Aspara-Bacon

What makes everything in life better? Bacon. Unless you're vegetarian...then I guess bacon wouldn't help you out much unless you like the smell of bacon and can find you a bacon candle. Ooh! Do they make those. I have to go check.

Look what I found! Bacon Candles!

(source)

There you go. Father's day? This may be the only candle a man might possibly be excited about. Or it'd tick him off because it's not real bacon.

But let's get back to the post.

Asparagus.

Some like it. Some do not. I'm a recent convert to asparagus. It's so yummy pan roasted in garlic butter. Mmmmm. But you know what would make it even better? Bacon.

The Original Pins:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/bacon-wrapped-asparagus#.UA91Nug4OjY.pinterest

http://www.justapinch.com/recipes/side/vegetable/bacon-wrapped-asparagus-3.html

Now that looks yummy! Alisa and Danielle found these two pins and realized the genius of them. Bacon and Asparagus. Yes! Well...maybe no?

The Pinstrosities:

I think one of the keys to this is the bacon to asparagus ratio. Now I know for most of, when it comes to bacon, is this is the ratio we want:

Sadly, this ratio doesn't work great when it comes to bacon wrapped asparagus.If you scroll up and look at the pictures from the original pins, you'll see that they either, A. Wrapped one fat piece of bacon around multiple asparagus spears, or, B. wrapped a skimpy piece of bacon around one spear of asparagus.

Another thing that might help here is the cooking time. Obviously you want to cook your bacon until it is done, but at the same time you don't want to cook the asparagus until it's ready to fall apart. The more fresh your asparagus is, and the less dried out, the better this will work also; you won't have as shriveled up of spears after they are cooked.

Need more bacon ideas? Want to see more bacon fails? Check out our other bacon posts!

The Baconator!!

Every once in a while we come a reader who is bound and determined to make a pin work despite all the odds being against them. 

Today is one of those days. 

Kathy sent us this recipe for some awesome bacon chicken combo that didn't have near enough info to be feasible, with a  little stick-to-it-ive-ness  and a turkey baster there is nothing this woman can't do!

Check it out!

The Original

http://diaryofarecipeaddict.blogspot.com/2011/07/sweet-spicy-bacon-chicken.html

Chicken+Bacon...does life get any better? I submit that it does not. Anyone know who that is from?!

Here is Kathy's version, and how she got here:

The Pinstrosity

"I love to try new Pinterest recipes and was truly excited to try the recipe for Sweet & Spicy Bacon Chicken The picture looked amazing and who doesn't love bacon?!

Well, first of all, there were no measurements included in this recipe, just a list of ingredients, not specifying how much of each. But, no problem, after reading follow-up comments, I seasoned it according to my family's taste. I also pounded the chicken pieces first, because the chicken pieces were too thick to cook evenly (another tip I picked up from follow-up comments, as recipe did not include this procedure). I planned on baking this, as specified in the posted recipe (bake at 400 deg. F), although the blogger did mention that she prefers to grill it. After prepping as specified, I put it in the oven and was anxious to see the results.  About 10 min. before the chicken was supposed to be done, I checked on it (mainly to see if bacon was crisping). The[picture attached] will show you what I saw. All the chicken pieces were sitting in a huge puddle of grease (from both the bacon & chicken combined). I knew the bacon would never crisp sitting in a pool of grease like that and I didn't want the chicken to soak up all that grease either; so I used a turkey baster and bowl to remove the majority of the grease from the pan.  Three bowls later, the pan was mostly dry and ready to return to oven. I cooked it for an additional 10 min (which would have been 40 min. in total) but bacon was still not crisp enough. Since I didn't want the chicken to dry out like a hockey puck, I turned on the broiler for a few minutes and bacon finally crisped up the way it should. After transferring the chicken to a clean serving platter, the final result did closely resemble what the finished dish was supposed to look like.

Summary:  The [original picture], shows this recipe being baked on a cookie sheet. With that much grease accumulating during the cooking process, that would have been an oven-cleaning nightmare. The blogger said that she cooks this recipe on the grill. I can only imagine how many flame flare-ups that would cause with all the dripping grease. I'm certain we would have had a visit from the local fire department if we even attempted to grill this. After all is said and done, I will admit the flavor was not bad (but everything tastes better with bacon). I may even make it again; but I will retype the recipe to include "de-greasing" the pan during the cooking process."

I give major props to Kathy for fixing the recipe to her liking, and NOT having the fire department called! Not that the original had this problem, but at my house grease plus heat usually equals an emergency of some sort.

