Bacon Fest

There aren't many things that can't be improved by the addition of sweet, smoked, crispy, fatty bacon. Vegetables? Wrap 'em in bacon. Chicken? Wrap it in bacon. Chocolate? Put bacon bits in a bar. Heck, even candy-lovers now have the option of eating bacon lollipops, and none of that is surprising to the bacon lovers in Iowa, who happily attend the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, which is held at the states Fairgrounds.

The Iowa Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival celebrates all things pork.

"Everything about bacon is like Hometown Iowa," says Becca Swalla, who hails from Urbandale, Iowa, and who attended the festival. "I mean, really, you wouldn't see this bacon-fest happening in California. Only in Iowa will people come together to eat a bunch of bacon-covered bacon." Well, as Chicagoans, we beg to differ.

Of the 4,000 attendees of the festival, however, not all were drinking the pork Kool-Aid (ew...you know what we mean). Elizabeth Cummings handed out pamphlets about the dangers of eating too much processed meat. Cummings made the drive on behalf of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, who, last year, posted billboards in Des Moines with the ultra-bummer slogan, "Warning: bacon can cause rectal cancer." Understandably, a group of 20-somethings mockingly wore lab coats to the festival, as members of the "Physicians Committee for Ridiculous Meat-eating."

Some of the wares offered included Templeton Rye pork tacos (um, delicious?), bacon butterscotch cupcakes (ick), bacon sausage, meatballs, bacon-wrapped jalapenos, and just regular ol' fistfuls of bacon strips. Dig in?