I don't remember the first time... but I remember one year in grade school a friend and I had bacon cheeseburgers during passover week. Our first thought was "shoot, bread!" then "meat and cheese!" then "oh yeah, bacon! how can we make this worse?"

baby back ribs broke me about six months ago. I was considering trying pork but they put me over the edge. The next day I tried a BLT. wow...

Fifteen years old, road trip from Austin to Nashville, Shoney's for breakfast. Suddenly: HAD TO HAVE THE BACON. After spending eighteen sleepless hours on a bus with a high school choir, pretty much anyone will break down.

And I've been a bad Jew ever since.

Oh, my goshness....this thread brings back some memories...

So here I am, non-practicing barely-Jewish (non-religious Jewish father) LBJ if you will...raised on a commune with Vegan diet, so the problem of Kosher-ness was merely a distant metaphorical jest.

I was about 11yrs old, & visiting friends of my family who had moved away from the community several years before. They maintained a vegetarian diet for the most part, with rare exceptions, which included occasional indulgence in actual...bacon...!
We were at a picnic-ground, and their mom fried up some vegan meat substitute bacon-like product, along with the real thing. I already liked the vegan stuff (with nothing to compare it to). But as for the pork...I was just plain, damn curious. I didn't like it. It was too meaty for my Vegan conditioning. It made my stomach go all gurgly too, with enzymatic confusion.
It was not till years later, that I actually tried some good, fresh, thick sliced, smokey, well-crisped bacon, and found it divine.

Thin sliced is easier to get crispy. Thick sliced has to be cooked just right. I find high temp does best, and I will go to great lengths to make sure the entire strip is crispy but not burnt. I am still working out the subtleties, but if you cook it too slowly, or too long, it doesn't always crisp enough before it dehydrates and becomes rocky instead of crispy. Handy tip: don't remove any fat from the pan during cooking. Don't remove any fat from the pan between batches. It cooks better and burns less, if it's sitting in a pool of rendered lard. *mmmm*

Most foods taste lovely with bacon (That's why I liked the sound of that "Brunch Pudding"). It's great with maple syrup from your pancakes or waffles. It's great wrapped around fried foods. It's great wrapped on the outside of roasts, and bar-bq'd items. I don't usually crumble it up in salads or casseroles. That's because I like to just eat it next to a salad, and I don't make many casseroles.
I could go on and on about what it is good with, but I think you all would either agree anyway, or add more things to the list like I had somehow forgotten, or feel I have insulted your personal bacon fetish by not including what is obvious to you.

What really finally corrupted me from the last semblances of being a vegetarian was...surprise...Sushi !! I knew that life as I had known it was officially over. That led to all sorts of other lovely sins, like baby-back ribs with Thai peanut Bar-BQ sauce, rare steak, lamb and couscous, and eventual liberation from the unknowingly-half-starved, food-obsessive state, of Veg-any-ism.

I sit now, with a BLT (with swiss cheese) in hand, and glass of milk to wash it down, courtesy of my darling boyfriend, who has solemnly sworn to put the plate when I am done, into the sink with the other dishes.