Bring Home the Bacon
If someone is “bringing home the bacon,” they are achieving some plan or object, maybe by winning a prize or race. There are two theories explaining the origin of this saying. The first goes back to a village in Essex where, in the year 1111 a noble woman offered a prize of a side of bacon to any man from anywhere in England who could honestly say that he had had complete marital happiness for a year and a day. In over 500 years there were only eight recorded winners. The prize was re-established in 1858 but was no longer offered after the local bacon factory closed in the 1980s. An alternative theory suggests the phrase comes from the ancient sport of catching a greased pig at a country fair with the winner keeping the pig.