Published: December 21, 2008

B-eautiful: Bacon, Boxing & Beer!

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By Rocco 'Boss Hog' Loosbrock

The "Times Leader" released a story that combined a tri-fecta of the following elements: Boxing, Bacon & Beer! Does this story actually need any more elaborate explanation than that? I didn't think so!

Enjoy!

Bringing Home The Bacon: Boxing, Bacon & Beer Unite Friends!
By Mary Therese Biebel mbiebel@timesleader.com
Features Writer

OK. Brace yourself. There was bacon in the ice cream. • Then again, if you peeked into the kitchen at John Alapick's house in Beaumont on Saturday, you would have found bacon just about everywhere. • There was bacon in the chili Walley Fish of Forty Fort was stirring on the stovetop and bacon wrapped around the water-chestnut-and-date hors d'oeuvres he had in the oven.

Walley Fish's chili contains a pound of bacon.

John Alapick, the host of the evening, brings out his bacon and macaroni salad.

Alapick's brother, Rob, gently tapped a mix of bacon, onion, peppers and cream cheese into mushroom caps. Soon he would roll ham slices around strips of bacon and pepperjack he intended to grill in a Panini maker.

Meanwhile, that bacon ice cream was chilling in the freezer.

"It's all about the three B's - boxing, bacon and beer - and it's a good way to get people together," John Alapick said, explaining why he'd invited about 20 guests to watch the Oscar de la Hoya/Manny Pacquiao fight, down a few brewskis and prove once again, as his friends do just about every month, that versatile bacon can be part of everything from appetizers to dessert.

"We keep Lipitor in business," Rob Alapick said with a laugh.

No, Jason Miller of Wilkes-Barre protested. He'd just had his cholesterol checked, and the numbers are good.

"Seriously, it's not like we eat it every day," Rob Alapick admitted.

"I did consciously stay away from bacon for breakfast today," Maurice Bradley of Dickson City said as he and his girlfriend, Megan Laury, wrapped a mix of bacon bits, diced apples, mozzarella and pear sauce (think applesauce, but it's made from mashed pears and rum) inside fresh baby spinach leaves.

The boxing match hadn't started yet, but more and more bacon dishes appeared to be contenders for the most popular part of the evening.

In one corner was John Alapick's chilled bacon-and-macaroni salad and, in another, his brother's broccoli-and-bacon salad.

One slow-cooker warmed a bacon/cheese dip that Stephanie Bohn of Northmoreland Township described as "positively addictive," while another heated a medley of barbecued pork chops and bacon designed to make the entire bacon brigade salivate.

After Fish pulled from the oven his bacon hors d'oeuvres - a simple arrangement of water chestnuts inside pitted dates wrapped in bacon slices -- Doug Bohn of Northmoreland Township put in two pans of bacon/cinnamon buns.

While the buns were baking, Bohn dished out samples of another of his creations, a rich, whiskey-spiked ice cream, to which he'd added bits of cooked and candied bacon.

If you're curious about this bacon-and-eggnog kind of dessert, you might want to know the bacon nuggets could at first be mistaken for pecans or walnuts - until you chewed them and that unmistakable bacon flavor shone through to complement the sweet ice cream.

But why analyze when you can just enjoy?

"Aw, this is a slice of awesome," Brandon McCabe told Bohn with a happy sigh.

Signing off at Pigging out!
Rocco "Boss Hog" Loosbrock

(NewsBlaze readers use coupon code Blaze to get 10% off your next bacon order)

Rocco owns and runs a Bacon of the Month Club called The Bacon Freak Bacon is Meat Candy Club as well as a Wine Club called the Coastal Vineyard Wine Club

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