It’s the little things that you miss when you start eating Paleo. On the surface, it seems that if you give up gluten, peanuts, soy sauce and cheese, you’ll be all set. But if you dig into the details of the paleo diet, you’ll see that there really is much more to it.

Among the list of “no” foods for the paleo diet, there will certainly be some that are more bothersome to you than others. This is why it is highly recommended that you do an elimination type diet when you first begin. Take everything out and slowly add back in. You’ll learn where you can stretch the rules of the diet and where you can’t.

For example, I can handle a little dairy, but I do not tolerate legumes at all. I am fine with a small amount of grains, particularly white rice, but industrial seed oils send me reeling.

Which is how I came to this recipe for bacon mayonnaise, or baconnaise for short. Mayonnaise helps so many recipes come together. I did not want to live without it forever.

I have to give credit to Diane Sanfilippo and her baconnaise recipe in Practical Paleo because I would not have thought of this on my own. I have tweaked the recipe a bit to suit our tastes, but I got the idea from her. I think I’ve recommended her book about a zillion times, but I’ll do it again in a heartbeat. If you buy one paleo cookbook, buy this one.

The marketplace has changed a lot since my early paleo days when we had to make everything from scratch (and when I first created these recipes). There are now several good mayonnaises on the market that use non-inflammatory oils. Primal Kitchen brand, Chosen Foods, Sir Kensington’s and Thrive Market are just a few. If you decide to buy one of these mayos rather than make your own, just read the ingredients list carefully and make sure they are not mixing avocado oil with canola or some other inflammatory oil. The big manufacturers have been making “olive oil” mayo for years, but they are still primarily made of canola or soybean oil and so that doesn’t count.

My most frequent uses for this baconnaise are in my heavenly (deviled) eggs and bacon and egg salad, but I’ve used it to make salad dressings too when I’ve been out of my homemade avocado oil mayo. But don’t let these two little ideas hold you back. Use this baconnaise anyplace you would use mayonnaise: broccoli salad, turkey sandwiches, coleslaw, and on and on. The applications are endless!