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.

New Year's Pozole

My sweet baby is nothing if not an idea man, and this was definitely one of his better ideas: making pozole on New Year's Day. After girding ourselves with a few bloody mary's from Big Star, and stopping for a few last minute groceries from the miraculously open corner store, we put our pork in a pot with half an onion and set it a-cooking. As it simmered, we catnapped and watched The Princess Bride - another brilliant idea. When the movie was done, the meat was cooked, and we pulled it off the bones and chopped it up. To be totally frank with you, I'm not entirely sure what happened next, because I am still suffering from the deleterious effects of jetlag, and I simply could not stay awake. I roused myself when the soup was basically done, and obediently chopped up the accoutrements for it. A big, hot bowl of this stuff is a meal in itself - a spicy, soul-warming serving of awesome. Happy New Year's!

Pozole Rojo, adapted from Rick Bayless' Mexico One Pot at a Time

1/2-1 pound of pork shoulder
1 pound pig head, chopped into chunks (we were going to get trotters, which is what the recipe calls for, but the nice guys at Butcher and Larder persuaded me that head would be richer and meatier.)
3 cans hominy
1/2 head garlic, cloves peeled and halved
1 large white onion
4 medium dried ancho chiles
2 arbol chiles
1 small cabbage
1 bunch radishes
dried Mexican oregano
tostadas
limes
avocado

Put all the pork in a large pot with half the onion, diced, and cover with 4 quarts of water and a tablespoon of salt. Bring to a boil, skim off the grayish foam that appears on the surface, and let it cook over medium low heat for about 2 hours. Let it cool in the broth.
Meanwhile, rehydrate the chiles in a little bit of hot water for about 20 minutes. Leave the seeds in if you want it spicier, or remove them if you want it milder. We did about half and half, and ours was pretty fiery. Put them in a blender and puree the ever loving crap out of them.
Remove the meat, pull it off the bones and chop or tear it up. Skim the fat off the top of the pot - lick the spoon off every so often for a little taste of heaven.
Put the two cans of hominy in a small pot with a bit of water and the garlic. Cook for about 20 minutes.
Throw that into the pork broth. Push the pureed chiles through a medium sized strainer. Now that you've got all that combined, add a few cups of water and simmer the soup for 45 minutes or so, reducing it down. Add the meat and simmer another 15 minutes or so.
  Meanwhile, chop up the rest of the onion, rinsing it in cold water. Slice the radishes thin. Cut the lime into wedges. Chop the cabbage into thin ribbons. Chop up an avocado. Set these all out as a kind of buffet, along with a small bowl of the oregano and a pile of tostadas. Let everyone add what they will.
De-licious.

Peruvian-ish lentils with chorizo

I was feeling adventurous the other day and decided to experiment with lentils. I ended up sort of combining two recipes, using this one as a base and this one for inspiration. The next night, heating up the leftovers, I had the brilliant idea of getting some chorizo involved, and thus, Peruvian-ish lentils with chorizo were born. The recipe still needs some work (feel free to leave ideas in the comments!), but it was tasty enough that I figured it was worth posting about.


To recreate what I made, you will need:

2 cups lentils
1 chicken boullion cube
1 bunch parsley
2 red onions
lots and lots of garlic
cinnammon
crushed red chili
red wine vinegar
chorizo
1 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1 can tomatoes
1 cup forbidden rice

Put your lentils in a big pot with the stems from your parsley, chicken boullion cube, and a few cloves of garlic (I actually forgot about the garlic part, but I think you should try it. The Jamie Oliver recipe suggests a bay leaf too I just noticed, so add that as well, even though I didn't). Pour 8 cups or so of boiling water over it - the recipes vary in their amounts, but lentils drink lots of water.

As they cook, mince a few cloves of garlic and put them in a big pot with some oil over medium-low heat. Stir for a minute, then add your cup of rice (I used forbidden rice, because I had some and thought it would look pretty, but regular rice will probably do as well). Stir to coat, then add 2 1/2 cups of boiling water and turn the heat to very low.

Now, chop up an onion and a few more cloves of garlic. Set a smaller pot on the stove with some oil and sautee your onion and garlic over low heat for a minute or two. Once the onion softens, add some crushed red chili and a few spoons of cinnamon. Cook for another minute or two, then crank the heat and splash in a glug of red wine vinegar. Stir well, lower the heat, and add the tomatoes. I know Jamie Oliver says to do this first, but when I did, it cooked way too long and became too thick. As discussed below, this part of the recipe is the most iffy. It could easily be replaced with something better.

Now you wait, and chop up your parsley. Put it in a bowl. Then, chop up your second onion and a few more cloves of garlic and set aside. Open your can of peppers and remove them one by one, being careful not to lose their delicious sauce. Chop them up.

