Looking back across the years, there are a lot of things that I remember fondly about Boy Scout camp. Food, however, is not one of them. While servings were plentiful, they were also clearly designed to save money and, even at the age of ten, I could tell that the powdered eggs, watery Kool-Aid (aka "bug juice"), and gristly burgers were only a small step up from prison chow. Over the course of the week, I used to load up on the occasionally palatable entree, but usually relied on bread, butter, and fruit to get me through.

While many of the dishes at Camp Rock Enon represented the culinary arts version of crimes against humanity, the worst, by far, was the fake bacon. Designed to resemble weather stripping, it was clearly artificial, with stripes that looked like they were painted on by Willy Wonka's employees and a scent that tried to approximate pork, but was actually redolent of a chemistry set. The "fakie bakie" was so bad that it actually turned my campmates and I off the real thing. I don't know what everybody else did with their pseudo-bacon, but my buddies and I used it in a collection of initiation games that bordered on cruel and unusual punishment.

It's been a few decades, and I'd almost completely forgotten about the utter horror of camp bacon. However, I happened across Eat Me Daily's review of Morningstar Farms' Bacon Strips and, in an instant, I was hurtled back to my childhood bacon hell. Basically, it seems like they've found the same hellish junk that still haunts my nightmares. On the bright side, the writer managed to perfectly capture the revulsion that this stuff evoked in me; this is nice because, although I have been forced to relive a terrifying period in my life, I am comforted by the knowledge that I am not alone.

This year, we say a tremendous number of fried food items served at county fairs (and theme parks) all over, including waffle sticks, deep fried snickers, deep fried Oreos, deep fried coke and even deep fried strawberries. The biggest trend this year was to put the food on sticks, which made it easier for people to eat while they strolled around the fair looking for more foods to indulge in. Next year, we might be seeing a new change, though.

A restaurant in Snook Texas has Chicken Friend Bacon Strips on the menu. These crispy cholesterol sticks are nothing more than extra-large bacon strips, dipped in chicken fried steak batter and, like any real chicken fried steak, they are served with thick gravy. Now, the gravy might not translate well to the fair environment, but since everything else is already being friend on a regular basis, we would not be at all surprised to see chicken fried bacon popping up on fair menus this summer.

[Thanks, Anna!]