Chapter 01.00: Bacon, my Teacher!

Table of Contents

Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

This is the definitive story of bacon and life. Our story.

The narrative spans the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time when many of the most pivotal advances in bacon curing took place, while blending seamlessly into the 2000s. Each character is based on a real historical figure and woven into events that actually occurred, both past and present. The world carries a steampunk flavour, with modern speech, behaviours, attire, and technology layered over a historical backdrop. The characters interact with one another through the cultural and historical biases of their time, creating a rich interplay between past and present.

The technological journey traced in this work is remarkable. It begins in prehistory and follows the evolution of curing methods across centuries, arriving in the modern day.

But it is also a personal journey. An our-story.

It may have started in Cape Town, but then again, perhaps somewhere else. Maybe on the dusty roads of Asia, in the Turfan Depression, or in cities like Samarkand and Batumi along the Silk Road. Perhaps it crossed the Alps into Hallstatt. Or maybe it began on the Wechsel in Austria, with a farm girl growing up on alpine meat and butter, raised by extraordinary parents and grandparents.

Maybe it began on the banks of the Vaal River and the wide grasslands of the Northern Free State. I’m not sure anymore. And perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Because wherever it began, it continues.

contemplative

In the Beginning

Bacon is my gateway into life, death and the universe.

The Most Elemental

When I was in my early twenties, Michael E. Porter, a prolific Harvard Business School professor, taught me to look for the seed of any cultural expression or technology. Understand the seed, and you will understand the tree. So, I began searching for the most fundamental elements that shape the essence of everything, whether physical or abstract. When I looked back to the dawn of human consciousness, the birthplace of our perceptions, my vision was obscured.

The Fog of Antiquity

The time before writing is like a fog – a haze filled with tiny particles of light and refractions. Just as we learn about the composition of distant stars by analysing their light, we can decipher the knowledge of the ancients by studying the fragments preserved in the fog of antiquity.

Food preparation is one such ancient light that has travelled to us through the story of humanity. What did the ancients eat? What technologies were at their disposal? What songs were sung around their fires? Recipes, or fragments of them, exist today, passed from mother to daughter, forming a rich tapestry that connects us to our earliest beginnings and perceptions.

After my thirty-eighth birthday, powers greater than myself determined that the crystal refracting this light of reality for me would be bacon.

Meat Curing’s Ancient Origins

Meat is unpretentious, and in recent centuries its bedrock has been bacon and ham. It fuelled armies and sustained travellers; entire empires were built on it. At its core was preservation. Women guarded its secrets long before artisan guilds became the custodians of its principles and practices. Bacon is food of wonders.

It enabled humanity’s earliest expressions of wanderlust, allowing people to journey far from their homes. Once the horse was domesticated, and long-distance travel became commonplace – just as it already had with sea voyages – cured meat was essential for nutrition and survival.

Curing also touches on another basic human instinct: the pursuit of immortality, our connection with the departed, and our relationship with eternity. Here we begin to see that bacon curing is not merely the application of an external preservative or a colourant to meat. It is not something done to the meat, but rather the unlocking of secret powers within the meat itself, aided by salts, water, or even substances naturally excreted from the human and animal body. These facilitated changes that seemed almost magical.

Meat that underwent these transformations lasted longer, tasted far better, and its colour would “come to life” again, shifting from dull brown to a vibrant pinkish red. Many natural excretions of the body – sweat, urine, saliva – are powerful agents capable of triggering these enigmatic changes in meat, alongside certain salts and vegetables.

Here, I am discussing the ultimate value in life from the perspective of Hinduism with my great friends Anil Jatwani and Samar Nair at the HFM Temple, Ilupeju, in Lagos.

Meat Curing is a Life-Giving Principle!

The ancients knew that salts were not the only curing agents. Over millennia, this holistic understanding fragmented. Today, communities preserve only pieces of the craft: some use long-term salt curing, others combine salt with spices, as in Italy and Spain, while in Turkey, spice curing merges with dry-ageing. These are not oddities but refractions of a once-unified knowledge, the life-giving principle of meat curing.

Can Something of Infinite Benefit be Harmful?

Cured meat has not always been seen positively. Observing correlations between its consumption and certain ailments, some scientists hastily declared it unhealthy or carcinogenic. They overlooked the curing reaction’s fundamental role in animal life and its complexity. This reaction is intrinsic to our bodies, defending against disease and facilitating cell signalling.

Research now shows that bacteria can trigger the same curing reaction in meat as salts, plants, spices, or even bodily fluids once did. This proves that curing is possible without added salts or spices.

False narratives pushed me to explore when cured meat is harmful or beneficial. Like milk or water, its safety depends on conditions and amounts. The accusations of cancer led me to nutrition, where bacon became my doorway to understanding humanity’s bond with food.

My Teacher is Bacon!

Bacon became my teacher, grounding me in nature and expanding my thinking. I travelled the world, writing letters to my children and colleagues about my discoveries. Beginning at Africa’s southern tip, I set out on a quest to make the best bacon on earth.

Bacon & the Art of Living

Bacon introduced me to what I believed was the essence of life – health, science, family, and the natural world. Yet what I once thought was revelation turned out to be nothing more than pebbles gathered from life’s eternal stream. It wasn’t knowledge or experience that drew back the curtain of eternity, but a union with a person. Bacon led me to the heart of the universe, to someone so unique that our connection instantaneously became magnificently brilliant! The essence of everything and the heart of the elusive Art of Living.

We met on my travels along the Silk Roads through the far western outposts of modern China, across ancient cities like Samarkand, past the Black Sea, and into the Alpine mountains of Styria, where magic created magic!

What follows is our story, of Bacon & the Art of Living.