sweet and savory bacon-cranberry rice - nice!

Boredom can be a bad thing, but it can also be the catalyst for something really wonderful. Like when you're tired of eating the same thing day in, day out (or what you perceive as the same thing). Tired of baked potatoes but in need of something quick and just different, I created this rice side dish one evening. It was just what I was looking for: simple, delicious and... different. The dried cranberries seem to lend their sweetness to the dish, and the small touch of curry powder accents that flavor, as well as giving the rice a nice golden color. And the bacon, well.... it's bacon! What's not to like?

This recipe uses Trader Joe's brown jasmine rice, one of my favorites because it doesn't seem as, well, brown as other brown rices. I'll let you in on a secret: I prefer white rice in all its processed splendor. Anyway, you can certainly use white rice for this dish as well; just reduce the cooking time since brown rice requires about 40 to 45 minutes.

This is all it takes to make my sweet and savory bacon-cranberry rice:

2 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled

2 green onions, white and part of green, sliced

small amount of olive oil

1/4 cup dried sweetened cranberries

1/4 teaspoon curry powder

1/2 cup brown jasmine rice

1 cup water

In a large saucepan, saute sliced green onion in a small amount of olive oil until tender and transparent. Add rice and quickly saute in the oil, then add the cooked crumbled bacon and dried cranberries. Pour in water, add curry powder, turn heat to high and bring to a boil. When boiling, turn heat to low, cover and cook on very low heat for 35 to 45 minutes or until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Makes approximately 3 servings. This is wonderful with roasted chicken or turkey, or pork.

classic spinach dip - with a twist, of course

The best spinach dip I've ever created? Yes, it has bacon, which automatically puts this recipe in the running for "best ever" but there's just something about it that is so ... satisfying. Great combination of textures - a little crunch, some creaminess but not overdone, my newest version of spinach dip has it all.

Serve at an elegant holiday party or other special occasion, or bring along to your next al fresco dining experience with a bottle of wine and a bit of charcuterie and good cheese. Like all spinach dips, this looks beautiful served in a crusty bread bowl; this version is particularly suited to dipping with pita chips. And if you haven't tried the Archer Farms Hummus Chips with Sea Salt from Target, get a bag now. Absolutely delicious little snack, and so good with this dip!

Recipe:
One 10 ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed
3 slices hardwood-smoked thick cut bacon
4 heaping tablespoons minced water chestnuts
6 tablespoons mayonnaise (NOT "salad dressing")
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 to 3/4 dried oregano (try a little dill just to change it up sometimes)
freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons crumbled feta cheese

In a skillet, cook bacon slices until crispy and drain on a paper towel-lined plate. While bacon is cooking, squeeze out as much water as you can from the thawed chopped spinach. Mince the water chestnuts and combine with the spinach. When bacon is cool enough to handle, crumble into small pieces and add to spinach-water chestnut mixture.
In a small bowl, combine mayonnaise, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano and black pepper. Stir into spinach mixture, mixing thoroughly, and add feta cheese, breaking up any larger clumps of feta cheese. Season to taste with salt (I find that little or no salt is needed with the bacon and feta cheese).
Makes about 2 cups of spinach dip.

declare independence from boring potato salads this July 4th!

Brewhouse Potato Salad with Bacon

Only the first day of July and already I'm bored with the usual cook-out side dishes... until now. I wanted to create a really good potato salad with a tasty beer-based dressing and so I did a bit of research. After some tweaking I came up with my very own Brewhouse Potato Salad: slightly sweet with a touch of bacon-y goodness; the perfect accompaniment to sausages and grilled pork or chicken... and a cold one, of course!

To begin, scrub 2 pounds of red-skinned new potatoes and cut into quarters. Cook in boiling water until just tender, about 10 to 15 minutes depending on the size of the potato pieces.

While potatoes are cooking, cook 6 slices of bacon in a skillet until done. Drain off all but 1 tablespoon of bacon grease. Set aside the bacon on paper towels to drain. When cool, crumble the bacon into bits.

