Baby favas with chicken and bacon

The other day I went to an organic food store with a friend. I bought what I thought was a container of green beans, but which turned out to be baby favas. I only know one way to deal with fava beans - boil them in salt water (shucked beforehand - in Poland you can buy them already shucked) and eat em. Delicious. But I was willing to try something new. I was, however, resistant to the idea of eating the pods, even if they are allegedly ok when still young. Just didn't appeal to me. The fact that recipes I found suggested grilling them didn't assuage my fears. So I shucked them, which left me with only a few handfuls of wee little beans. This quickly tanked my lofty plans to make several dishes out of them, Iron Chef style.

In the end, having browsed various recipes online, I defrosted 3 slices of the bacon from my cache, chopped them and fried until nearly crispy. Pressed in a few cloves of garlic, stirred, then added some diced chicken rolled in oregano (or maybe thyme. Jury is still out). Once that was nearly cooked, I added the fava beans, stirred, then splashed maybe 1/2 a cup of white wine in and simmered until it was evaporated and everything was cooked through. I served it over polenta with some grated Parmesan, and overall it was pretty decent. In the future though - I'd do it without the favas. They added very little joy. I'll have to find something else to do with those, I guess.

Bacon Greeting Cards

Awhile back I was contacted by a representative of Ron Kanfi, the president of Noble Works, a greeting card company, asking me if I'd be willing to review some of their bacon-themed cards on the blog. I agreed, and she sent over a pack.





To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what occasion calls for a bacon card. Happy Birthday, friend! Have I told you lately how much I love bacon (and you, I guess)? Though come to think of it, I get quite a lot of emails declaring that International Bacon Day is nigh (there seem to be many such days - is there some kind of international committee that regulates such things? They should investigate the Bacon Day issue), so maybe if you're bringing someone a gift of pork on a day that is devoted to it, you could match it with a thematically appropriate card saying Happy Bake-day (wink wink), or Happy Birthday (to Bacon, not you)? I really don't know. I'm actually not big into gift cards myself (though I do love sending postcards when I travel), but Better Half almost always includes them with gifts, which makes me feel like I need to step my game up. Maybe it is more conventional than I realize to have birthday cards that seem to be talking about things totally unrelated to the person or their birthday. Or maybe I could think of these as postcards with a lot more space and an envelope. I dunno.

ANYWAYS. These are very nice cards. Bright, lively colors, and reasonably clever messages. This was my favorite:





But if you go to the Noble Works website - www.nobleworkscards.com - you'll find that they have lots of cards of all different kinds, many of which have more obvious use than missives pledging love to pork.

Foods Made Better with Bacon

This blog seems to be getting a lot of traffic lately, because I keep getting emails from people with links to things they think my readers (I guess I have some?) might enjoy. I tend to ignore the blatantly commercial stuff (no, major fast-food chain, I do not want to advertise your latest bacon burger. Please stop writing me.), but if something actually looks good, I pass it on.

Suzanne Cullen sent me a link to her list of 25 Foods that are better with bacon, and I have to say, it's a damn good list. Aside from the blue cheese, because I am just not down with blue cheese at all, to the extent that I can't even think about whether they would work well together, I agree with every single thing on there. I've even posted about some of them, or at least I think/hope I have. I don't eat corn on the cob (or any corn in non-popped or corn nut form), but I am pretty confident that it'd taste better with bacon grease.

Anyhow, overall, an excellent list. Thanks for the email, Suzanne!

MetaBright

I was recently contacted by a guy named Nathaniel, who is co-founder of a site called MetaBright. MetaBright is an online community where people post challenges and then users can post their "solutions" to them. It bills itself as a way to "showcase your skills and get better at stuff you're passionate about."The challenges are divided by topic - I was contacted because, of course, they have a bacon section. But they've got other categories too. To be totally frank, I'm not entirely sure how posting a picture of your favorite American food improves any skills other than finding an image online and posting it (though I will say that hats off, finding a bacon-themed coffin is pretty impressive), but it does seem like kind of a fun site to play around on, and Nathaniel seems like a really nice guy, so I wanted to pass on the info for people who might be into it.* Unfortunately, you do need to link either your google or your facebook account to it in order to register - Nathaniel and I exchanged a few emails about that, because I am deeply opposed to the idea, and he was willing to listen and said they are still trying to figure out the best way to balance how closed/open the site will be, which is understandable but doesn't change how I feel about it - but if that doesn't bother you, dive in and get to work!



*If you are reading this and thinking that this means I will also advertise whatever bacon product you sell, you're mistaken. I don't really like advertising stuff on this blog. But if someone mails me free stuff to review, or contacts me with something neat, or emails me and seems like a cool person who I'd like to help out, then I will make an exception. But most of the emails I get seem like they've been written by robots and they really creep me out. And insanely enthusiastic ad copy about the latest burger at a certain fast food chain annoys the crap out of me. You know who you are. Quit it.