Birthday Bacon

Last year, I inadvertently started a little tradition of celebrating B's birthday with bacon. Not just regular bacon though - bacon used in unexpected ways.

Part of B's birthday present last year was a Frozen Peanut Butter Pie with Candied Bacon. It was my first really extravagant cooking endeavor and I'm still a little surprised I pulled it off.

It was crazy good, but a lot of work! Candying bacon is serious business! I suffered a really horrible burn from the melted sugar that took like a month to heal.

This year, I knew I didn't want to do anything quite so involved (or dangerous!). I also knew that time would be short this weekend, so I wanted to do breakfast on Saturday morning and then be done with it. Enter the Bacon Cinnamon Roll.

I started with a 8 slices of platter bacon and a tube of store-bought cinnamon rolls (although can you imagine how great these would be with your mom's homemade cinnamon roll recipe!? Whoah).

I unrolled each cinnamon roll (I had to use a knife to separate the dough, but it wasn't difficult) and placed a piece of bacon on top of each strip of dough.

My bacon was actually both too long and too wide for the dough that I bought, so I sliced a bit off each end and then sliced the bacon lengthwise so it wasn't so wide.

 Then I just rerolled each cinnamon roll with the bacon inside,

And placed them in a greased baking dish.

I cooked them according to the package instructions (375 degrees for about 15 minutes):

And then frosted them using the frosting that came with the package.

Hold on to your hats, friends. These things are like crack. Salty and sweet and cinnamon-y and bacon-y. Your house will smell amazing. You will eat half of them and get sick to your stomach.

I actually only had one. B had three. We're taking the rest to my father-in-law.

I have a feeling these will be making a reappearance on Christmas morning.

Or maybe tomorrow morning...

Pizza Thursday!

Today is B's birthday!

[Source]

Happy birthday, honey!

I have lots of fun things planned for this weekened (I love birthdays!), but let's back up to last night.

Pizza Thursday!

Because we are going out to a fancy dinner tonight, I moved Pizza Friday to Thursday and whipped up a pie that has been hanging out in my bookmarked recipes for a few months now - Spinach, Bacon, and Feta!

You are supposed to make this with a sun-dried tomato pesto, but we just used regular old basil pesto and it was great. I started by mixing up a batch of whole-wheat thin crust pizza dough while B made pizza sauce (this is a really great recipe - you will never buy pizza sauce again!). I must have been distracted while measuring the flour because the dough was as sticky as bubblegum at first! If this happens to you, just add more flour one tablespoon at a time until you get a workable consistency.

Pizza before hitting the pizza stone:

Pizza after baking for 5 minutes, then topped with crumbled bacon and feta and then baked for another 3 minutes:

We made a simple salad and devoured an entire pie. Fortunately, we made two so I have leftovers in my lunchbox for this afternoon!

After dinner, I made B put a hot compress on his face because he had a stye that looked like it was getting infected...

TMI? I wasn't planning to tell this story, but then I took this picture and it was too funny to just leave on my camera:

He was not a happy camper.

But this morning he was much more pleasant when he got to take his coffee to work in his brand-new San Jose Earthquakes travel mug!

I am the best wife ever. :)

Hope you all have stellar weekends planned! I'll be back on Sunday with an update on all our birthday festivities!

Pizza Friday

You guys know how much we love pizza over here! After a 4-mile run with the hubs, I whipped up a batch of my whole wheat thin crust pizza dough and went to town!

 
But first, run stats:

• Total Mileage: 4mi
• Total Time: 35:45min
• Average Pace: 8:55min/mi

Keeping my fingers crossed for a smooth and drama-free 9-miler tomorrow morning!

On the the pizza! I was originally planning to make Jenna's zucchini pizza. which promises to rock your face, but forgot to buy ricotta at the grocery store this weekend. I have a ton of zucchinis though, so I did a quick switch and went with an old favorite from Smitten Kitchen, a Lemony Zucchini Goat Cheese Pizza.

The other pizza was a Corn, Bacon, Tomato and Basil pizza from Eggs on Sunday.

Sadly, in my haste to get this pizza in the oven (and, consequently, in my mouth) I forgot the tomatoes that I had been saving all week from our CSA box for this very pizza! I didn't even realize it until we had eaten half of it! It was delicious without them, but I'll be sure to include them next time!

