More Recipes & Bacon

I’ve become an Everyday Food addict. I love buying that little magazine filled with ‘easy’ recipes. I really like the way it looks stacked up on my cookbook shelf. I almost have the Everday Food: Great Food Fast cookbook, it was a gift last Christmas and I use it a lot. Some of my favorite recipes are in there and they never take a long time. The June edition of Everyday Food has several good grilling/summer food recipes but one baking recipe caught my eye – Coconut Pineapple Loaf Cake. I thought it sounded really good and really easy. I made it last Thursday, it turned out really well. It was easy enough to make on a weeknight and had a minimal ‘dirty-dish’ count. The pineapple made the cake moist and tangy and the coconut added a nice crunch, together they made it taste very tropical.

Several weeks ago I bought some Portobello mushrooms with the intention of grilling them. Well time passed it was several days later and I still not grilled them and that night it was raining. So I went to Epicurious.com and searched for Portobello mushroom recipes. I found this one, you make a stuffing of shrimp, breadcrumbs, parm, mayo, basil, onion, garlic and a few other spices, mound that inside the mushroom and bake it until the top and golden brown. OMG this is good, Doug *loved* it and rarely does he *love* food but he really loved this one. The recipe is perfect but I also added Old Bay Seasoning and used shallots instead of onion (just because I had shallots on hand that day). I’ve made it several times since and it really is a great recipe, it’s fairly easy too as long as you get shrimp that is already peeled and deveined.

Bacon is a guilty pleasure of ours. We both know it’s totally unhealthy and most of the time we eat turkey bacon when we have a hankering for bacon. And turkey bacon is good, it’s a little dry but it has that crunch and it’s only 20 calories or so a slice. Every once and awhile I’ll break down and get real bacon, but I almost hate to because when you cook bacon the scent of sizzling bacon lingers all.day.long. and then you have the bacon house. Anyway, we were making a Super Target shopping run a few weeks ago and came across Niman Ranch Applewood Smoked Bacon and Apple and Gouda sausage. We decided to buy some and try it out, as a treat. That stuff is amazing, pure pork heaven. I’ve never had such delicious bacon and sausage. Of course now we’re both hooked, the only redeemer is that we have to drive all the way out to Super Target to get it so we’re less likely to eat it very often thank goodness. We really heart Niman Ranch bacon.