There is definitely something to be said for a woman on a mission, and it doesn't hurt that this mission included bacon at the end. This wasn't so much a case of a recipe being a Pinstrosity as it was a recipe that had a little tweak and turned out great. This just goes to show that a little ingenuity and some elbow grease (literally) can go a long way!

Well done Kathy! It looks delicious! My hubby and I will probably try this one out this week!

Does anyone have any bacon+chicken recipes that will rock our socks?! Let us know! we love your feedback!!

Happy Wednesday Pinstrosipeeps!

Throwback Thursday - Achy Breaky Broken Bakey

We have made it to Thursday everybody! Hang in there another day and it's the start to the weekend!! Woohoo!

 

For today's Throwback Thursday we have one of our very first posts from when Pinstrosity was just a 8 lb. 9 oz. baby blog, the original ran March of 2012 and this one is a good one! check it out!

 

 Bacon Hearts

   Em here, so Melinda sent us in one of her Pinstrosities and can I say I am really disappointed that this one didn't work out, bacon in the shape of a heart! How cute would that be for a loved one for breakfast in bed (or for yourself for that matter, you need some bacon lovin' too ;) )?! This looked so easy to do also! Well after what we hear from Melinda, and more importantly what I can show you, it's all to good to be true...

The Original Pin

Before...

http://thepapermama.blogspot.com/2011/02/wordlessish-wednesday-bacon-of-hearts.html

 

...during...

...and after!

 

The Pinstrosity

    Two words, no bueno. As Melinda explained, "I tried to make these for my daughter's birthday sleepover...  I followed the directions by cutting them in half and shaping them into heart shapes and throwing them in the oven.  When it was time to take them out they were small piles of grease that sadly most of them didn't resemble hearts at all. Luckily my husband saved the day and cooked the girls bacon the old-fashioned way - which turned out tasty despite not being as cute." After looking over the recipe on the original blog, the only thing I can think of is maybe Melinda used a different kind of bacon than the original pin. A possible solution for this might be using thick bacon, which tends to still have some substance after being cooked, and after putting them into the heart shapes, stick toothpicks in each end, so the bacon stays in place.

Anyone else do fun shapes with bacon that we should know about?!! Share with us your delicious bacon artistry wisdom!

 Thanks for sharing Melinda!



Achy Breaky Broken Bakey

 Bacon Hearts

   Em here, so Melinda sent us in one of her Pinstrosities and can I say I am really disappointed that this one didn't work out, bacon in the shape of a heart! How cute would that be for a loved one for breakfast in bed (or for yourself for that matter, you need some bacon lovin' too ;) )?! This looked so easy to do also! Well after what we hear from Melinda, and more importantly what I can show you, it's all to good to be true...

The Original Pin

http://thepapermama.blogspot.com/2011/02/wordlessish-wednesday-bacon-of-hearts.html

Before...

during...

and after.

The Pinstrosity

    Two words, no bueno. As Melinda explained, "I tried to make these for my daughter's birthday sleepover...  I followed the directions by cutting them in half and shaping them into heart shapes and throwing them in the oven.  When it was time to take them out they were small piles of grease that sadly most of them didn't resemble hearts at all. Luckily my husband saved the day and cooked the girls bacon the old-fashioned way - which turned out tasty despite not being as cute." After looking over the recipe on the original blog, the only thing I can think of is maybe Melinda used a different kind of bacon than the original pin. A possible solution for this might be using thick bacon, which tends to still have some substance after being cooked, and after putting them into the heart shapes, stick toothpicks in each end, so the bacon stays in place. Seeing as I have no bacon in my house at the moment (bummer eh?) I can't test this one, but I will for sure be ALL over this one this weekend, thanks for sharing Melinda!

                                           -Emilee

Bacon Cheese Dogs

With Independence Day Barbecues just a week away, I thought it was high time to pull this one out of the submission archives and get it up on the blog. Want to take your barbecue to the next level? Check this one out:

The Original Pin

http://www.savoryreviews.com/2009/08/18/cheese-stuffed-bacon-wrapped-hot-dogs/

That's a hot dog, with swiss cheese in the center, and thick sliced bacon wrapped around it. Ooh-de-lolly! The only way that could be more American was if you stuffed American cheese in the middle, but I personally love Swiss, so I'd leave it as is.

Jennifer said, "This weekend while camping, my mother was soooo excited to try 'this recipe from Pinterest.' My mother isn't always one for following the directions (or even reading them all the way), so we didn't have any instructions or photos to follow, just her memory of the pin. We first tried grilling them, but the drippings from the bacon caused the grill to flame up. So then we moved to a griddle. The end result wasn't pretty!"

