Ladies of the world! The traditional gift-giving season is past you, but perhaps you have a male friend with a summer birthday and you’re looking to get him something cute and perhaps inexpensive. Well. What is it that Men are always thinking about, that concept that plagues the male mind and never wants to leave? You get three guesses and the first two don’t count.

That’s right, I’m talking about bacon! … What? No, definitely bacon. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Bacon may be one of the finest confluences of Salt and Animal there ever has been. Its aroma is an intoxicating liquor, its mouthfeel a tone poem of fat and protein on the tongue, and its gentle, yielding crunch is a testament to the gifts of the Pig to Man.

…

Excuse the pause. I may have drooled slightly on the keyboard.

So now, though it is no longer the Year of the Pig, I humbly present bacon-themed cool gifts for guys that you might want to get for the men in your life.

1. J&D’s Bacon Salt: http://www.baconsalt.com/ourstory.php

And you doubted the existence of a loving God, didn’t you? This is not to be believed – salt that tastes of bacon, in three flavors (Original, Hickory, and Peppered). The brainchild of two self-dubbed “bacontrepreneurs” (this may be the word of the year); Bacon Salt is, according to their website, a “zero calorie, vegetarian, certified kosher seasoning salt that makes everything taste like real bacon”. Hope springs eternal.

2. The Wake N’ Bacon alarm clock: http://www.mathlete.com/portfolio/wakeNbacon.php

I first heard about Matty Sallin’s Wake N’ Bacon on Lynn Rossetto Kaspar’s Splendid Table podcast, and I was delighted. I am unsure if this is something available for purchase, but it’s certainly something worth investigating. It’s an alarm clock that wakes you not with a blaring noise but with the gentle sizzle of bacon. You put a slice of frozen bacon in the special cooking basket the night before, and when the alarm goes off, twin halogen bulbs slowly cook the bacon until you are awoken by the scent. And what better way to start the day than with a piece of bacon before even leaving bed? Don’t answer that.

3. The Grateful Palate’s bacon-related offerings: http://www.gratefulpalate.com

These guys aren’t kidding around. There’s a Bacon of the Month Club, bacon soap, and my personal favorite, BLT votive candles. The candles come in a set of three, each with a delightful little icon of the sandwich component the candle imitates, with a little legend that reads “Bacon = Freedom; Lettuce = Love; Tomato = Passion” on each successive one. You really can’t lose here: buy your guy friend a Bacon of the Month subscription if you feel like splurging (it’s $150 for a monthly shipment of ‘artisan bacon’), or, if that’s too much, get him a bar or two of bacon soap, and send it to him wrapped in the Grateful Palate’s Bacon Gift Wrap.

4. Joanna Pruess’s Seduced by Bacon cookbook, by The Lyons Press, a subsidiary of the Globe Pequot Press: http://www.globepequot.com

At 25 dollars in hardcover, this book, with glossy full-color photographs of the food in question, is definitely worth consideration as a gift for your bacon-crazed buddies. The publisher’s website lists a few example recipes that sound odd, if not enticing: “Candied Bacon Bites”, for one, and “Sweet Potato-Hazelnut Rösti with Apricots, Bacon, and Watercress” (Rösti are Swiss potato pancakes.). Even if the guy you buy this for never makes anything in the book, it’ll still make a great coffee-table tome, and he might amuse himself by looking at the pretty pictures.