Bacon: A Love Story, A Salty Survey of Everybody's Favorite Meat is a 2009 non-fiction book about bacon, written by American writer Heather Lauer. It describes curing and cooking bacon, gives over 20 bacon recipes, and analyzes the impact of bacon on popular culture. The text is interspersed with facts about bacon and bacon-related quips from comedian Jim Gaffigan. Background Before the book's publication, Heather Lauer was a public affairs consultant in Arizona. She got the idea to write a book about bacon after going out for cocktails with her two brothers in 2005. Lauer explained to The Arizona Republic: "I was out drinking with my brothers one night, and the topic of bacon came up. We had eaten bacon as kids, and bacon was a special thing on Sunday mornings. Somehow, the idea came up about how funny it would be to start a blog about bacon ... I took it and ran with it." She began the blog Bacon Unwrapped, at www.baconunwrapped.com, and a social networking site about bacon at baconnation.ning.com in 2005. She began the blog as a joke, but said, "I started to realize there is something about bacon that gets people incredibly excited, and that was fascinating to me." She completed a cross-country bacon tour of America. Lauer thought that the surge in interest in bacon products prior to the book's publication was "media driven". She noted that a response to political correctness as related to cooking and food consumption may have driven interest in the product. Lauer said that bacon seems to be "the one thing that people are unwilling to give up". In a post of her blog in March 2009, Lauer lamented those that were willing to posit an end to the trend of interest in bacon. She commented, "Bacon is something that everybody is familiar with and most people grew up eating. It has a comfort aspect to it and a familiarity. It's also got an addictive aspect to it — that sweet and salty combination of flavors." She asserted that interest in the product is as much due to the culture surrounding it as to bacon itself. "Current food trends focus on eating real and eating local, and there's nothing more real than a delicious strip of bacon. In many U.S. cities, local producers and chefs are making a name for themselves because of bacon," said Lauer. She stated that