Ice Cream for Breakfast

This is the story of how I ended up having bacon and ice cream for breakfast on a Sunday morning.

I moved into a new apartment a couple of weeks back, then, after unpacking the kitchen, I discovered (while trying to make a meatloaf) that the oven was broken (toaster oven to the rescue!). It was fixed shortly thereafter (I have a good landlady), and I was ready to delve back into the wonderful world of food. So, I invited some friends over and got ready to make a pointlessly fancy dinner. Since I happen to know that these two particular girls are very fond of their ice cream, I decided to make a fancy blueberry sour cream ice cream that I've seen in the little ice cream maker my little sister gave me for Christmas. So far, so good.

Then my plumbing decides not to function anymore. Ok, no problem, I'll call the plumber. Plumber comes over, can't fix it, guess we're waiting until tomorrow. Dinner party cancelled, evacuation to my friend's house for the night. 8AM rolls around and my landlady informs me that the plumber has decided not to return, so she's finding a new one. 8:30, the new one calls, says they'll be by in an hour. I drag myself out of bed (I am not a morning person) and head home to wait. I'm waiting... waiting... waiting. Sigh. Hunger.

Hrm, well, I had started to make the ice cream last night in my dinner prep process, but it hadn't solidified properly so I just stuck it in the freezer when I left. Let's see what it's like now. Oh hey, it's frozen... Let's let it thaw out just a touch and churn it some to make it a nice, even consistency, and see how that goes. It worked! Victory is mine.

Now that I have the ice cream, I want to eat it, obviously. Still, I'm not traditionally a sweets-in-the-morning kind of a girl, so I'm going to have to balance it out. What is this? Ah ha! Bacon left over from my most recent chowder. Perfect. Into the toaster oven you go to broil.

The end result? Well, it's a little weird and I'd trade it for an extra several hours of sleep in a heartbeat, but it definitely hits the spot.

Hopefully my plumber will get here soon and there will be a happy ending to this, my tale of woe.

Savory Snacks: Meaty Delights

Cookie parties are fantastic, they really are, but you simply must have some form of salt-laden snacky goodness to combat the sugar high.

In an unrelated note, children are not the only people who respond amusingly to sugar.

Back to salt. I'm a huge proponent of having at least one or two warm snacks. This requires a little bit more attention to timing, in that you should be pulling things out of the oven maybe 10 minutes after people start arriving or you should be cooking as the night goes on, depending on your personal style, the location/visibility of your kitchen, and the likelihood that you will forget about something and set your house on fire. Please do not set your house on fire.

I opted for foods that can be assembled at any time during the day and then thrown in the oven right before people arrive, with a bonus of making the house smell pretty fantastic: (1) Andouille sausage wrapped in puff pastry dough and (2) Bacon-wrapped dated stuffed with goat cheese. Men will eat these, women will eat these, even children will gobble them down (though they may make a face when first presented with a date).

Creamy Corn Chowder

I understand that the food-related zeitgeist these days can be boiled down to “bacon makes everything better.” Now, I’m pretty sure there’s a line, and I’m even more sure that said line is definitely on the near side of bacon vodka (sorry, Jacob), but there is one thing that bacon consistently improves: chowder.

Much as with cheese, I grew up in a bacon-free household. Oh sure, we had turkey bacon, but unless I was at my grandparents’ house inhaling 2-4 ethereal BLTs at a time, I never had the real thing. I had the lowest cholesterol on earth… or at least I would have if I didn’t drink milk by the gallon… but I never learned how to properly cook using bacon. This all changed when I started taking cooking classes: bacon happens.

One of the classes focused on stocks/soups/stews/pretty much anything that is primarily composed of broth. Before this class, I thought that putting bacon in chowders was a uniquely southern habit, and maybe it is, but the class was in Boston and they still did it, so I ‘m going to assume that it’s fairly widely accepted these days. That day, we made a fennel corn chowder that, if I loved fennel, would have been perfect. As I do not really favor licorice-y flavors, however, I then went home and messed around with the recipe to correct the potato-corn balance (there was way too much potato) and substitute a big pile of sweet onion for the fennel. Delicious!

I’ve made it for a bunch of people and it rarely has leftovers. In fact, it may be my most commonly requested recipe. I’m going to be nice, even, and give you both the “good” way and the shortcuts. So, here it is and, in case I have somehow been unclear, do not omit the bacon!