of the month clubs

Perhaps it’s just me, but one of the only expressly masculine things I engage in is my love of meat and hot sauce. Forget about sports and the feetballs and the puck-holes, and forget about dining at restaurants that have only waitresses with certain physical attributes. I love me some hot foods.

It’s always the quirky intellectual who’ll show up at a barbecue and start spouting off things about scovilles and scotch bonnets, that specialized knowledge surely winning friends, gaining attention and not a little bit of admiration from the ladies. I saw that guy, and became him. Minus the ladies. Did you know that a ‘chipotle’ is just a smoked jalapeño? Do you like me more now? See?

For this reason, I’ve always wanted to surround myself with hot sauce. Maybe it’s genetic – my grandpa grows his own chilies and at the end of every season, they’re dried and we make out own super-hot pepper, and my grandma will ask for whatever secret supply of hot sauce that any good Mexican restaurant can offer. And when it comes to sushi, I make a beeline for the Spicy Crunchy Roll. While I’m not combing the dusty back aisles of Marshalls (an excellent place to find bizarre, but occasionally questionable, hot sauces), The Amazing Hot Sauce of the Month Club is the best thing to supply my crazy spicy needs. Eggs, tuna, soup – you name it.

I’ve made no secret in discussing my adoration for the ‘Amazing Of The Month Clubs’ before. They offer a great, hand-picked variety of verified awesome, and I get a distinct pleasure in being surprised by a monthly delivery of… surprise. It used to come in the form of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse videotapes, and then, the Classic Marvel Figurine Collection. Clearly, I’m evolving. I can barely stop my beard at the rate it’s going.

Your monthly delivery of hot sauce comes with two safely packed bottles, described in an accompanying newsletter. I had the delight of receiving Hot Mama’s Habanero Hot Sauce XX, which is made in Belize of all places, and ‘Hot Chocolate’, another habanero sauce, this one from some mysterious place in the US, and made from ‘chocolate’ habaneros, which is actually a variety of pepper, and not some strange Wonkaish augmentation thereof. This is actually a darker variety of the regular habanero with an ‘unusual’ taste, can be dated back about 7000 years, and have a growing period longer than the average pepper. Though I’d not be opposed to the stranger, sweeter alternative either.

Your normal habanero is regarded as one of the hotter peppers, and ranges from 100,000 to 350,000 scovilles. A few peppers reach higher than this, but at that point, you’re probably putting yourself in physical danger. Anything above a million scovilles has been manufactured or chemically derived from the capsaicin found in peppers. So, dropping some chocolate pepper love on us this month was indeed a well-selected choice to give the hot sauce loving audience something that they might not have tried before.

And that’s what it’s all about – that amazing lottery of flavor that comes to you every month, and for less than 20 bucks a shipment, also. Like all of the other clubs, there’s a variety of time spans to decide from, but after only a few months, you’ll start to assemble your own colorful display of sauces for your kitchen cabinets or fridge. Which is really exciting. Click on over and check out another superb start to a great collection.

I’ve said before that it’s impossible to collect meat in the traditional sense unless you’re going the well-preserved jerky route, but when it comes to any food-based ‘Of The Month’ club, the definition of ‘collecting’ can be shifted into something a little more transient. Does a collection of something need to exist permanently, or does every item need to exist at the same time? Does the ‘object’ in question need to be in your possession, or can it be a well-remembered experience within a theme? Are roller coaster enthusiasts who pursue upside-down thrills across the U.S.A. any less ‘collectors’ than someone who has a drawer full of matchbooks?

Of course, all of this philosophical meandering always leads me to one thing : bacon. I’m known as something of a ‘bacon freak’ among my comrades. For much of high school, I ate what I called ‘The American Heart Association Lunch’ – a whole lot of bacon on a buttered roll, which remains a favorite snack even today. Friends have gifted me with bacon-themed wallets and band-aids and shirts, and it’s pretty much not a complete day until I have a bit of the hog. It was a stroke of bizarre coincidence when I dated a few vegetarian girls in a row, so my friend Dan (who’d later become a vegan) deftly suggested that I hide bacon in my cheeks when I’d kiss one of them in an effort to convert them back to the meat-side.

