Bacon bits? How about making your own!

We really love bacon in our house and if you eat low carb, you know that bacon isn't nearly as unhealthy as people seem to think and bacon fat makes a nice fat to cook your other tasties in.

A week or two ago, I was at a small, local grocery store and they were doing a remodel. They were throwing things into the discount bins left and right! I picked up 5 3 pound packages of bacon ends and pieces for $2 each! That means that a pound of bacon in those packages equaled 66.6 cents (I told y'all that Alpha Man was a devil...)

If you've ever bought bacon bits in a store, you know the ones that are made from real bacon are extremely expensive. You get a tiny 3 ounce jar for almost 3 bucks! Whaaaaat? So I brought home 15 pounds of bacon for 10 dollars. I cooked a package and we ate some on salads and such, then I cooked another but I kept putting off freezing the other packages, even with the food saver. Last night, I finally gave in and chopped them all into bits and cooked 9 pounds of bacon into bacon bits for freezing. I used my large dutch oven for this and just stirred them while they cooked. Then, I would drain and put in another batch.

It's pretty easy to make your own convenience foods like bacon for salads. Once I was done, I spread them all out onto a cookie sheet and froze them. Then, I put them into quart jars and stuck them in the freezer. Now whenever we have salads, we already have our bacon made, so my life is that much easier. And the best part? I got this much out of it.

That is 4 quarts of ready to eat bacon bits for what it would have cost to buy only 4 tiny bottles of the ones from the store. So watch those meat sales! And if you find one of your stores is remodeling, go in often! You never know what they may be closing out on and marking down.