Bacon-wrapped Asparagus

We got two bunches of fresh asparagus in our SLO Veg box this week. Yum and thank you! Just for good measure, I am taking some bacon-wrapped asparagus along to the Memorial Day barbecue, just to make sure we all get enough bacon and vegetables today. Wouldn't want to slack on the vegies, and bacon! 

These just get a drizzle of olive oil and coarse salt, then go onto a flat grill pan with the little holes in it and cook for about 20 minutes on the barbecue. I hope its a hit!

Paleo Apple Bacon Sliders

It's 7 am and its my day off and I'm hungry. Where is the darn room service when you need it? 

You know what sounds good right now? Grilled cheese on sourdough. With bacon. And cheddar cheese. And an apple sliced up in between it all.

So I drag myself out of a warm bed and creak down the stairs in search of sustenance. I am thinking "coffee". But first I pull out a few sheets of paper towel and lay that on a dinner plate, then top it with the last four slices of bacon and pop it into the microwave for 4 minutes. Now I turn to the bread basket and grab that loaf of sliced sourdough that has been languishing there for over a week. 

What? No! Darn, its all moldy! Into the dumpster it goes. Well, I still have my apples, those ones from SLO Veg. I think they are Fugi's. I grab the two largest ones...yuck.  One is beginning to rot in the center, but the other one is okay. I need to use up the rest of them, pronto!

We only get our basket delivered biweekly now and this is the tail end of the last delivery. Fresh stuff is coming this week. 

I slice the apple thinly into 5 rounds and cut out the tiny core. Then I sprinkle on a handful of grated cheddar cheese. The bacon is ready, so I cut 3 pieces in half, laying each piece on top of the cheese. I have 1-1/2 pieces of bacon leftover, so I eat them! Yum! 

The plate goes into the microwave for one minute to melt the cheese. Then I think, no on the coffee, I will heat up some of that spiced apple cider. Breakfast complete! Back to bed with a tray of gooey apple bacon sliders. I will let Lee have 3 since I ate the extra bacon.♥

Potluck Broccoli Salad

Broccoli salad. For a few years, this was my very favorite potluck dish. Every potluck seemed to have one of these, and there was never enough. Sometimes it has raisins, sometimes dried cranberries, sometimes crushed ramen noodles with the Oriental seasoning packet mixed into the dressing. Usually it has a sweet mayonnaise vinegar dressing, or sometimes a vinegar-oil oriental one. One thing all the versions have to have is bacon! Today, I knew it would be the perfect accompaniment to the roasted lemon-pepper chicken I was making for our Sunday family dinner.

Both my daughters commented that they had not had the broccoli salad for a long time. Probably because they are about 10 years out of the sports circuit and haven't had any team potlucks to attend. I learned how to make this salad from a recipe in my girls' softball recipe book they had compiled one year for a fundraiser. 

We received the nicest, crisp green broccoli in our SLO Veg box this week that would be fabulous for this salad. The heads were still young, not over-bloomed, and so very tender for the light blanching required here. I have made this salad before with completely raw broccoli, but I think I prefer the three-minute blanching which brings out more flavor and allows the dressing to be absorbed better into the vegetables.

Broccoli is diced, then blanced in boiling water for 3 minutes. Plunge immediately into chilled water.

The salad ingredients include broccoli, raisins or dried cranberries, red onions and green onions, sunflower seeds and bacon. I like to use roasted, salted sunflower seeds, the kind you snack on, in this salad simply for the salt and the crunch. The seeds and the bacon give a perfect amount of saltiness and savoryness to balance out the sweet dressing and make this dish a potluck favorite. It's always the first dish to go!

Onions and raisins are added into the broccoli, then the salad is dressed about 2 hours before serving. Just before serving, toss in the sunflower seeds and crumbled bacon and watch it all disappear.

I started out with a simple dressing of 1 cup mayonnaise, 1/3 cup granulated sugar and 3 tablespoons of white vinegar. Then I had to mess with it some. I rhought it was too sweet, so I added 1 couple of tablespoons of sour cream and a splash of lemon juice. I also had some poppy seeds, and since this is pretty much the base for a poppy seed dressing, I added a couple of teaspoons full of those. I had some raisins on hand, the kind that come in a little snack box. Three of those boxes proved to be the perfect amount, about 1 cup. I cooked four slices of bacon on paper towels in the microwave and then hid them in the frig where Taylor and Lee wouldn't find them. I wanted to make sure I had them two hours later to crumble into the salad, not provide them with a pre-dinner snack! The bacon and sunflower seeds are mixed into the salad just before serving.

I served dinner with roasted lemon-rosemary chicken breasts that were so fantastic. I just plucked two big bunches of rosemary from my outdoor plant and rinsed it off, then laid in in the roasting pan. I quartered an onion and two lemons, squeezing the juice over the chicken. I had 6 bone-in chicken breasts for 8 people. Then I drizzled on some olive oil, seasoned it with coarse salt and fresh ground pepper and let the chicken roast in a 350 oven for an hour and 15 minutes. Each breast was really large, so I halved them and served them on a platter. It was all so fragrant that I forgot all about taking a picture. But everyone ate it up!

*********************

BROCCOLI SALAD

Dressing:
1 C mayonnaise
1/3 C granulated sugar
3 Tbs white vinegar
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/4 C sour cream
2 Tbs poppy seeds

5 C fresh broccoli, blanched for 3 minutes
1 C red onion, diced
3 green onions, diced
1 C raisins or dried cranberries
1 C sunflower seeds, roasted and salted
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled



Here are two variations on Broccoli Salad recipes: Trisha Yearwood has a recipe on her site, and there is another one of SLO Veg. Sometimes you just have to search for one that suits your tastebuds and calls for ingredients you have in your pantry.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/trisha-yearwood/broccoli-salad-recipe/index.html

http://www.sloveg.com/printRecipe.cfm?recipe_id=155
 

I

Bean n Bacon Soup

We had a late lunch in town today, so I wasn't even sure if I wanted to make dinner tonight. 

I had some chicken thighs defrosted already, but I just didn't feel like preparing a whole meal now. I really wanted something simple, lighter and comforting...soup!

At first I thought of making corn chowder using the few ears of corn leftover from our 4th of July barbecue. Then, upon inspecting the contents of the frig, I spied the baked beans. I knew I had two or three strips of bacon left so I thought "bean and bacon soup!" I would add corn to that. Brilliant. 

So I chopped up a bit of onion, about a quarter cup, and sauteed it with the diced bacon in a stockpot. I added a quarter cube of butter, Paula Deen-style. Then I made a roux by adding a small scoop of flour to the pot, along with about a cup of water and a teaspoon of organic chicken broth powder in lieu of broth. When that thickened, I added a little more water, then stirred in the leftover beans, which amounted to about two cups worth, and about a cup of corn that I had cut off the cob.

I tasted the soup and decided it needed some punch, so I added a splash each of Worchestershire sauce and white vinegar vinegar and a generous dollop of ketchup. Still not completely satisfied, I opened a 15 oz. can of diced tomatoes and poured it in. Garlic salt, pepper and oregano flakes finished off the seasoning and the soup was ready. It turned out to be pretty tasty!