Posts Tagged With: bacon

For the Love of Bacon

Posted on February 7, 2013 by rachelocal

I’m lucky enough to have some really great friends. Old friends, new friends, close friends, and long distance friends. As I was thinking about my friend line-up today, I realized my friends and I share an all-encompassing, very important commonality: a mutual love of bacon.

Misty, my best friend since tenth grade, likes her bacon chewy, not crispy.

Julie, my artist friend, loves her bacon wrapped around a cheese-filled jalapeno and grilled.

Nicole, my traveling companion friend, likes her bacon any way possible.

Allison, my favorite Massachusetts friend, likes her bacon on a slice of toasted pumpernickel with sharp white cheddar and an egg over easy (this girl knows what she wants).

Natalie, my chef friend, loves bacon in all forms and will cook you up something delicious at the drop of a hat.

Phil, my friend who loves to cook and eat with gusto, likes his bacon in the form of pancetta, which he makes himself.

And Jules, my blogging friend, likes her bacon in ornament form (click here to learn more) or layered evenly and prettily over turkey meatloaf. Being the dear friend that she is, Jules has agreed to share the recipe with us today.

Jules was definitely drinking while making this meatloaf

Prepare yourself to be amazed:

A year or two ago, when I saw we had ground turkey and bacon in the fridge, I decided to experiment.

The resultant recipe soon turned into one of my favorite go-to meals during the week, when I want to make something simple, hearty and delicious. I’ll whip up this feisty loaf on my lunch break and stick it in the fridge until it’s time to bake. (I wait to put the sauce on until just before baking.)

It’s nearly impossible to screw this up, so feel free to get ~~drunk while making it~~ creative. And if you don’t like spicy food? Use mild peppers and leave out the Sriracha sauce!

Spicy Turkey Meatloaf (with BACON!!!!)

Serves 4

Meatloaf

1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1-2 of your favorite spicy peppers, finely chopped (I like sereno, jalapeno and Habanero, or peppers from Peppermeister‘s garden)
1-2 T vegetable oil
1 egg
1/2 c. oatmeal (I use steel-cut; you can also substitute with bread crumbs)
3-4 oz. pepper jack and/or cheddar cheese, shredded (you can use just about any kind of cheese you like)
1.2-1.5 lbs. ground turkey (1 package)
6 strips of bacon, uncooked
salt and pepper (to taste)

Sauce

1/2 c. ketchup
1/4 c. light brown sugar
3 T Sriracha sauce

Preheat oven to 350 F. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan and saute the onions, garlic and peppers until softened (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat and let cool.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the turkey, egg, oatmeal and cheese. Add the cooked onion mixture and salt and pepper to taste.

Form a loaf in a medium-sized baking dish or loaf pan.

Cover with bacon. There is no way to do this wrong, but the quality of the bacon will make a big difference, so don’t skimp if you don’t have to.

This is the reason my life feels fulfilled without children.

In a small bowl, combine the ketchup, brown sugar and Sriracha sauce and pour over the meatloaf.

Bake for 1 hour. Remove from oven and let stand 5-10 minutes.

Slice and serve!

This is fantastic the next day, too, if you can leave any!

Thanks for a bacon-licious idea, Jules! I love you (almost as much as I love bacon)! If you haven’t visited Jules’ blog yet, go see what she’s up to today on Go Jules Go.

So tell me, what’s YOUR favorite way to eat bacon?

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I’m Dreaming of a Bacon Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2012 by rachelocal

I can just hear Bing Crosby singing THESE words to one of my favorite Christmas songs…

I’m dreaming of a bacon Christmas

With every shopping trip I take

Where the pork is double smoked

And everyone knows

Thick cut is no joke

Local. Amish. Bacon.

I’m dreaming of a bacon Christmas

With every breakfast menu I plan

Where the bacon fat glistens

And everyone listens

To hear that sizzle in the pan

Do you hear what I hear?

I’m dreaming of a bacon Christmas

Just like the ornaments Jules creates

Where the bacon makes me smile

And I pause for a while

To relish every bite I take

BBFFs (Bacon Best Friends Forever)

I’m dreaming of a bacon Christmas

Where fat renders beautifully

The meat is crispy AND chewy

And may all your Christmases…

May all your Christmases be BACON-Y!!

Do you see what I see?