Your lentils and rice should be finishing up around the same time. Drain the lentils, remove the parsley stems and bay leaf, if you used it, and return to the pot. Then add the rice and stir to combine.* In a small-medium pan, fry the onion and garlic. When they're soft, add the chipotle peppers and their sauce. Stir until heated through, then add to the lentils and rice and stir.  Then add the parsley. Top with the salsa (ie, the tomato cinnamon thingy).

Oh, and the chorizo! As mentioned, I added it the next day. Basically, I fried it, breaking it up, and then added the cold rice-lentils concoction to the pan. I guess you could either fry the chorizo earlier. Perhaps with the onions, garlic, and peppers. But the basic idea is, you mix everything together =-)

Here's the deal though. The recipe is flavorful, but not so well balanced. The chipotle peppers and chorizo dominate. The tomato-cinnamon was a nice touch flavor wise, but it sort of added to the melange of adobo and chorizo in a not especially inspired way. I'm not entirely sure what to do about that. I would prefer, actually, to go with Italian sausages, as per Jamie Oliver's recipe, but I just didn't have any. For the chorizo variant, I might try to improvise on the original Peruvian recipe idea, which involves frying all this up at the end. My plan is to try, perhaps for lunch tomorrow, frying up a little more chorizo, combining it in a bowl with some of the lentil-rice concoction (because I still have tons of it left), and then, get this - combining it with some egg and frying that. I think the egg might mellow out the other flavors some.

The bigger problem, for me, is that it was overly dry. The salsa added some liquid, but not nearly enough (perhaps because I cooked it too long). I think ideally you'd really get some kind of good gravy like thing going for this.

I dunno. It's a work in progress. But the dinner guests I fed it to raved about it, and I did find it quite tasty, albeit somewhat monotone as a main dish, so I wanna stick with the idea and see what I can do with it.


*I would consider adding some butter to the rice when it's done cooking, and letting it sit for a minute, then adding it to the lentils. Living in Turkey has converted me to well buttered rice. 

Fou lard (bacon scarf)

http://www.natalieluder.ch/shop.htm

I have to admit, I find it strangely beautiful. I kind of want one.

(The above image is from here, and I also need to give credit to my friend Alaska Jane for alerting me to it in the first place)

Expat pepperoni pizza

It's funny; you miss different kinds of pork at different times, living in Turkey. Sometimes I feel like I would would sell my first-born child for some good chorizo, other times I heart for a succulent pork tenderloin. Lately, I've been jonesing hard for pepperoni pizza. You can get something that is called pepperoni pizza here, but I quickly realized that it was actually pepperoni flavored sucuk, ie, a fraud. When my dad was visiting recently, I asked him to bring me some pepperoni and he obliged with a stick of Boar's Head. My oven is not trustworthy enough to make a pizza from scratch, but I figured it could probably handle a doctored up frozen pizza. And today I decided to take the plunge.

The bodega by my place didn't have a plain cheese pizza, so I got their fancy Italian style pepperoni. Side note: isn't it actual trick that frozen pizza boxes play on you? The picture on the outside looks like this:

A trained eye will immediately realize that something is not quite right about this pepperoni.

But what is inside the box invariably looks like this:

It actually looks better with the plastic wrap on, is the sad thing.

I picked off the sucuk, which looked crappy, and the olives and mushrooms (didn't want em anyways), so I was left with the least appealing part of any frozen pizza; the crust, sauce, and cheese. At this point I realized, again, how dumb it is t buy frozen pizza. All you really want is the crust, and it will invariably be awful, as will the sauce, probably sickly sweet, and vastly inferior to a can of tomato paste with your own herbs mixed in. Oh well.

I grabbed a hunk of my cheddar cheese reserves from the freezer, carved it up, and sprinkled it over the top, followed by a chopped onion, a hefty sprinkle of what smells to me like oregano but could be thyme, and, of course, the pepperoni. One of the nice things about DIY pizza is that you can finally have as much pepperoni as you've been wanting all along. They were ready to hit the oven:





I then got caught up in a New Yorker article about Justin Bieber's manager (I don't have full blown Bieber fever; more like a touch of a flush? He's a guilty pleasure. Shut up.) and semi-forgot about what was in the oven. Ooops. Luckily I like my pizza a little burnt-y. Voila, le dinner!

The wine was on sale at Real recently. It's decent, but not great. Especially on the second day.

Not as good as the real thing, but not too bad either. I think regular, crappy pre-sliced pepperoni might actually be more like what I'm craving. But this was close enough to tide me over for the next two weeks, when I'm visiting Amereeka.