There may be better bacon & betterer bacon, but there is no such thing as bad bacon. Well, alright, I never did think much of Francis Bacon's art *ahem*. But I've never come across bad bacon.

Bacon Salsa. This arises out of Cucumber Glut. Take one cucumber, preferably homegrown, and dice quite finely, one onion (guess at size according to own notions of taste) ditto, and tomatoes - whether you use tinned, passata, or well-chopped homegrown (yep, Tomato Glut too!) is up to you. You will also want lime juice at the end. That's the base.

To that, add whatever pleases in the way of herbs, chilis, etc as you please. Italian herbs work well (I know, traditionally, coriander should be in there, but I cannot eat leaf coriander); the chilis that I grow are a variety called Ring o' Fire (hurhur). Allegedly, they are 50K-80K Scoville Units, but how a hot a chili gets is partially dependent on growing conditions; temp, mostly; so the UK being cooler, I suspect mine are at the low end of the range, if that, but they're right for me. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

Mix everything together, add lime juice to taste, leave overnight / at least 12 hrs in the fridge, so the herbs, etc can suffuse. Taste again, adjust the lime juice if need be. The key thing is don't let it get too sloppy, which is why it's always useful to have some passata on hand. And of course, the piece de resistance, if so desired, dice & fry an appropriate amount of bacon in butter, and when the last of the bacon is fried, add all of it and the pan juices too! And mix thoroughly. Keeps in the fridge for a week or more, and also freezes well (although, as with anything tomato, the tomato tends to separate on thawing).

The one thing I will disagree on with Steve is I like smoked bacon too! Especially if it's proper i.e. it's actually been smoked, rather than injected with 'smoked' flavouring, which is what happens to most s/m 'smoked' products. Smoked bacon works well in the above, particularly if you've used a particularly robust mix of 'erbs & shpishes! As for bacon juices left in the pan, whilst I agree they're wonderful to fry other things in, frankly they don't last long. I tend to simply scrape them straight out of the pan (along with burnt crunchy bits!) and either eat them straight off the knife, or on a savoury biscuit / cracker.

On topic, don't confuse nitrites with nitrates (DavetG!). It's nitrites that are used for preserving food. Nitrates occur naturally and are a vasodilator. Foods such as rocket & beetroot are high in them. And as someone who used to play squash vigourously (if not particularly well), I can testify to the effect of a snack of 100g or so of beetroot eaten 45-60 mins before playing any sport!