Sep 1, 2023 By Dave Bates for The Observer-Reporter newsroom@observer-Reporter.Com 4 min read

As fall weather arrives, football season gets underway. We prepare for hunting season and start working the dogs. We put a few rounds through the deer rifle to make sure we’re on when it comes time to make the shot. The cursory rounds of skeet or trap or sporting clays are shot with our hunting shotguns to make certain we can still hit the broad side of a barn.

One of my favorite things about fall is all the good things to eat. Fresh backstraps off an early season bow harvest. Doves on the barbecue. My most favorite event involving food is the bacon roast. I know there are those who are raising an eyebrow and retorting, “What in the world is a bacon roast?” I’ve had folks ask about it when invited. Well, I used to think the same thing until neighbors Jan Haiden and Bill Lubich set me straight.

A bacon roast in the more traditional context was a gathering of friends, mostly of Eastern European descent, who gathered together to sit around the fire, share a drink or two, and cook a chunk of pork belly on a stick. Think of it as a bacon s’more.

Keeping a slab of homemade bread handy, the grease from the “bacon” is dabbed off onto the bread and the bacon continues to cook until crispy. Finally, a sandwich is made from the grease soaked bread, the pork belly and whatever ingredients you choose to add. My personal toppings of choice are cheese, hot peppers, mayonnaise and redhot sauce. Some folks like to go the roasted vegetable route with peppers, squash, zucchini, etc. One is limited only by imagination. One thing is for sure, this is not what I’d label health food. If and when I ever happen to get a cardiologist, I am not inviting Doc to this gathering for fear that it would curl his/her toes.

Rather than travel the more traditional route of our neanderthal forefathers, we no longer roast chunks of pork belly on a stick. Like so many of the old-fashioned ways, we have taken the lazy man’s approach and now cook sliced bacon on a giant frying pan over the same propane gas burner that we use to deep fry wings. The charcoal hibachi serves as a rudimentary toaster for bagels, homemade bread, muffins and biscuits. Round it out with a few side dishes like my wife’s egg strada, a layered dish of eggs, bread, sausage crumbles or some shredded zucchini stir fry . Throw in a little fruit salad, some yogurt, a coffee cake, danish, doughnuts or various sundry breakfast sweets and you have a feast worthy of a king. And don’t forget urns of hot, black coffee. It’s the cement that binds all the good times together.

Regardless of how you go about cooking up your bacon roast feast, the truly most important ingredient is really not the food at all. It’s those gathered around the fire that make the bacon roast special. The preparations are as much a part of it as anything. I greatly enjoy waking up at 5 a.m., making preparations whilst the sun comes up. I light a fire in the pit and savor the smoke as it permeates the darkness. The soft glow of the twinkle lights makes me content. The smell of bacon filling the barn where we do our cooking is tops, in my book. All of the different selections have to be sampled before company gets on site in order to make sure everything is just right. One by one, friends begin to show up, some just a bit early, wanting to share in the quiet times before the crowd makes its way into the morning. The early hour is quiet and reflective and pensive, not so much in the celebratory sense but simply finding one more excuse to gather together. To be together … maybe just to be.

As the morning’s festivities push towards noon everyone begins to make their way back home in preparation for the afternoon picnics that are scheduled. We’ll head to my sister Joyce’s later in the day for a more traditional round 2.

Towards evening, I might grab the shotgun and head out for a late afternoon dove hunt. Nothing speaks of fall as does the cool chill of the evening moving in off the creek and over the valley. The lonesome song of the mourning dove announces the official opening of the fall season. So many of the traditions that I hold dear to my heart, all offered up in one day. I truly am a blessed man to call this my life.