Creamy Bacon and Mushroom Polenta

All of your wonderful submissions for our bacon marmalade contest have been lip linkingly good! We were so  excited about doing our first contest / giveaway that we wound up doing our own entry on Tuesday night! We put together a creamy bacon and mushroom polenta that definitely rocked the polenta world. We pushed off posting this just in case anyone came up with the same idea, and if you did, then you might just win! So far I haven't seen it done yet, but theres still time left as we write this! Fall is coming to a very wintery finish here in the Bay Area and the Christmas season has gotten into full swing. Christmas stuff everywhere? Check. Certain closets / drawers / rooms people are not allowed to look in? Check. A front yard thats so bright it can be seen from space? Double Check. It also means nearly everything we cook is hearty and warm and goes well with cuddling by the fire. A huge dish of polenta that smells like bacon fits that description! If you've never had polenta, this is really a good starter for you. It's creamy and full of familiar flavors but carries that unique soup like texture that makes polenta... well... polenta. Definitely something to serve with a side of family!

Speaking of family, we wanted to make mention over the next week or so of a charity that Eric has been a huge fan of and contributer too. The charity is called Child's Play and is organized to provide toys and games to children's hospitals around the world. They are partnered with over 70 different hospitals and staffed entirely by volunteers during the holiday season, so every dime donated goes straight to help make long hospital stays for children with life threatening illnesses a little easier. We know that everyone is stretched to their limits these days but anything that you can donate really does make a difference. You can donate directly to a chosen hospital (see the website for the worldwide map of partnered hospitals) or simply donate via paypal or the tech friendly out there can text GAMERS to 50555 to donate $5.00 (its added to your cell phone bill). Check the website for the TaxID and other donation deduction help!

Bourbon Bacon Marmalade

We work really hard not to repeat recipes or do too much that is really similar to what we've done before but sometimes you have to break the rules. Earlier we did a whole meal using bacon in some form in each course. And some of the highlights may have got a bit lost in the overwhelmingly large bacon friendly meal, specifically the bourbon bacon marmalade. We had a whole bunch of this leftover and served it on burgers for Eric's birthday party the next day and you've never seen a pack of hungry wolves devour something so quickly. The whole bowl vanished in less than an hour, walking out on hot dogs, bread slices and BBQ bacon cheeseburgers because hey, what goes with bacon better than bacon? Anyway we decided that for Christmas we would recreate this marmalade and can it, making a fun gift to give out to all our friends and family, and what an adventure it was. Have you ever heard of a pressure canner? We hadn't until we had already made a whole batch and realized we needed one. Charisse was very excited with her new toy and started listing off all the things she could can, which is basically everything. Apparently Eric isn't the only one who likes new gadgets. The real treat though was seeing the virtual mountain of bacon we cooked up to produce enough marmalade for everyone, it was almost enough to build your own pig! One thing we were not sure of is what you can put this on. Eric seems to thing you can put this on just about everything but that might not work out the best if your having cherry ice cream. Some of the things we came up with are crackers and melted brie, burgers, hot dogs, most sandwiches, you could use it in an omelet or on sliced apples. And that train of thought got us thinking, who wants a jar of their own?

We're officially doing our first give-away! Whoever comes up with the best use for bacon marmalade as judged by Charisse and Eric wins one! Follow us, leave your suggestion in a comment and make sure it includes an email address or some other way to get a hold of you, and we'll announce the winner next week! Cut off time for entries is 5PM PST on Friday! 

Baked Potato Soup

While Charisse was in Arkansas we both ended up having soup on the same night. We all saw how Eric's turned out while Charisse on the other hand was eating out at a Mennonite restaurant in Gentry and enjoying a baked potato soup. We were talking later that night over Skype and Eric learned two things: Mennonites are people and therefore not edible and baked potato soup is the best thing since the baked potato. Actually, he learned 3 things that night, the third being that canned low sodium soup tastes terrible. Especially if its past its expiration date by a year and a half. So when Charisse came back this was near the top of the southern-cooking-to-die-for-and-may-actually-kill-you-too list and was promptly cooked up for lunch on the first really cold October day. It was actually a great Sunday afternoon food, it really fit our day. We've been having some really unseasonably warm weather this October with temperatures in the 90's for a while so to have this sudden cold snap really kicked up our holiday season anticipation as it finally feels like Fall is here and Winter is coming. We built our first fire of the season and lounged around all day watching movies and eating hearty southern food. since then we've decided that more exercise is needed and will probably be making more... healthy food but that wasn't on our minds at the time. What was on our minds was this soup. It really is like a liquid baked potato. Or more like a twice baked potato in liquid form. We topped it with chopped green onions cheddar cheese and crumbled bacon, but any baked potato toppings would work. So with winter well on its way you should take a day off to hunker down with this soup and just be full.