In the 1 tablespoon of reserved bacon fat, saute 1 medium onion, minced

then add:

1 cup beer

3 tablespoons malt vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

Boil mixture for 5 minutes until slightly reduced, then remove from heat and whisk in:

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

(honey mustard also works well; I used Sierra Nevada's Spicy Brown Porter Mustard)

4 tablespoons mild olive oil

When potatoes are cooked and drained, add:

1/4 cup minced parsley

2 green onions, white parts and part of light green, sliced thinly

Toss potato mixture with the dressing, 1/2 to 3/4 more teaspoons sugar (to taste), salt and black pepper to taste, and the crumbled cooked bacon.

Let salad sit for a while for the flavors to blend; Brewhouse Potato Salad with Bacon is best served lightly chilled or at room temperature.

Love bacon? Now you can even wear it!

gimme some skin!!

Super Snacks for The Big Game!

Whether you actually watch the football action, or just tune in for the commercials, everyone can agree that the Super Bowl is one of winter's finest foodfests.

What is it about football that encourages such gastronomic indulgence? True, I've been to some major league baseball games where there was tailgating but nothing like football games, or the incredible spreads at home parties everywhere. Fire up some pork chops before the big golf championship? Whip up a giant cauldron of chili for the gymnastics tournament? Not likely but who knows, maybe football's savory spirit will someday infiltrate other sports as well.
While you're cursing the quarterback or laughing at the newest Snickers commercial, feast on a few of these luscious bacon and cheese potato skins. You can bake the potatoes in advance to save time; quickly remove the foil from the potatoes after baking to reduce any "wrinkliness" in the refrigerator later.

If you're using bacon for your skins, I highly recommend the flavor and quality of Applegate uncured "Sunday Bacon." As a card-carrying Team Bacon! member, this product is one of my favorites. You will not believe the hardwood smoke aroma of this bacon! It does not shrink up into shriveled little strips, and there is very little excess grease to pour off. Truly a quality cured meat!

On the Lonesome Road, we generally try to use low-fat dairy products; however, there are some instances when this isn't the best option or doesn't produce the best results. Potato skins are one of those instances; I prefer to use full-fat cheese for its melting qualities and it generally seems to brown better.

When you're ready to assemble the potato skins, cut each baked potato in half and scoop out the insides so there is about 1/4 inch of potato in each shell. Then, the shells will need to "dry out" a bit so that they will be crispy when finished. Sad truth: frying the skins before filling them really does taste better, much like a McDonald's apple pie. However, if you're trying to cut down on a few fat calories you can bake the shells first. I've done this by putting them on a foil-lined pizza pan in a 450 degree Fahrenheit oven for ten minutes face-up, then flip them over and bake another 15 minutes or so. Potatoes will be ready when they no longer stick to the foil when they are face-down.

Now the fun part! The fillings are entirely up to you but I like a classic combination of Cheddar cheese, bacon and green onions or chives.

For a change, try some of these ideas:

• herbed cream cheese
• blue cheese
• chili
• taco meat
• chorizo
• chopped smoked ham
• Canadian bacon
• hot or sweet Italian sausage
• broccoli
• mushrooms
• chili pepeprs
• olives, green or black
• giardinera
• black bean and corn salsa with Jack cheese
• your favorite pizza toppings + marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese
• fresh spinach, garlic and feta cheese

When your masterpieces have been created, simply broil until the cheese is bubbly.

Depending on the size of the potatoes, plan on at least two skins per person but if the potatoes are small or if I am at the party, do allow more!

necessary indulgences

Fun at 4:20. Or not.

Slow Down and Smell the ... Bacon. Or Cinnamon Apples.

There's nothing quite like having a day to yourself. No slogging along thanklessly for "The Man," no scurrying around running errands all day. No hurried weeknight dinners designed around everyone else's schedule. Eat dinner at 4:20? What am I, ninety years old? Didn't I just eat lunch about 3 hours ago? 4:20 might be time for something but it's not time to shovel in an uninspired supper.

So today was MY day to indulge myself with a nice brunch. Not only do I get tired of off-schedule eating and the accompanying crummy dietary habits it creates, but I like to cook - when I have the time to stretch out and experiment. Not just slapping something in the oven on a pizza pan for twenty minutes and calling it dinner.

