Bacon for more

Great turn out for 2008's Early Turkey Day / Reunion / Job Fair. There was gobble. There was booze. There was merriment. There was bacon. Thanks Dan for getting the ball rolling. Great to see old and new faces. Those of you who didn't make the party, we totally made fun of you behind your defenseless backs. Let that be a lesson to you.

This year's spread gets even more impressive than years past. Deliciousness from everybody. Turkeys and squash and nuts and greens and fennel and sweet potato and ravioli and pasta salad and chocolate cake and crab rangoon.

I contributed a flight of bacon courses. We begin with bacon chocolate chip cookies. Next time, I'd double the amount of bacon bits. Bacon doesn't lend itself well to subtlety.

Bacon toffee. If you like salted caramels, bacon toffee is even better. Bacon candy!

And we close with bacon ice cream with bacon salt. Best ice cream ever! We now have definitive proof that bacon DOES make everything taste better. There will sonnets written for bacon ice cream. Ships will be launched for bacon ice cream. Hillary might be Secretary of State for bacon ice cream. And even Brangelina might get married for bacon ice cream.

I heart salt

Tonight, I work on making heirloom quality Loo Juice. A sodium umami bomb to pass onto the next generation. Soy braised chicken wings, tofu, beef shank, shiitake, and eggs. I should probably get one of those home EKG machines. I'd mod it to spit out menu planning advice. And my EKG machine would support RSS.

Embalassed

Simple salt pickles from the Japanese picre press. Cucumbers were a bit bitter, so I will peel them next time. But carrots have a nice bite. Picre presses open up all sorts of opportunities for experimentation. Juniper berries. Pickled onions. Coriander. Pecks of pickled peppers. Eggplant. All sorts of new pickle inventions. And the inevitable failures. Massive massive pickle failures. Pickled bacon anyone? 

Fried rice - peas and bacon and corn. I just can't seem to make Chinese food correctly. One more thing that makes me an embarrassment to my people. The list is getting pretty long.

Renewal

I am so grokking this salt and pepper set that Aaron and Jenne sent me. Little tins filled with things like assorted flake sea salts from all over the world. Smoked pepper and African grains of paradise. And the best part... wait for it... bacon salt! BACON SALT! AND the elusive Balinese Long Peppers I've been trying to track down for months. How did they know? BACON SALT! Does a more wondrous invention exist? I think not.



Replanting the planter box with assorted succulents and cacti that mimic rocks. According to feng shui, placing fleshy round shaped succulents in the front courtyard is auspicious. But the reality is that I placed them near the front door so I won't forget to water.



Some mornings you just wake up and think, "I'm too sexy for my hair."



And you act upon that thought.

BACON SALT!