Salmon Hash with Poached Eggs

Mmmm Breakfast. What an overlooked, but truly outstanding meal. They say Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Were not sure who "they" are but they do tend to be right. Theres something about having a big filling breakfast thats like filling the gas tank before a big road trip. Cruising past pit stops and snack bars knowing you don't need to stop... okay that analogy is just not working, but you get the point. Weekday breakfast is all too often sadly uneventful. Theres no such thing as happy breakfast hour or breakfast meetings. Nobody does a power breakfast. In today's world breakfast seems to either get woofed down on the drive into work or skipped entirely which is a real shame because some of the worlds best food is for breakfast. When we lived in San Francisco, the big thing to do was Sunday breakfast. We're talking everyone in town went out for breakfast on Sundays. You could tell the best spots by how long the lines were, and when you got through the line (even if was almost lunchtime) you knew you had some great food to look forward to. The other weekend we wanted to try our hands at Sunday Breakfast, and with lots of leftover fish, we invited some people over and whipped up a Salmon hash. Charisse even tried her hand at poached eggs, which taste great, but are super easy to screw up. Theres just something about watching an egg basically dissolve in water that makes you go "eeeewwwww". The eww generally produces laughs from everyone else, so its fun to do at parties! This one is super easy to do (except for the eggs which are optional anyways) and its really filling. It is just the sort of thing that helps take the edge off after a long night out and is a great way to start off your Sunday (Eric says you can't watch football on an empty stomach!).

Plumbing Work - Day 2 - Old School Pasta Carbonara

This is is what our front yard looked like when Eric got home from work. Now normally, he gets all excited whenever theres a big power tool being put to use, and if it has an engine, even better. Yup, in some ways he never grew up. Go figure. So Eric gets home last night to a backhoe in our driveway, a 6 1/2 food deep trench along the side of the house and Charisse's rose garden in shambles. There are 3 or 4 neighbors in addition to the trencher standing around the edge of the hole saying things like "oooh thats not good" and the trencher says "I've never seen one this bad". When comments like that are being used for your house's exit pluming you know things are not good. When the trencher finally finished and left for the day, we got down to the business of dinner. We could have started earlier, but Eric insisted on keeping an eye on the work. Not because the workers needed supervising, but what guys could not stand by and watch a big yellow machine dig a big hole?

For dinner we put together one of our everyday dishes, a true Pasta Carbonara. Now most restaurants that offer a Pasta Carbonara are offering you a cream based sauce, more of a Alfredo sauce than a true Carbonara. Carbonara actually has no cream in it whatsoever, the sauce is thickened with egg yolks brought to temperature slowly, a time consuming and fragile operation. The tick here is to add the hot water slowly, so the eggs cook a little, and come up to near boiling without actually scrambling. Add the water to fast, you get breakfast, add the water too slow and it cools too much and won't bring the eggs up high enough. When done right, you get a creamy-cheesey textured pasta, without the cream, perfect for anyone who loves pasta! 


Pictures and recipe after the break...

Apricot Poppers

Well, we made it back in once piece from the big abalone picnic up north, and what an exciting experience that was. We'd like to start off by saying thanks to Laura and Ian Batra for inviting us, and Lindsay and Sean Spanek for letting us join the house! A weekend full of good food and wine, can't ask for much more than that. For anyone who hasn't heard about our trip we'll tell a few stories and share the recipes we brought.

The whole weekend revolved around a big abalone picnic hosted by a few families from the Bay Area. For a few days leading upto the picnic, a hand full of guys go diving for abalone, a challenge in and of itself! The divers must free-dive (no tanks, no air tubes), pry the mollusks from the rocks and return to the surface in one breadth. Because abalone are such a sought after creature (and make such an amazing dish!) California's laws are extremely strict on the sport harvesting of abalone.The divers must be extremely careful about the size and number they pull from the water and follow a strict tagging procedure. The transportation of even the shells that are not tagged correctly can get you in trouble. On Saturday the abalone were cleaned and prepared at an event called the pounding party. We'll show you how the abalone are prepared next time (pictures are still downloading from the camera as of this morning). On Saturday night Ian and Lindsay cooked us a wonderful multi-course meal (it's nice to have someone else cook from time to time!) and we spent all of Sunday morning preparing our two appetizer courses for the picnic.

