A match

I understand the appeal of bacon in forms other than cured pig-belly meat. Bacon wallets, bacon bandages, bacon T-shirts. I’m still trying to find bacon gum. (Just think: Chicklet-style crispy outside, juicy inside. Mmm.)

But a friend just gave me what might be the next best thing to bacon gum: Uncle Oinker’s Savory Bacon Mints. (Purchased, he says, at The Machine Shed Restaurant, the Iowa’s answer to Cracker Barrel.) The ingredients list “bacon and mint flavors,” but I taste a sweet smoke flavor with a hint of mint and not much pork. The manufacturer, a Seattle company called Accoutrements, says on its Web site that “mint and bacon is a match made in Heaven.”

That description isn’t as apt as the old version, available via Google’s cache, that has one subtle-yet-key difference. “It may sound weird but once you taste it,” it reads, “you’ll see that mint and bacon is a match made in China.”

Update
Another bacon item, too good to let languish in the comments: bacon cake with beer (and by the looks of it, well-aged beer). At least as awesome, but not fitting with the fake bacon theme, is this real bacon cake.