This particular day I was craving something breakfast-y and this scramble with bacon, caramelized onions, and melty rich Brie cheese was just the thing. A side of sauteed Granny Smith apples dusted with cinnamon was the perfect accompaniment.

Maybe I'll incorporate it into a weekend breakfast someday.

"Lean and Mean" Bacon Belt Buckle by Lonesome Road Studio.

bacon makes everything better!

Meat Candy!

Lately a lot of people I know have been doing jalapeno poppers with various fillings - and all wrapped in bacon. And grilled. Can it get much better than that?

The usual fillings seem to be cheese, and the usual "fillee" seems to be jalapeno peppers. Well, the Lonesome Road garden had an overabundance of beautiful, mild Cubanelle peppers recently, so I decided to make stuffed, bacon-wrapped grilled peppers as a main dish.

Cubanelle peppers are similar to "Italian Frying Peppers" and are perfect on the grill. To begin with, cut a "T" shape on one side of the pepper; the horizontal cut at the top near the stem, and then straight down but not through to the other side of the pepper. Carefully clean out the seeds and trim off excess ribs, then stuff them!

I stuffed mine with pre-cooked hot turkey Italian sausage halves cut to fit the length of the peppers, plus mozzarella cheese (they don't have to be stuffed until bulging, just comfortably enough to get them back together again). Wrap each pepper with a slice of bacon and secure with at least two toothpicks, one at the top, one towards the bottom. I did soak my toothpicks in water for a while first, even after I heard grill guru Steve Raichlen say that it really makes no difference if you soak wooden skewers or not; they burn anyway. And um, yeah. He was right. That's why he's the guru and I'm not. Anyway.....
Grill over a medium-hot fire until the bacon is thoroughly cooked, watching carefully and turning often (this takes around 20 minutes but can take longer depending on the heat of your fire). By the time the bacon is fully cooked, the peppers will be perfectly cooked; firm, not mushy, with a wonderful full flavor.

Count on two peppers per person, more (of course) if the peppers are small. Be sure to try them stuffed with chorizo and Cheddar cheese as well, for more of a south-of-the-border flavor. In fact, let your imagination run wild... why not pre-cooked meatballs and provolone, then serve with marinara sauce; or shredded chicken breast, marinated tofu (facon-wrapped, of course!), Middle-Eastern-inspired ground lamb and feta cheese... oh, I could go on and on.
(But first I should check the garden and see how many more Cubanelles we have left!)

wordless wednesday? not quite....

August is National Sandwich Month....

need I say more than this?

BLT on ciabatta. Wow, just wow.

bacon candy!

Have you ever wondered what bacon candy might taste like? I'm thinking that it might taste a lot like this sugared bacon!
As a proud team member of Team Bacon! on Etsy, I submitted this recipe, "Arnold Palmer's Sugared Bacon" and it was recently published on the team blog, Six Degrees of Etsy Bacon.

If you're a bacon aficionado, as we are, you won't want to miss KokoDiablo's ongoing cooking series full of luscious, smokey cured goodness, like her "Cream Cheese Stuffed Jalapenos Wrapped in Bacon". Oh my.

Oh. And one other thing... in case you haven't heard, Team Bacon! is running a weeklong challenge from May 17th to May 21st: Hide the Bacon! Simply find the hidden bacon image in participating Team Bacon! shops on Etsy and you could win a prize - now that sounds easy, doesn't it? We had eleven lucky winners on Monday - could you be one of our next winners?

Get started now!!

team bacon!

Lonesome Road Studio is proud

to be a member

of the new Etsy team, Team Bacon!

Team Bacon! is a unique Etsy team that celebrates bacon, creativity and quirkiness. Within the pages of the team blog, Six Degrees of Etsy Bacon, you will not only find mouth-watering bacon recipes and photos (of course!) but a whole collection of useful information for those who sell their artisan wares online and/or at shows. You will also find bacon news and trivia, Team Bacon! community outreach information, and giveaways!

Lonesome Road Studio will be a contributor to the team blog in the near future, so pop in, take a look around and say "hi" to Team Bacon!