Tag Archives: bacon

October 1, 2014 · 8:00 am

Cooking Frenzy

I’ve noticed I have a new habit.  After traveling and witnessing all the foods that I either a) can’t eat or b) can eat but with a very high level of stress, I return home and get the itch to cook.  I go to the grocery store full of ideas and pick up ingredients for this, for that, and oh I could use this to make a new batch of that!

I return home and proceed to enter a cooking frenzy.  After a summer full of wedding celebrations and nearly half the weekends spent away, I have just been waiting to have more than a minute at home so that I could start mixing, baking and cooking.

I stocked up, and I made balsamic cheddar quinoa with fall apples, I made twice-baked potatoes, and I made bacon.  I made pasta sauce and filled four mason jars.  I filled up the fridge.

No room for even a salad, the Tupperware overwhelmed the shelf space.  Anyone else looking inside might have balked, incredulous at the Tupperware that had multiplied on the fridge shelves overnight.  I, on the other hand, smiled.  I had made it, I had filled the fridge, and I would eat it.  With maybe a little bit of help from “A”.  I turned from the open fridge door back to the cookbook under my elbows, dreams of home-made empanadas floating through my head.

Two days later, the weekend struck and I made maple-bacon biscuits to use the rest of the bacon.  I made quiche.  I went to the store and bought the ingredients for my vegetarian lasagna.  I made pickles.  The fridge was stocked, the freezer was filling up, and my stomach was happy.  I can always rest a little easier knowing I have some “safe” emergency meals in the freezer.  Most people might keep a frozen pizza or ready-to-microwave meal.  I keep leftover veggie lasagna, home-made meatballs and personal tangy barbeque sauce.

I’ve done this several times now, entering a bit of a cooking frenzy in the days after travel.  I think I like to overcompensate for all the foods I missed and couldn’t eat while away.  I respond to the billboards on the highway in defiance, saying, “Fine, I can’t eat this now, but I can darn well make it – and make it better – when I get home.”  I get home, and I not only need to fill my fridge and my stomach, but the hole in my food-heart that grew in the time I spent away.

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July 30, 2014 · 7:25 am

Easy Drop Biscuits – Maple-Bacon and Feta-Green Onion

So, I found instructions on Pinterest for no-recipe biscuits, and felt inspired (thank you, Posie Harwood – http://food52.com/blog/10148-how-to-make-yogurt-biscuits-without-a-recipe).  It involves dumping unmeasured amounts of flour, baking powder and glops of yogurt in a bowl and mixing them together, and then adding whatever else you like – I love that!  It also had rolling and cutting biscuits, which seemed to be more work than I was interested in.  So instead, I just dolloped the biscuits onto the baking pan to see how they’d go.  They are certainly not picture-perfect-Martha-Stewart biscuits, but I’m not exactly a picture-perfect-Martha-Stewart chef, so it all works out okay in the end.

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Here is my adaptation of the recipe, in two versions – Maple-Bacon and Feta-Green Onion:

In a big bowl…  Start with as much flour as you would like biscuits.  Take your baking powder and pour in a lil’ shake of it, and then take your salt and pepper shaker and give two shakes of salt.  Mix up these ingredients and wiggle a little while you do.  (You don’t actually have to wiggle, it just makes this more fun).

Now, take a big thing of yogurt – I like vanilla, even for savory biscuits – and let a good sized glop or two fall in.  Mix this stuff up and add some milk too, until it is thick and gloppy but not quite runny like pancake mix (if this happens, add more flour).  See the above Food52 website for pictures of what the consistency should look like.

For MAPLE-BACON (aka. Breakfast-in-a-Biscuit):

-Cook up some bacon beforehand.  You can use leftovers from brunch, or if you haven’t had brunch today, bake it in the oven.  If you have extra bacon grease – pour a little in to your biscuit mixture to add flavor.

-Add a healthy pour of maple syrup.

-Crumble up bacon into little bits – more than you think you’d need.

-Mix it all together!

For FETA-GREEN ONION:

-Pour in as much feta as you’d like. Feta is great because as it cooks in the biscuits, it creates little air pockets that are delicious when you eat them!

-Add chopped little green onions.

-Add a handful of cheddar cheese, too, if you’d like.

-Add in a little oregano, garlic powder and fresh basil.

-Mix mix mix.

Then, drop the mixture onto baking pans or cookie sheets – I use two spoons and drop as much mixture as I would cookie dough.  Bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes.

YUM!

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