Apple Bacon Day

Sometime in the past decade, I became mildly allergic to raw apples. A few minutes after biting into an apple, my lip will swell up and my throat will constrict to the point where it feels like something is perpetually stuck down there. The same thing happens when I eat raw watermelon, which has tragically forced me to get my daily fruit intake from Jolly Ranchers to prevent any need for hospitalization.

This food allergy really doesn't bother me as much as something like a cheese allergy, because apples are just a "sometimes" food for me, and red apples are stupid (everyone knows that Golden Delicious are the only kind of apple worth eating). It does make it Morissettely ironic that I decided to go to the Graves' Mountain Apple Festival in Syria, Virginia this weekend though.

While strolling through the typical country fair set up with crafts booths and bluegrass bands, I found myself surrounded by my nemesis, the apple. From apple butter to apple cider to keychains shaped like apples, the sheer amount of apple-themed paraphernalia frightened me (to my core). Festivals like this would be more enjoyable if they involved a food that some of our population wasn't allergic to. For this reason, I propose that next year, Sterling should host the First Annual Bacon Festival. Here's a brief list of the kinds of attractions you might find at this festival:

• Freshly-cooked bacon and bacon pies, just like grandma used to make. Bacon cheeseburgers, bacon-wrapped-scallops, bacon-wrapped-bacon, and baconcakes (strips of bacon coated in batter and dropped into a deep fryer) topped with powdered sugar.
• Skin-care products like bacon grease butter which greatly soothe dry skin (allow it to cool before applying).
• Bacon art, where you sprinkle coloured bacon bits into a bottle to make pretty patterns.
• Games, like "Scale the Bacon", where you have to climb a giant rock coated in bacon butter to win a prize.
• A tour of a live, working pig farm, where you can sit in a sty and experience the life of a piggy. $5 Hog rides for the youngsters.
• Custom-made jewelry from pigs' hooves and tails.
• Festive strips of shellacked bacon with pithy statements like "Home is where the Pork is" etched into them, which you can hang over your mantle if you live in "red-state" Virginia.
• Fresh pork rinds, obviously.
• Performances by the extreme metal band, Pig Destroyer.

What else would you like to see at my Festival?