Bacon and White Cheddar Frittata

8 slices bacon

2 tablespoons olive oil (or bacon grease!)

1 onion, diced

8 eggs

Splash of half and half (or milk)

1 cup grated sharp white cheddar cheese

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Make the bacon:

I always cook bacon in the oven. It’s less messy and if I watch it carefully, cooks perfectly.

Put the oven on broil. Place strips of bacon on a baking sheet and broil for about five minutes. Turn each strip over. Broil for five more minutes or until bacon is crisp but still chewy (just the way I like it). Drain on paper towels and cool. Once cool, crumble or cut the bacon into bite-sized pieces.

Make the frittata:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Heat the oil (or bacon fat from the cooked bacon, which is what I did) in a nonstick oven-proof skillet on medium high heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and translucent.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs and half and half together. Add a pinch of kosher salt and some black pepper (or more depending on your taste). When the onions are translucent, turn the heat to medium low. Add the eggs to the pan and cook until the sides begin to set (about 4 minutes). Don’t mess with it! Just allow it to cook slowly. Once the sides begin to set, sprinkle the cheese and bacon on top. Put the whole skillet in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until the frittata puffs up and the eggs are firm.

Run a rubber spatula around the pan and carefully turn onto a plate. Or be like me and just cut a wedge right from the pan. Serves 6.

Bacon Frittata with a Side of Bacon.

No tree should be without a hand crafted bacon ornament. Thanks, Jules, for the best Christmas gift ever!

Merry BACON Christmas to each and every one of you! I pray you are surrounded by light and hope and people you love!

Categories: Fall Recipes, Recipes, Spring Recipes, Summer Recipes, Winter Recipes | Tags: bacon, breakfast, Christmas, food, holiday, humor, life, poetry | 35 Comments

I’m-Disgusted-with-the-Grocery-Store Sweet Corn and Bacon Pasta

Posted on August 8, 2012 by rachelocal

I wrote a guest post debuting today on Childhood Relived. I waxed nostalgic about the snack foods of my youth, most of them processed and full of high fructose corn syrup. (Make sure to check it out for nostalgic stories and embarrassing photos.)

Reminiscing about these foods made me thankful for a mom that cooked healthy meals, so at least I was forced to make good food choices at home. The 1987 to 1994 versions of myself would choose a Mountain Dew, a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, or a Hostess Cupcake every single time (or all three at once).

Even now, my permed and neon clad 1987 self takes over and wants to buy anything processed and packaged, boxed items like Zatarain’s jambalaya mix (one of my favorite things) or sweet treats like Nutter Butters and Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies.

The temptation to buy processed foods is one of the reasons I rarely shop at the grocery store. These days I go to the farmers market or John’s backyard (I could live on his tomatoes). But last Sunday I needed to buy some cat supplies (we just welcomed a new calico kitten into our family) so I headed to the closest store which happens to be a grocery store. While there I decided to get something for dinner. I thought to myself, Certainly I can buy some local produce; it’s summer after all.

I was mistaken. Nothing was local. But more importantly nothing looked good or fresh. The only thing I actually wanted to buy was an avocado, but it’s not on my locavore diet.

Disgusted, I purchased the kitten supplies and determined to make do with what I had at home.

I thought you should all meet ZuZu

Rummaging through the refrigerator and pantry, I discovered local corn, yummy local double smoked bacon, chicken stock leftover from a previous recipe, local cream, and leftover pasta. Inspired by the memory of a recipe on Frugal Foodie Family, I made Sweet Corn and Bacon Pasta.

Sweet Corn and Bacon Pasta

Ingredients:

3 slices bacon, diced into bit-sized pieces

1 small red onion, diced

Kernels from 2 ears of fresh corn

1/2 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika

pinch of cayenne pepper

1/2 pound of cooked pasta, whatever shape you like

1/4 cup Pecorino Romano

salt and pepper to taste

In a large skillet, get the bacon going over high heat. Cook until the bacon starts browning and crisping up. Turn the heat to medium high and add the onion. Cook until the onion is translucent, about 4 minutes.

Nothing smells better than bacon (or onions)

Add the corn and stir to combine. Add the chicken stock, heavy cream, smoked paprika and dash of cayenne pepper. Let that hang out for about 5 minutes.

