Hand-Prepared Bacon Shipped Monthly

I’ve been fascinated by those fruit-of-the-month clubs over the years but reluctant to join any. I’d see the beautiful catalogs and wonder: Would the pears arrive as lovely as they looked in the pictures? What if I were out of town when the blueberries arrived? Would I come home to a box of blue mush instead?

Last year I took a leap of faith and joined a club - not the fruit-of-the-month club, but the bacon-of-the-month club - through the Grateful Palate catalog.

Bacon just sounded goofy enough for some fun, and it appealed to me if, in fact, I could get my hands on some really toothsome bacons.

I’ve tried and tried to find bold-flavored bacons at the grocery store, but they’re always a disappointment. When I got my Grateful Palate catalog, I was intrigued by the idea of getting hand-prepared bacon from small producers around the country - bacons only the folks who lived near the producer got to taste.

“These aren’t your typical mild, wan, smoke-injected strips,” said the catalog. It described the November Summerfield Farm’s Virginia molasses-and-brown-sugar-cured bacon as “a great big hedonistic pig bomb, like bacon pudding.”

The Grateful Palate, a California-based, mail-order artisan food catalog, began the bacon-of-the-month club in 1998. It started with eight members and now numbers more than 1,000.

Annual membership fees are a hefty $225 for one package per month, or $300 for two packages, most of which goes toward the two-day UPS air shipping. The bacon comes in insulated packaging, with a frozen block to keep it chilled. Each bacon shipment comes with the story of how the bacon was created, and information on ordering more of a particular month’s selection if you crave an extra pound or two.

For more information, visit www.gratefulpalate.com or call (888) 472-5283.