I grew up in a thoroughly assimilated Jewish family. We did not keep kosher. My grandmothers did, or at least tried to when they came to this country, but it was difficult to find kosher products and keep all the dishes separated, so they modified the practice and eventually gave it up.

Still, our non-kosher cuisine had some limits. We ate ham, but not fresh pork. I don’t know why, unless curing the meat took some of the stigma away (I have since learned to appreciate the joys of pork chops and pork tenderloin.). We didn’t eat shellfish at home, but only because in the 1950’s and 60’s there was no fresh shellfish in grocery stores in the Midwest – only frozen. But at certain times of the year local restaurants would feature fresh lobster, flown in from Maine, and we’d be first in line – along with many of our Jewish neighbors. And we didn’t usually eat meat with milk, except for cheeseburgers and Reuben sandwiches, but that was more because of cultural preferences than dietary restrictions.

But bacon – bacon was a staple, a necessity of life. We ate it for breakfast and in BLTs. Bacon made a great after-school snack, and the grownups wrapped it around chicken livers, called it rumaki, and ate it with cocktails. Bacon was supposed to be good for you, full of protein, and it made your coat nice and shiny. It’s hard to believe, but I began life as a poor eater. One thing I would eat was bacon, and my mother used to make me buttered noodles and bacon several times a week.

My friend Silky the lawyer grew up in a kosher home in the Bronx, and even his mother made bacon – she cooked it in a special skillet that she stored in the closet, wrapped up in newspaper, so that it would not accidentally be used for kosher food. Our parents truly believed in the restorative and healthful properties of these strips of pork belly.

Today, of course, we know better, and many of us have given up bacon because of the animal fat, salt, nitrates and nitrites and who knows what. Thus, I was surprised to see it on the Sunday brunch buffet table at my parents’ retirement home. The first time I was there I saw a mound of bacon glistening in a chafing dish right next to the scrambled Egg Beaters. My dad took several strips, and although he has since left us, he managed to live to 93 on a diet rich in salami and Fritos as well as bacon, so I figured I could risk it. The food at the “home” is pretty bad, but darned if they didn’t do an excellent job on the bacon.

There’s a real art to getting the perfect degree of crispness. Undercooked, and it’s limp and greasy. Overcooked and you can’t chew it. The bacon should be crisp but not cremated. It should shatter delicately between your teeth. To tell the truth, I could eat maybe 10 strips of bacon and leave the rest of the food alone, but I control myself and take only two pieces, or maybe three, balancing the artery-destroying properties of the bacon with fruit and vegetables. It’s a seductive food, and if I am not vigilant I could easily end up dazed in a back alley somewhere, surrounded by empty Oscar Mayer packages.