I love my UrbanSpoon app.  I love the way it nudges me to try new, independent restaurants all over town.  Aren’t I just the queen of variety, sampling barbecue up on the northwest side, and sandwiches slicked over with garlic butter down in Bloomington and waffle cones in Cincinnati?  

Then again, maybe not.  I can pick up a menu, splashed with colorful pictures of foodie wonders and, more often than not, end up with bacon on my plate.  I’ve just got a finder for it.  Cats hunt mice.  Bees detect flowers.  Dust finds computer screens.  Bye-bye Nesquik’s menu-searching eye skips over the meatball sandwiches, the garlicky pasta, the fried potato skins and lands straight on something with bacon in it.

I’m sure this wouldn’t happen to me in an ice cream parlor, although I hear bacon has made inroads there, too.

But really, how can a wrap or a salad or a burger go wrong if you add a strip or two of pig to it?

Even when I’m not looking for bacon, it finds me.  I chose this salad because of the picture.  I didn’t even notice that stuff hiding between the carrots and the spinach, but look at the ingredient list and you will see that my finder has, once again, sniffed out the bacon.  Bacon wants to be my friend.

Pretty Layered Salad

As for the Finished Book Pile, it’s more like the started book pile as I give Nathaniel Hawthorne another try.  So far, I’ve swallowed a short story about a minister that takes to wearing a black veil.  I understand this eccentricity about as well as I understood why Hester Prynne wouldn’t reveal her fellow adulterer.  But just like we are eating spinach, carrots and peppers today, I’m making myself sit down to a helping of literary vegetables.

Please pray for me.