Refreshing change on a really hot day

[CharlesHarris]

My understanding is that American bacon is derived from "fatback" which was slave food in the Southern states before emancipation. The leaner cuts were more expensive and reserved for the upper classes, while the fatty belly meat was rendered for cooking grease, used as shortening for making cornbread and biscuits, etc.

After the Civil War the cheapest cuts became immigrant food and sliced, smoked pork belly remains a breakfast staple of the working class to this day, along with scrapple, and simple ground pork sausage seasoned only with sea salt, red and black pepper and rubbed sage.

The plantation owners, wealthy planters and factory ate ham with their eggs.

The "poor white trash," hillbillys, blue collar factory workers, farm and ranch hands, lumberjacks, construction workers, soldiers, sailors and marines got bacon, and gobbled it all up, greasy drippings, fat and all. Still do.