Fire up your frying pan because August is Bacon Month in Manitoba.

Since it is summertime, the wackiest way to celebrate bacon this month would be swimming in it — and theoretically, you could. The Maple Leaf Foods plant in Winnipeg, alone, produces enough bacon every year to fill more than 13 Olympic-sized swimming pools — that's 25 million kilograms of meat.

But if going for a dip in bacon is too much for you, you could celebrate with a bacon dip or an apple-and-bacon pancake. That's the thing, bacon is everywhere. There's bacon butter, bacon cupcakes, bacon-wrapped anything-you-desire -- you can even buy bacon floss.

Susan Riese, Manitoba Pork's manager of public relations and consumer marketing programs, says the trend in bacon-everything has gone up over the last four or five years across North America.

"With restaurants, I think, putting it on their menus sort as a value-added item — so wrapping things in bacon, using bacon as a condiment, incorporating bacon in confectionary products, I just think a lot of trends start at the restaurant level and make their way into daily consumer recipes and dishes," she says.

Manitoba Pork has several of these recipes on their website, including the Ooey-Gooey Bacon Tart. They're also giving away free bacon for a year.

"It's just such a popular taste, and it's somewhat addictive I think," Riese laughs.

Bacon isn't just a salty garnish, though. It's also important to the economy. Manitoba pork production and exports contribute over $1.7 billion to the economy annually, which translates to over 13,000 jobs in the Manitoba pork industry.

"We produce a lot of pork in this province, most of which is exported," Riese says. "But to the economy, it's huge when you think about the various jobs, not just in terms of raising the animals, but also the processing, the transportation, the development of feed."

As the country's leader in bacon processing, Manitoba is the bacon capital of Canada.