Looks good already

Cream and corn with a kick

Mix in the cheese and taste. Add as much salt and pepper as you like (I only needed to add pepper because the bacon and cheese are salty enough). Stir in the pasta to combine. Remove from heat and serve.

The husband and I finished this entire dish by ourselves, so I would say it serves two. But maybe it could serve three people with reasonable appetites.

If I can pull this recipe off with local items I didn’t even know I had, I’ll never need to shop at the grocery store again!

Being disgusted with the grocery store never tasted so good

Categories: Recipes, Summer Recipes | Tags: bacon, corn, food, life, local, slow food, summer | 24 Comments

Breakfast with Steinbeck

Posted on July 10, 2012 by rachelocal

Seeing as I have been a traveler (of sorts) as of late and just returned from vacation, I thought this email I received from my brother was fitting:

Ra,

Attached is a passage from John Steinbeck’s book Travels with Charley: In Search of America. In 1960, Steinbeck took a 3-month long road trip to discover what it is to be American, get a feel for the essence of the country–something like that. The part attached is pertinent to your current endeavors, and I think you’ll get a kick out of his assessment.

Regards,

[Fake name/inside joke which would be lost on you, so I omitted it, but trust me, it was funny]

My brother knows me well, because I did get a kick out of Steinbeck’s assessment. I also got a kick out of the fact that Steinbeck traversed the countryside with his poodle (hence the name Travels with Charley). I have an affinity for poodles. The favorite dog of my life was a black toy poodle named Pepper. If he was still with us, I would take him on an epic road trip and most definitely devote many blog posts to his curly cuteness. But back to Steinbeck.

Travels with Charley book cover. (Photo credit: penguin.com)

Steinbeck managing to look dapper and surly at the same time. (Photo credit: indulgy.com)

After traveling and eating in various roadside joints, Steinbeck wasn’t impressed. His honest and thought-provoking assessment is as follows:

In the eating places along the roads the food has been clean, tasteless, colorless, and of a complete sameness. It is almost as though the customers had no interest in what they ate as long as it had no character to embarrass them. This is true of all but the breakfasts, which are uniformly wonderful if you stick to bacon and eggs and pan-fried potatoes. At the roadsides I never had a really good dinner or a really bad breakfast. The bacon or sausage was good and packaged at the factory, the eggs fresh or kept fresh by refrigeration, and refrigeration was universal. I might even say roadside America is the paradise of breakfast except for one thing. Now and then I would see a sign that said “home-made sausage” or “home-smoked bacon and hams” or “new-laid eggs” and I would stop and lay in supplies. Then, cooking my own breakfast and making my own coffee, I found that the difference was instantly apparent. A freshly laid egg does not taste remotely like the pale, battery-produced refrigerated egg. The sausage would be sweet and sharp and pungent with spices, and my coffee a wine-dark happiness. Can I then say that the America I saw put cleanliness first, at the expense of taste? And–since all our preceptive nerve trunks including that of taste are not only perfectible but also capable of trauma–that the sense of taste tends to disappear and that strong, pungent, or exotic flavors arouse suspicion and dislike and so are eliminated?

…If this people has so atrophied its taste buds as to find tasteless food not only acceptable but desirable, what of the emotional life of the nation?

I need to mention that although Steinbeck was a brilliant and thoughtful man, he was by no means an environmentalist. In the book, he boasts about cooking with aluminum pans and then tossing them off his boat into the water (easier than cleaning up, I guess). So while Steinbeck is only making an observation based on his own taste buds, he foreshadows a bigger problem–the industrialization of food.

It’s like the time my mother said, “Wow. This organic chicken is what chicken used to taste like when I was a kid.” So what happened to our taste buds? And like Steinbeck asks, do our nation’s food choices have anything to do with our emotional state? When questions like these are asked, the usual next step is finding someone to blame.

I’m taking a different approach. While I do have more questions than answers, I know one thing for sure: local food tastes better than any packaged or transported item I can get at the grocery store (remember my “eggsperiment”?). So I plan to search for answers by taking a page from Steinbeck’s book and finding, eating, and enjoying (without embarrassment) local, non-industrialized food.

Who’s with me?

{This post part of Fight Back Fridays on Food Renegade}

Categories: Farmer's Markets, Random | Tags: bacon, books, breakfast, food, John Steinbeck, literature, local, travel | 19 Comments

Posts Tagged With: bacon