For our first (and most popular) appetizer we made Apricot Poppers: Apricots stuffed with Havarti Cheese wrapped and bacon and grilled. YUM. We hauled the old blue Weber with us and enjoyed the first official grilling session of the season. (Eric could write an entire post about why the Weber grill is the best grilling device ever made, but we'll get to that another day). Now here is where Eric made a tactical error (and lost some arm hair correcting it). These poppers need to be cooked at low heat with very few on the grill at any given time. Eric ended up overloading one part of the grill, and as the bacon grease started to drip, the coals ignited, sending 4 foot flames to slightly overcook the first batch. 6-10, spread in a ring around the coals is the most you want on there at any given time to keep the flare ups down, and the bacon cooking evenly without melting away all the cheese.


Eric's grilling tip #1: Lighter fluid is forbidden. FOREVER. It leaves a oil on the coals and taints the flavor of whatever your cooking. Buy a Charcoal Chimney, they are cheap, easy to use and start the grill 2-3 times faster than lighter fluid. Just pour your charcoal in the top section, add crumpled paper underneath and add fire. If your serious about good tasting food coming off the grill, this is what you want.
Pictures and recipe after the break...

Bacon Stuffed BBQ Burger

This burger was designed especially for Eric, yet another victim of the food network (DARN YOU CABLE!). After watching "Burger Paradise" the other night, we were gearing up to make a simple every day weeknight salad for dinner. Unfortunately Paula Dean came on. With more burgers. Really good looking burgers. At that moment Eric decided he just had to have a burger "right this second..." and of course for Eric, it had to be topped with bacon. Now Charisse likes to stack her burgers with all kinds of veggies like lettuce and tomatoes and whatnot. She even prefers to skip the bacon (primarily because she doesn't like it when you bite into it and all the bacon comes out in the first bite). So Charisse engineered a compromise. Bacon stuffed the right into the middle of the burger. That's right, bacon with every bite. And she didn't stop there, she imagined a burger full of cheese, and bacon and sauce and every amazing flavor you can imagine. We finally settled on BBQ sauce basted burgers filled with bacon cheese spread and topped with red onions, lettuce and homemade ranch sauce. Now if you really want to bribe (or reward) that significant other in your life (or attract one maybe? "Hey baby, wanna try my burger?" No? Does Eric have the worst pick up lines ever? Yup) try this burger. After dinner, Eric was so overwhelmed with burger delight, he actually did all the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen!

Without being asked.

Pictures and Recipe after the break

Red Spud Salad

Yesterday was Easter, and to our family that means what every holiday means... big meals, family, food, friends, and eating. Yes theres a repeating theme there and now you can see where we get it from! There was lots of food, stuffed lamb, raviolis, salad, fresh bread and Charisse's dad's special request: a delicious Red Spud Salad, our contribution to the meal. A potato salad at Easter time was a staple in the Farnsworth household for years and was also a contribution to the dinner table from Grandma Martha.  Since she passed away about 3 years ago the potato salad has been lacking and nobody every really thought much about it. A couple days ago we were talking about what we could bring to Easter Sunday Brunch and were thinking about the Tres-Leches cake or how about a cheesy zucchini casserole? At Patrick Farnsworth's request we settled potato salad as good as my Grandma's. Now we are not mayonnaise people by any means, in fact Charisse has only been able to tolerate it in the last few years, so any sort of "salad" with a mayo base is not her thing. But her father requested it, so we just had to make one. Mouths watered, bacon glistened and a new tradition was born. While the base salad is fairly traditional in many ways Charisse did put a bit of her own twist in it. We used red spuds instead of the yukon potatoes, mostly for texture color. We deleted celery out of the dish, nobody here really likes the stuff. Lastly by topping the salad off with crispy chopped bacon, we made sure that everyone would love it, because hey, everything tastes better with bacon. Charisse thought not only would it add some great color and texture, but who doesn't love bacon?! Maybe Vegans, but if you are a Vegan you probably already figured out this isn't the site for you, sorry. Overall this was a complete success, the fresh dill and parsley and all the great crunchiness of the veggies went perfectly together and was very refreshing. You could certainly experiment with this recipe, water chestnuts would be wonderful thrown into the mix...or maybe some cucumbers!  Either way, you will definitely need to loosen your belt after this one!

Pictures and Recipe after the break