The Pinstrosity

"Once I returned home from the camping trip, I looked up Mom's original pin and found a *few* minor details we failed to follow:"

• The original pinner cut a pocket for the cheese. Mom sliced the hot dog from end to end, so the cheese oozed out.
• Mom used approximately 3 times the amount of cheese as the original pinner. Maybe even 4...
• Our bacon did not entirely cover the hot dog, leaving gaps for the cheese to ooze out. We used 2 pieces, but needed at least 3 to cover our Costco dogs.
• We didn't have toothpicks to secure the ends of the bacon. We did find some skewers and used those once we realized the bacon was flopping all over the grill and not sticking to the hot dog.

"Despite our less than stellar results, the hot dogs were absolutely delicious. Next time we will actually follow (ahem, READ) the directions (or in this case LOOK at and follow the step-by-step photos)."

When we were kids my mom would cut a slit in the hot dogs, insert a small stick of cheddar cheese (or whatever cheese was on hand), and broil it until it was crispy and the cheese was gooey. That was a favorite treat. Adding bacon to the mix just sounds amazing. It's like the grown up version of a favorite childhood snack! I'm definitely giving this one a go!

Fall Feast Food Pins Tested

Cameron and I usually do a dinner for the Autumnal Equinox each year, but we missed it this year as I was at a wedding and he was out lizard hunting (yes, you read that right...life of a zoology major). I didn't think it'd matter much, but I kinda missed putting together a fun and fancy meal (well...fancy for us...). I decided yesterday that I'd put together a Fall Feast to make up for missing the Equinox dinner, so I pulled up my Pinterest boards devoted to food, tried to find ones I already had the ingredients on hand for, made a plan and got testing these tasty looking food pins. As I was cooking though, I realized I was making way more food than Cameron and I could eat so we called Em and Chip to come over and we feasted together on the Pinterest found meal. I pulled a few recipes from our own files, but I tried many new ones this time. I figured I'd share how they turned out, what worked, what didn't, and what I would do (and did do) differently.

So there's the set up. I love my dishes, they are just so happy looking.

Alrighty, dish #1.

The Original Pin
Tomato Bisque
 This didn't actually have a picture of this soup...but here's the link:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/tomato-bisque-recipe/index.html

The Outcome

Mine came out a little more yellowy orange instead of orangey red...but the tomatoes I canned last year weren't very red...so I'm attributing it to that. I was excited to get a chance to use my canned tomatoes. Last year was my first year canning, so I'm still a little excited to be using these tomatoes. Anyway...this tasted fantastic. I loved it. Cameron's not huge with tomato soups, but he said this one isn't bad (here's the secret...there's bacon in it and the veggies are sauteed in bacon fat for 8 minutes...man pleasing right there).

I did have to tweak this one due to the ingredients I had on hand (I don't live where just running to the store is an option), but I think it came out decently similar to what it would have had I had all the ingredients. First, I didn't have carrots...so no carrots in this soup. Second...I just had normal onions on hand...no spanish onions. Third, my herbs were dried, not fresh...so I just sprinkled them in and left them in (minus the bay leaf, I took that out). Fourth, I had half and half in the fridge, not heavy cream. So I know those made some difference, but I don't think they completely altered how this turned out. I would definitely like to try it 100% true to the recipe, but even with these tweaks, this turned out delicious and was easy to make. My biggest disappointment? The bacon crisps I had ready for the end didn't float on top of the soup, they sunk to the bottom...so they just ended up being a part of the soup and not a garnish...but that's not really anything to complain about.


The Original Pin
Stuffed Roast Turkey Breast

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/stuffed_roast_turkey_breast/

Let me tell you, this was delicious. I did tweak it, but it was still delicious. Was mine anywhere near as pretty as that. Bahahahahaha, no.

The Outcome:

It's a good thing food doesn't have to be beautiful to taste good.  Don't get scared off by that picture though, it was delicious. And again...it has bacon in it and the last step before baking this is to glaze it with bacon grease. Another man pleaser (then men did love it, btw).

I actually followed the directions decently here, just adding my own twist at the beginning. The recipe doesn't call for the turkey to be marinated, but I did it anyway. I tenderized the turkey breasts, then added them to a bowl with some olive oil, coriander (whole and ground/roasted), garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and sage and let it marinate for 1 1/2 hours. For the filling, the only deviations I did was using plain boring canned mushrooms rather than porcini mushrooms, I didn't have shallots so I used onion, and the cranberries were omitted entirely. Other than that I followed the recipe and directions to the best of my ability. This turned out so incredibly tasty and moist. We could cut it with our forks it was so tender. This is a huge win in my books, I'll definitely be making this again.