Are you all reading Eggs on Sunday? If not, you should be. Amy really knows her stuff and posts some incredible recipes (and gorgeous photos!). I especially love her Ingredient Inspirations page, where you can browse recipes based on ingredient. Always helpful when I buy avocados and want to make something more creative than guacamole!

Note: I'm assuming that you already read Smitten Kitchen because, well, Deb is basically the Queen of the Foodblogging World. And her kid is so cute, I could totally eat him.

Anyway, pizza. I decided to do these in the oven since it's not a billion degrees today and I didn't feel like working super hard to get organized like I usually do when we grill (this might account for the forgotten tomatoes...). I assembled both pizzas on parchment paper while the oven heated to 500, then just slid them onto the pizza stone, parchment paper and all. The parchment paper keeps the dough from sticking to the stone and the dough pulls away from the paper as it cooks. Genius!

I'm considering an official Pizza Friday tradition around here. We used to do Pizza Friday when I was a kid (although it meant takeout!) and it was always something fun to look forward to.

Do you (or your family) have specific dinner theme nights? Mexican Monday? Thai Food Tuesday?

Seventeen Pieces

My running schedule has been totally thrown off this week. I typically do three training runs during the week and then a long run on Saturdays, but between my sore knee and my cold and, I'll admit, sheer laziness, I only did two training runs this week. On Tuesday I did three miles of rolling hills on the treadmill, which totally aggravated my knee. Today I was supposed to do 5-miles, but pooped out around 4. I waited WAY too late to run so it was hot out and I drank more coffee than water this morning and... bleh. 

I have 10-miles on the calendar for Saturday, so let's keep our fingers crossed that it goes well! Fortunately, good eats the rest of the day made up for my lackluster cardio morning!

I was so hot when I came home from my run that I made a big fruity Green Monster and slurped down over half of it before snagging a picture.

(spinach, banana, apple, orange juice)

A week or so ago, my blender tragically bit the dust. I was super bummed because it was a wedding present and I have only used it, like, 5 times. I was griping about having to buy a new blender (and trying to compromise by making smoothies in my food processor, but it's just not the same!) and my uncle offered to give me this sweet Magic Bullet-style system that he found in his office's basement. 

I tried it today for the first time, and it works! My only problem is that my blender was two pieces but this sucker is seventeen pieces and now I need to find homes for all of them!

For lunch I had some leftover Italian Chicken Salad on a bed of spinach leaves. It was delightful. 

Italian Chicken Salad
adapted from The Kitchn

Ingredients

• ~3 cups shredded chicken (I bought a rotisserie chicken and shredded it, but you could oven roast 2 large bone-in breasts if you prefer)
• 1/4 medium red onion, chopped
• 2 medium celery stalks, chopped
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced roasted red pepper (check out Emily's great post on roasting your own)
• 1/2 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 4-5 artichoke hearts, quartered
• 5 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
• handful of Italian parsley, chopped

For the vinaigrette:

• 2T red wine vinegar
• 1t dijon mustard
• 1/2t salt
• freshly ground pepper
• 1t sugar
• 1/4c olive oil

Method

1. Make the vinaigrette. Whisk together the vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, and sugar. Stream in the olive oil, whisking until combined.
2. Combine all salad ingredients in a large bowl. Pour in vinaigrette and toss to coat.

Yum. This is one of my favorite salads to make. Red wine vinaigrette, chickpeas, bacon. Good stuff.

I would venture to say that dinner was equally magical. I made a batch of Ashley's Zesty Italian Veggie Burgers and a summery couscous salad. I topped my burger with mozzarella cheese, basil from our garden, tomato slices, and a little pesto. B was more traditional and had his on a bun.

These burgers were huge! I definitely could have made 8 patties instead of 6. The only changes I made were:

• No carrots. I realized I had eaten them all with hummus earlier in the day. Oops!
• I added an extra zucchini and a stalk of celery
• I used half yellow onion and half red onion
• No pepitas, so I threw in some extra sunflower seeds

I am looking forward to having one of the leftovers on a salad tomorrow already!

Tomorrow is also the second to last day before we leave for Hawaii! I have so much to do, mostly in the form of cleaning. I hate coming home from vacation to a dirty house! I need to finish laundry, run and empty and the dishwasher, and just do some general picking up.

Do you do a major cleaning overhaul before you go out of town or am I the only weirdo?