Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Supported by

Things We Love Right Now: School Starting, Bacon Jam

Clark County School District
Mainly, I’m grateful for the academic calendar that called my overachieving, high-school senior stepdaughter back to the classroom, where, for at least seven hours a day, she can either think about something other than what college she’s going to next year or obsess about it around someone other than her father and me. I also confess to indulging in some guilty pleasure, watching the comedy of errors that is back-to-school in Las Vegas unfold. Being the fifth-largest district in the nation, in a city that is known for its transient population, and in a state that perpetually (and woefully) underfunds public education, CCSD scrambles each year to deal with the influx of new students, the drift of families from zone to zone and the lack of buffers (excess desks, say, or bus routes) to absorb the flux — all while trying to solve the usual problems plaguing public education, such as how to adjust to the latest government-mandated standardized tests. This year’s particular crisis, a drastic teacher shortage, makes the situation less amusing, however. That the administrators and teachers who do hold permanent positions in Clark County schools continue to show up, help each other out and attempt to impart knowledge to our kids amid the chaos makes them nothing short of heroes.  — Heidi Kyser
Bacon Jam at Carson Kitchen
I love bacon, but not in any of its currently trendy forms. A purist, I blanched when I tried a bacon cupcake: a nibble, a gagging sound and the moist thump of cupcake hitting trash can. At journalistic gunpoint, I tried the bacon martini at the Double Down Saloon. Because I was on assignment, I glugged the whole damn thing, but — and I mean no disrespect to the mad scientists behind the bar at this venerable joint — it was terrible. Afterward, I wanted to wash my mouth out with kerosene. Same with chocolate-covered bacon and bacon donuts. I unspool all that preamble so you’ll get how surprised I was when I couldn’t eat enough of the bacon jam at Downtown’s Carson Kitchen. I was wary, of course, but my friend insisted, and I’m glad she did: It was smoky and sweet and, in contrast to novelty crap like bacon cupcakes, those qualities were  integrated into a distinct flavor instead of simply juxtaposed. Making all the exquisite difference. We ate other things that afternoon — do I recall a meatball? — but it’s only the bacon jam I still taste. —  Scott Dickensheets
Copyright 2015 KNPR-FM. To see more, visit http://www.knpr.org/.

Sponsor Message

Scott Dickensheets is a Las Vegas writer and editor whose trenchant observations about local culture have graced the pages of publications nationwide.
Desert Companion welcomed Heidi Kyser as staff writer in January 2014. In 2018, she was promoted to senior writer and producer, working for both DC and KNPR's State of Nevada. She produced KNPR’s first podcast, the Edward R. Murrow Regional Award-winning Native Nevada, in 2020. The following year, she returned her focus full-time to Desert Companion, becoming Deputy Editor, which meant she was next in line to take over when longtime editor Andrew Kiraly left in July 2022. In 2024, Interim CEO Favian Perez promoted Heidi to managing editor, charged with integrating the Desert Companion and State of Nevada newsroom operations.