You’ve seen how a husband and wife team at UnderConsideration re-envisioned the holiday of love. Now see the other winner of Studio 360’s Redesign Valentine’s Day challenge, as picked by this week’s guest, author and modern love expert Elizabeth Gilbert. And, yes…it’s bacon.

First place goes to the Broquet, a bacon bouquet, which was cooked up by Portland-based industrial designer Sarah Tisdale. Last fall, Tisdale had just fallen for for her next-door neighbor when something brought his spirits down. Tisdale

brainstormed an appropriate way to cheer him up. “I wasn’t going to get him flowers or anything like that,” she remembers, “but I wanted to bring a smile to his face.” The two had bonded recently over their love for a winning combination: whiskey and bacon. So Tisdale realized there was really only one option: A bacon bouquet. Her house swirling with smoke, she

presented the neighbor with a dozen juicy pork blossoms.

He was thrilled, but the

relationship eventually fizzled, much like a grease on a hot skillet. Tisdale has no regrets. “We’re not

still dating,” she says. “But it was very poetic and beautiful.”

In an equally poetic twist, Tisdale herself was a vegan until bacon became–as it has for many recovering vegans–a gateway meat. “I don’t know what it is,” she says of the country’s current obsession with bacon. “For me it’s just this primal, salty thing.” Tisdale describes what she calls a “bacon movement” afoot in Portland, where house-cured meats are the pride of local sandwich shops. “You know,” she confesses. “I’m actually still mostly a vegan…except for bacon.”

For Tisdale, the Broquet was a way for her to merge her love of food with her design skills–as well as her incurable inner Cupid. “I’m a hopeless romantic,” admits Tisdale. “I really love Valentine’s Day, I love how silly and ridiculous and pretty and funny it is.” But she agrees that as a culture, we could all use a reminder about what Valentine’s Day really means. “It’s not just about romantic love,” she says. “It’s about sharing what you love with someone else.”