Now for another side dish...
The Original Pin
Smoky and Cheesy Buttermilk Baked Mashed Potatoes

I raided Cameron's cooking boards for this one actually. Good choice hunny!

The Outcome

Poor cam was late getting home and he was bringing the taters, so we sped through making this as much as we could...so we cut out the baking part. But it still tasted great. Our main substitution: we didn't have buttermilk so I used half and half. I know...it would have tasted better with buttermilk, but it wasn't bad at all with the half and half. I loved how creamy these potatoes were with the cream cheese in them. MMMmmmm. Then we did add a small dribble of liquid smoke to get a more smoky flavor. Easy and yummy!

And what is a good meal without some sort of bread?!

Oatmeal Dinner Rolls
http://mowercooking.blogspot.com/2011/02/oatmeal-dinner-rolls.html

I've made these quite a few times actually, and they turn out good every time. Well...the didn't turn out the one time my house was too cold for the dough to rise...but every other time they turned out great. They are so quick and easy (2 1/2 hrs from start, through rising time, to finished and in your belly), and they taste great. Don't get scared off by the fact that you make oatmeal, then turn it into rolls. These are great, give them a try.

I have no idea what happened to that roll on the left...it looks like a hand with a finger pointing at me or something. Tasted good though. 

What to drink?
 Water is always a staple...but I wanted a fun drink too,
 so I found a recipe on my boards for Prickly Pear Juice. I ended up just using the recipe as a basis though and made my own deal instead. I ended up with a Pin Spin, making Prickly Pear Raspberry Lemonade instead.

Like our fancy glasses? Got them at the Dollar Tree for a buck. Love great deals like that, and they class up a meal so fast when we want to "fancy". 

 And then it was dessert time...

The Original Pin

http://mowercooking.blogspot.com/2010/09/double-decker-pumpkin-pie-autumnal.html

I'd actually made this pie twice before. Once was an overwhelming success...the other time, not so good.
I found out for this recipe, using real pumpkin is key. The first time I made this I bought a pumpkin, cooked it, and used the pumpkin goop to make the pie. It was sooo tasty. The second time I bought canned pumpkin pie filling...not so tasty. In fact, it went uneaten for the most part and I chucked the remains today. Lesson learned...use real pumpkin. It's so worth it!

 This time...the taste was great, but I tried making individual servings rather than a whole pie and that didn't go quite like I thought it would.

The Pinstrosity

These tasted great (again, not pretty, but ignore that), but they weren't quite firm enough and were hard to eat out of the paper cups. I should have just left it as a pie. Oh well. Live and Learn.

 And then finally...
The Original Pin

http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2010/08/creamy-lemon-crumb-squares.html

I've had these pinned for forever. Cameron loves lemon bars, so I thought I'd try these out and see what he thought. They were scrumptious, but boy were they crumbly! 

The Pinstrosity

I mixed the crust/topping up and it just seemed too dry, so I added 2 additional tablespoons of butter. It still seemed dry, but I didn't want to add too much...for all I knew maybe it was supposed to be really dry. I'd never made these before, so I had no clue what I was looking for. I mixed the "filling" and poured it in, then sprinkled on the topping and popped it in the oven. When the timer yelled at me (mine is an excruciating whine...it was definitely designed so that it could not be ignored) I opened the oven and the crust didn't look like it'd changed at all, so I left it in longer. 10 min later there was still no change, but I didn't want to overdo anything so I pulled them out. They were super tasty, but they were so incredibly crumbly. I think next time I'll keep adding butter until the crust/topping consistency is more tacky and less dry. But they were scrumptious and Cameron heartily approved of them.

So there's a few yummy pins all tested for you guys. I'd make any of them again, they were fantastic and made for a fun meal. Thanks for sharing it with us Em and Chip!

Bacon Pineapple Appetizer

Reader Submission for the Pinstrosiversary Challenge:

I usually wouldn’t send in this pin because it worked exactly like it should have. But in the spirit of the Pinstrosiversary and good will towards all of your readers who need to experience the awesomeness, here it is.

http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/appetizers-and-snacks/bacon-wrapped-pineapple-bites/

I was looking for football appetizers and found this. I only had pineapple tidbits so I wrapped a 3^rd of a piece of bacon around two tidbits. Didn’t have tooth picks but the bacon fully wrapped around the tidbits so it wasn’t necessary. They were tasty.

