we’re talking about the Bacon of the Month Club.

Susie made the connection some seven years ago: Knowing how much I loved bacon, she got to talking with one of our gourmet-conscious friends.

Turns out Steve had seen a little blurb in Food & Wine magazine, something about a place called The Grateful Palate offering memberships in its newest venture, a Bacon of the Month Club.

Never mind that she can’t stand the smell of bacon, and can’t even stay in the house when it’s cooking.

“OK, I’m headed out to run,” she’ll say, cracking open the window in the kitchen, even when it’s approaching freezing temperatures outside. “I’ll be back when you’re … done.”

Talk about a life-giving gift. Each month, a brown cardboard box would arrive, containing a couple of freezer blocks and a 1-pound package of one of the finest “artisan” bacons around. I put the official membership card in my wallet, and still have the official club certificate above my desk here at work.

Each Christmas, my club membership would come with another new bacon T-shirt. My favorites are the two that have strips of bacon lined up beside one another across the chest, like a super-yummy bar code of pork.

The bacons themselves come from specialty smokehouses from as nearby as Missouri and as far away as Denmark, all promising as much quality as variety. This isn’t Oscar Mayer or Hormel or anything else that you can find at the supermarket, offering the same old taste for the millionth time.

Good luck finding Nodine’s Bayou Bacon at Dillons. Or Rabideaux’s Dry Cured Smoked Bacon. Or Burgers’ Smokehouse Peppered Country Bacon.

I enjoyed such bacons and dozens of others for better than five years, until I just couldn’t justify it anymore. I figured that eating a pound of bacon at one sitting – even if it’s only once a month – might just be too much for anyone’s good health.

Then again, our two kids just might get me back in the game. Erin enjoys a few slices anytime we go out for breakfast, and Max – still six month shy of his third birthday – doesn’t hesitate to serenade me with unprompted calls for “ba-con! ba-con! BA-CON!” on Sunday mornings.

Now with two more willing mouths to feed, Bacon of the Month may soon have to return to the menu.