It wasn’t as successful as I’d imagined it might be, and I stopped listening to Dan.

So, in my never-ending quest for bacon delights, I came across no less than three different Bacon Of The Month clubs. My potential favorite of the three presented me with the slogan ‘Bacon is Meat Candy’ – which I couldn’t agree with more. And, in honor of today, the Second Annual International Bacon Day, I asked Bacon Of The Month Club and BaconFreak.com proprietor Rocco Loosbrook how his Bacon Of The Month club started.

“It’s kind of one of those dumb luck situations that you just stumble onto. I was on a business trip in Kentucky, so of course I wanted to go out for some breakfast to experience some of that real ’southern hospitality’. Anyway, I ordered breakfast and when the waitress served it, I immediately noticed that the bacon was absolutely huge, all thick and plump and sticking way out of the breakfast sandwich that I ordered.”

Thus began Rocco’s growing love affair with bacon. Well, REAL bacon – the uniquely hand-prepared and loved bacon, not the generic, inconsistent and water-fattened store-brand stuff. “I bought some for myself before I left and took it home and started sharing it with friends, relatives and colleagues. Everybody that tried it absolutely ‘freaked’ – thus the name ‘Bacon Freak’ was born – and they all insisted that I go back as soon as possible and get a bunch more. It wasn’t long after that that I was in the bacon business.”

So, like a lovingly crafted mixtape of meat, subscribers are treated to month after month of expertly crafted bacon. I’ve always loved the surprise that comes with any ‘Of The Month’ club – you might not love every single item that comes along, but the exposure to the unusual or those things that you’d otherwise not try is where the value lies, and when you experience something heavenly, it’s worth all of the trial and error in the world.

While the only bacon that I’ve ever collected into my meat-xperience has been ’salt’ or ‘maple’ in nature, I’m informed that the full range of bacons extends far beyond this limited spectrum. “Each piece of bacon is hand rubbed with various flavors such as cajun, apple cinnamon, brown sugar, vanilla bourbon or sun dried tomato to ensure that you get a burst of flavor when you take a bite.”

Loosbrook’s personal favorite bacon is, understandably, his own creation. “Boss Hog Bacon is sugar cured and hickory smoked. Our dry cured bacon will not shrink like packing house bacon because no water is added or used in the curing process. We use a time-honored secret formula and you can certainly tell the difference in taste – this bacon has sweet and hammy pork flavors, boasts an intense flavor and the meat is succulent. Finally, a new bacon that is bold enough to stand up and say, ‘Eat me’.”

This is followed by their Bourbon Street Cajun Bacon and Coastal Caliente Smoked Jalapeno Bacon, so if you’re looking to sample some bacon before you dive head-first into a monthly experience, this is the way to go. This is a man passionate about his meats. For him, it’s about contrast : “The reason why Bacon Freak bacon is so perfect to me is because we have all had bad bacon, which makes good bacon even more exciting.”

Gourmet food it not an inexpensive taste, as most are produced in small, hand-crafted batches, so Bacon Freak offers a selection of options which all include two packages of bacon delivered safely and swiftly to your doorstep once a month, for different spans of time. You can commit to a full year of bacon, or you can join on a month-to-month basis. Either way, you’ll never have to leave the house in search of bacon again, and you even get a neat bonus package, including a t-shirt (in case you DO need to leave the house), recipes, games and a bacon air freshener. Of course, you can buy things in regular quantities also. For some, bacon isn’t as common an event as others. Let us mourn for those people.

Loosbrook’s clubs don’t stop at bacon though, as the site also offers steak, jelly, sausage, ribs, lobster, olives, barbecue sauce and ham – all on a monthly basis, each one a collection of sensory delights that can be enjoyed legally within your own home. I’m a firm believer that any food that you don’t have to put your shoes on to get is good food, so swing on by Bacon Freak and consider sampling some of the most versatile of all meats.