A Week of Pinterest Meals

Reader Submission for the Pinstrosiversary Challenge:

Pinterest Week

Who has a Pinterest account?  I got one probably a little under a year ago, and go through spurts of activity on it.  However, I find that I have a hard time integrating meals, crafts, etc into my daily life.  So Jeff and I set last week as our Pinterest week - all of our meals were Pinterest recipes.  I'm pretty proud of how all of them turned out, so here's our week in review.

SUNDAY

On Sunday we decided on Spaghetti Loaf.

The recipe was simple enough - Make spaghetti, add sauce, and then wrap it all up into a loaf of bread.  Here's our try:

Nailed it!!!  The recipe called for you to put egg whites an the top, but we don't own a pastry brush thing, so I just poured it on the top before I put on the garlic and Italian seasoning, which is why the top looks a bit wonky.  But overall it was REALLY good - especially the top.  We found it was a bit dry and needed more sauce once it was cut, but overall it is definitely something we'll make again.  Because at it's root, it's really just spaghetti and breadsticks, but wrapped together.  It's a cheap meal that's fancier than plain spaghetti.

MONDAY

Our plan for Monday was Bacon Avocado Grilled Cheese sandwiches.

However, if you've read this post, you'll know we ended up with this:

It was REALLY good.


TUESDAY

Bacon Mac and Cheese.  The Pin:

Alright, so this recipe called for 8 oz of uncooked macaroni, which is only like, 1 cup.  Neither Jeff nor I thought this was going to be enough, so we TRIPLED the recipe!!!  That was maybe not the very best thing we could have done, but it actually ended up being ok.  Instead of an 8x8 pan, we had a 9x13 pan full of the stuff.  We ate about half of it for dinner, then again for lunch the next day.  Here's ours:

The ONLY thing I would do differently if we made this again was that I would buy shredded cheese.  I'm not entirely sure what happened, but we didn't have enough shredded cheese, so I was shredding a TON of it in a frenzy before the other things boiled.  Not worth it.  Also, it needed more bacon... but I feel like that goes without saying.


WEDNESDAY

Wednesday we went for the big money - Chicken Pot Pie!!!  Here's the pin picture:

The only time I've ever made chicken pot pie I think was in a college cooking class my first semester... Wait.... that actually might have been chicken noodle soup.  In that case, I've never made chicken pot pie.  However, being somewhat of a connoisseur of pie (but mostly its crust), I decided to give it a go.  Here's how ours turned out:

We were in somewhat of a hurry (so we could go back to Urgent Care to get Jeff's hand checked out), so we cut into it while it was still REALLY hot, which made the insides pretty slippery.  I don't know if you can tell, but the crust on my plate is pretty much all empty, and the filling is all next to it.  We also don't own a pie server spatula, but that was only part of the problem. )  However, once it cooled down it got better.  I also made the crust wrong (here's to reading the directions BEFORE just dumping all of the ingredients into a big bowl... embarrassing, especially after the connoisseur comment), but it turned out alright.  Again, both of us had this for lunch again the next day, and it was just as good the second time as it was the first.  It was actually really easy to make the filling, and then it only needed to be in the oven for a short time, so this is definitely a recipe I'll use again.

THURSDAY

We had so much food in our refrigerator by Thursday that there was no more room left - so we had leftovers!!!  It was all so good... again.

FRIDAY

So, Friday night is Date night, but we still are too poor to go out to eat, so we try and have something cool for dinner.  95% of the time it's pizza in some form (regular pan pizza, pizza rolls, calzones, stuffed crust, etc), but this week we switched it up; Orange Chicken!!  Here's the pin:

I have never ever fried chicken before, but I could not believe how easy it was!!  The pin was for a crock pot recipe that you make your own Orange sauce and let it cook for 7 hours.  Well, we don't have a crock pot, or 7 hours to let things cook, so we just pulled out our Panda Express Orange Chicken sauce and we were good to go.  This meal seriously took 15 minutes, and it was AWESOME.

SATURDAY

I had to shoot a wedding on Saturday, so Jeff and I didn't get to eat dinner together.  However, we had one and a half browning avocados in the refrigerator, so for lunch we decided to try our Monday disaster:

These little babies were worth the wait.  If you ever want to have the best lunch ever, have a Bacon Guacamole Grilled Cheese Sandwich.  A - freakin - mazing.

So there you have it good people.  A week solid of Pinterest recipes!!!  We'll probably keep doing this (making Pinterest meals I mean - there are just so many great ideas and recipes and they all look SO GOOD!!!)  However, I don't know if I'll blog about it - I don't really care for taking pictures of my food before I eat it.  It's a lot of work, and a lot of pressure.