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!

Lemon Polenta Cake with Pouring Cream

Nothing goes better with cake than new toys. Right. What? It turns out Eric is obsessed with finding reasons to by new toys. Tools, gadgets, gizmos, every project or endeavor seems to need just one more. Want to put new floors in? Have to buy a nail gun. Fix the fence, need a new saw. Fix the other fence, gotta go get a different saw. Start a food blog? Must get a new camera, new lens, new flash, new tripod, new computer, another new camera, one more lens... and you get the picture. Sometimes the new toy tool costs more than the rest of the project but ends up in the cart because it has to. This is exactly the kind of thing that puts a real gleam in Eric's eye whenever theres a new project or something gets broken, which is exactly what happened to our camera flash last week. We were getting ready to start shooting this Polenta cake when the camera took a tumble and the flash when flying into about thirty six million different pieces.  While bits where still flying around the room was online looking for a replacement, as a broken gadget meant it was time to upgrade to something bigger, faster and better.
It was during the week or so we spent waiting for the replacement that we came to realize how much of a difference the flash really made. We like to get action shots, liquids getting poured, batter getting beaten, sliced things getting... sliced. The additional flash really actively freezes the action, giving a super clear picture in great focus, something the built in flash just can't do. When Eric was processing this weeks pictures there was a clear level of frustration as many of the shots we consider our staple "bread and butter" photographs were blurred or the action was not quite frozen. Even though we were pretty disappointed about how the pictures came out, the cake did its part and made the day. Yet another use for lemons (fast becoming the 2nd most used ingredient here, behind butter) this cake was a tangy, textury wonderland for your mouth. We mixed our preserved lemons with a regular lemon for the flavor and the cornmeal give it a super unique texture. We're big food-texture people so when the two don't pair well, neither of us tends to like the dish. In this case the cornmeal really changes each bite, providing a different experience bite to bite.