Bacon

I had the most interesting experience with bacon tonight. Actually, it was prosciutto, but it's the same idea.
Tonight I was making a recipe that involved, basically, sautéing onions and mushrooms and then simmering them in wine and then tossing them with bacon (or prosciutto) and pasta. When I read the recipe, I considered omitting the bacon because often I find that the meat in recipes isn't where the flavor is, it's the sauce or fixings that I like, so cutting out the meat doesn't really affect the flavor. But then I looked at the recipe and realized that it was only 3 ounces of prosciutto, and I love prosciutto, so I decided to keep it in there instead.
I started sautéing the onions and mushrooms, added the wine, and set it on its long simmering (40 minutes). Then I went about the business of boiling the water for the pasta and frying up the prosciutto. But a funny thing happened when I peeled back the corner of the plastic container: it didn't smell right. I smelled it again, checked the label to make sure it was prosciutto, and then smelled it one more time.
"Yep, that's familiar," I said to myself. "That actually is what prosciutto smells like, but it doesn't smell the same anymore."
And I thought to myself, "Well, what does it smell like, if it doesn't smell like it used to?"
And what I answered was: "Flesh and meat."
And then I read the ingredients and it said: pork and salt and spices. And I thought, "Yep, that's pretty much what I smell."
And that bummed me out.
See, this is what prosciutto normally smells like to me:
thin slivers of salty meat- just enough flavor to make a sandwich- on really good bread with some tasty mild cheese.
Or, in other words, my three weeks spent in Northern Italy where I could actually order a sandwich that was just bread, meat, and cheese; not all that other stuff that I've always hated about sandwiches: mustard and mayonnaise and icky lunch meat piled too high on blechy bread.
It also smelled like:
Salty wrappers that you bite through to get to mango or watermelon or some other juicy fruit.
Or, in other words, the first time that I made a recipe for friends (prosciutto wrapped mango) that was actually good, and kinda fancy.
And I have to say that as I fried up the prosciutto, it definitely did NOT smell like bacon, the way I had hoped it would. It didn't smell like my grandma's house on a Sunday morning, before church, when we would be treated to homemade krullers with powdered sugar or thin crepes filled with grape jelly.
What it smelled like was meat, and fat, cooking. And honestly, what it felt like, was a pig, being cooked, for me to eat.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with the smell of blood as it is released from a burger frying in a pan. I also have no problem with the smell of bacon fat, as it sizzles away from those delicious shrinky-dinks of goodness we refer to as cooked bacon. Honestly, I have no problem with those smells. In fact, I love those smells. Those smells remind me of outdoor barbeques, leisurely mornings with friends in the kitchen, and, honestly, get- togethers with cousins, aunts, and uncles (we rarely had bacon or burgers at my house, for no reason other than the fact that we had sausages and steak instead).
But tonight, I didn't have those associations. All I had was the actual smell of raw prosciutto. And then all I had was the smell of cooking prosciutto.
I'm assuming this was because all I was focused on was the thing in front of me; that I was aware not of my thoughts and associations with the food that I was preparing but instead of the actual food in front of me: pork and salt and spices.
Bummer.
Prosciutto is nowhere near as delicious when it is pork and salt and spices as it is when it is all the memories and events that I associate with it.
Also, I can see now why people would want to be vegetarian. I can see why people wouldn't want to eat dead animals. They just don't taste all that good when that's what you're eating.