I was just perusing the Provoketive site and saw a picture my friend Jonathan posted of a dozen “bacon roses.” He seemingly balked at the idea.

Living in California may keep Jonathan from enjoying the nuances of bacon delights here in the South. A bouquet of bacon roses would be a delight for many young southern maidens.

Bacon love in the past few years has taken a life of its own. Without even doing research, I can name several bacon oddities I’ve seen online in the past few months: bacon flavored vodka, bacon flavored toothpaste, bacon bikinis, bacon ice cream and chocolate covered bacon.

Let’s face it, bacon makes just about everything taste better. I agree.

But the bacon lovers need to slow their roll for a second. I believe there might be a contender for the title.

I was discussing it with my lovely wife, Allison, last night and I asked her which was better. She said without hesitating, “bacon.”

I said, “Hold up. Just think about it for a second. You’re sitting around and you want to eat. It’s late. Bacon? Maybe, but dang. It takes time to cook. Even if you microwave it, there’s still cleanup. And don’t tell me you’re going to buy pre-cooked bacon. That’s just un-American.

“So you go to the pantry and there it is. A pristine, unopened jar of peanut butter. Your heart races. You know why? Because peanut butter is like a dessert. Heck, it is a dessert. It’s so sweet, we add it to desserts to make them better. We’ve even made it into a verb – ‘peanut-buttier.’

“You open the jar, pull back the shiny silver lid and what do you see?”

My wife was salivating while she was thinking about peanut butter at this point. She said what I’m thinking. “The smooth peanut butter.”

I said, “No. You see smooth ripples of undisturbed sweetness, begging for you to dig into it with a spoon.”

“MMMMMMMMMMM,” she said.

“That’s right. You want bacon now?”

“No,” she said.

“And you take that first succulent bite that just slides onto your tongue. You look down into the indention you made and you say to yourself, ‘I need to smooth that hole over.’ So you dig into it more, taking bite after bite.”

She said, “Until you realize you’ve eaten half the jar.”

“And that’s the beauty of it,” I said. “That, and peanut butter is just as versatile as bacon. You put it on crackers to make them better, you can’t have a PB&J without the PB, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups would be nothing without them . . . “

She interrupted, “And no one would eat celery without it.”

“Excellent point,” I said.

“But,” my sweet wife said, “peanut butter gives me indegestion. I’m sticking with bacon.”

My shoulders dropped. “Well,” I said pouting, “I think bacon at least has a contender.”