Last month, searching the lifestyle wire for something to fill a hole on the Living page, I came across an article about the 100 top trends for 2010. Hoping to find the list and cut it to the "Top 8" or "Top 15" or whatever would fit the space, I opened the file and started scanning.

The article turned out to be a column about a secret list shared with the writer by, I think, a cousin (sorry, I was scanning at warp speed and the article disappeared from the wire before I thought to save it) and it didn't include the list, only a few sample entries and the writer's feelings about each. So I moved on, left with the general impression that what's going to be hot this year is a bunch of celebrities I'd never heard of.

And bacon.

Well, what a coincidence. First I read about people taking their money out of the shaky stock market and investing it in agricultural futures like pork bellies. Then, months later, I started noticing mentions of pork rinds among more Northern, Eastern, buttoned-down, big-city kinds of people than one used to associate with pork rinds. And now, a few months later still, I learn that the big food trend in the coming year is going to be bacon.

Well, maybe. Or maybe the writer's cousin invested heavily in pork belly futures and shared this list in hopes of making a killing.

Being a suspicious type, I got on the Internet to check it out, and sure enough, the people who predict these things are predicting a bacon fad. Bacon vodka. Bacon chocolate in various forms. Bacon ice cream. And at the top of the page on Google, a Santa Fe New Mexican story headlined "Bacon is the new black."

Last week, I saw bacon mentioned in The Gazette's annual foodie issue, so it seems the trend is perking right along.

We've all seen enough food trends to know how this scenario is going to play out. We've had our interest piqued by the bacon vodka, we've been told about the trend, and the next step is the snob or one-upmanship appeal. Like with mushrooms or peppers or cheese, it's never the kind you've been buying at the supermarket all these years that's "in." The best whatever-it-is is something exotic and hard to find.

So if I'm wrong and the so-called bacon trend is just a plot to lower health care costs by killing off the baby boomers with sudden massive heart attacks, the "best" bacon will come in a can from Denmark or somewhere. But if I'm right about the pork bellies, the best bacon will be American.

And if we play our cards right, the best bacon will come from Oklahoma.

Think of Virginia ham and Vermont maple syrup. How many people, in a blindfolded taste test, could tell what state their food came from? But people assume these things are the best because they've heard of them all their lives.

So, before Chicago shoves in with its big shoulders and "hog butcher for the world" act and Virginia chimes in with, "If you like our ham, wait 'til you try our bacon," Oklahoma needs to move in with a list of little-known bacon facts including one that people can use to impress their friends while serving Oklahoma bacon.

I can't tell you what fact this would be because I know next to nothing about bacon. I'm not even sure what it tastes like. (I thought I knew, but if people are putting bacon in ice cream without being pregnant, I must assume my memory is inaccurate.) Someone who isn't vegetarian will need to work out the details here.

But the kind of fact we need is like the al dente thing the pasta people had going.

Al dente had everything. A foreign phrase ("I am sophisticated") but easy to remember (dente-dentist), with an appeal to authority (Italians know their pasta) that's vague enough that it can't be trumped by someone's Italian grandmother or junior year abroad. And, the most important part, it meant practically everybody you knew had been doing it wrong all these years. For what seemed like centuries, no one could write about pasta without including the definition of al dente.

The foreign part may be tricky, but perhaps we could come up with something that sounds exotic outside our area. Table scrap fed, sorghum cured, red cedar smoked (or maybe Bradford pear -- what kind of trees do we most want to get rid of?), fried up in a cast iron skillet? Or we could just come down hard on the you've-been-doing-it-wrong angle.

We have, I think, an Oklahoma Pork Council, an authoritative-sounding name under which the little-known bacon facts could be e-mailed out to food page editors all over the country. (If we don't have an Oklahoma Pork Council, a couple of county extension agents from pig-raising counties could get together and start one.) Editors need an authority to back up such pronouncements, so the little-known definitive right way to cure/cook/eat bacon would be preceded by the words, "According to the Oklahoma Pork Council..." as it was repeated over and over and over.

Attached to the little-known facts would be a few recipes calling for "Oklahoma bacon." The ideal recipes wouldn't be weird like bacon ice cream, they'd be something like bacon chipotle dip which ordinary people might make for their next party. Their friends will like the stuff, the recipes will be photocopied and passed around, and the phrase "Oklahoma bacon" will become as familiar as Virginia ham.

And one of our state industries will be on the red-eye gravy train.

Linda Henley 366-3530 citydesk@normantranscript.com