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Archive for the ‘Magical Magical Animal’ Category

Sunday, Beginning and End

Sunday morning (late morning, anyway) started with a repeat of my open-faced bagel sandwiches, with shredded cheddar since we were out of slices.  This is ridiculously satisfying…I wish I had a picture of the wonderfully running yolk after you cut into the middle of the bagel! Next time I will get one!

I surprised Matt with a side for our bagel….cinnamon apples! YUM! I’ve never made these before, but I have a bunch of apples left in the fridge and felt like we needed some fruit to kick start our day.  Very very easy to make:

• Chop 2 apples into 16 pieces each (8 wedges, each cut in half)
• Toss in a small pan with about 1/2 cup of apple juice, 1 Tablespoon brown sugar, 1 teaspoon granulated sugar, and cinnamon to taste.
• Boil the hell out of them until they are soft and gooey.  If you like your apples more firm, decrease the apple juice, more soft, increase it!

 

yum yum yum yum yummmm!

We ran errands, splurged on some soft pretzels in the middle of the day, and then came home to make some delicious comfort food for dinner!

Sweet & Spicy Pepper Meatloaf

This recipe was adapted from Alton Brown’s Good Eats Meatloaf, and changed up based on what we had in the apartment.  When my mom makes meatloaf, there is a disgusting layer of grease that builds up around/on top of the meat that then gets drained off…it has always dissuaded me from making meatloaf.  When I came across this recipe, which avoids that problem for the most part, I was thrilled!

What you need:

• 3 oz crackers
• pepper
• cayenne
• chili powder
• dry thyme
• 1/2 an onion
• 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 1.5 lbs ground beef
• salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• cumin
• Worcestershire sauce
• hot sauce
• honey

What you do:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Pulse cracker, pepper, cayenne, chili powder and dry thyme in a food processor until fine and add to beef.
• Pulse onion and red pepper in food processor to a fine chop and add to the bowl. This made a gorgeous orange/red mix!
• Combine the cracker mixture, onion mixture and ground beef with salt and egg until well mixed, but not overworked. 

• Press mixture into loaf pan(s).  We used a mini loaf pan and got three loaves out of it.  This is a great way to make loaves to freeze and reheat later!  You can also do it in one large pan.
• On a parchment-lined baking sheet, turn the molded loaves out and bake for 10 minutes.

• Combine ketchup, cumin, Worcestershire, hot sauce and honey.
• After 10 minutes, brush glaze on loaves and return to oven.

• Bake until internal temperature reaches 155 degrees.  For our mini-loaves this took about 20-30 more minutes. 
• Remove from oven and let rest for a couple minutes, then place on paper towel-lined plate to remove some of  the grease from the bottom.
• Slice and serve!

   

We served with Parmesan Red Mashers (baby red potatoes mashed with a bit of parmesan, a tiny bit of cream, a pat of butter, salt and pepper) and my Creamy Bacon Brussels Sprouts.  This is one of my absolutely most favorite veggie side dishes, and a stellar example of how bacon makes the world a better place.

We were in major food coma state after dinner, but we relaxed, watch a movie and were completely satisfied with our comfort food for the weekend!

Celebration and a New Meal!

Hey hey hey! Look up! A Bacon-Wrapped Life is now located at it’s very own domain name baconwrappedlife.com!!! EXCITEMENT! Also exciting, Dori’s Shiny Blog is now located at dorishinyblog.com, check it out and keep your eyes peeled for some fun on her end to celebrate the change!!

I’ve been absent from the blog for a few days because we were switching servers, updating names, and just generally being busy with chores, errands and some nice weather  But I have a yummy new recipe to show for the missing weekend!

This is a conglomeration of this cooking light recipe and a pumpkin ravioli recipe I tried about 4 years ago and turned into an AMAZING pumpkin lasagna recipe that I’ll probably share at some point. 

Spicy Sweet Butternut Squash Ravioli with Prosciutto and Parmesan 

I roasted the heck out of a butternut squash at 400 degrees for about an hour or so, then scooped it out of the peel (after it cooled) and mashed it.  In a pan with a bit of olive oil, I sautéed 4oz diced prosciutto until it was a little crispy on the edges.  Half of the meat went into the squash along with breadcrumbs, 1 egg, salt, and parmesan cheese.  

 

I bought a package of wonton wrappers, and these made the ravioli! I filled a wonton wrapper with about 1Tb of the squash mixture, wet the edges with water, topped with another wrapper and sealed all around, making sure to get out all of the air bubbles.  I used a biscuit cutter to cut into rounds and set them aside on a parchment-lined tray. 

I made 20 ravioli like this and still hade some wrappers and squash mixture left, but knew we wouldn’t eat them, so I just stuck with the 20 (good thing, because I was stuffed by the end of the meal!).  Brought a big, wide pan full of water to a simmer and cooked about half of the ravioli at a time, for about 5 minutes with each batch.  I pulled them out with a slotted spoon and let them wait on the parchment-lined baking sheet while I cooked the second batch. 

As the second batch of ravioli cooked, I heated the remaining prosciutto and olive oil back up and added a little over a tablespoon of brown sugar, a few chopped sage leaves, a pat of butter and a dash of cayenne pepper for a little kick.

After this got all melty, I sort of just wanted to eat it with a spoon!

I melted this over medium-low heat and then tossed it with the ravioli and served, topped with a little more fresh sage and some parmesan!  Pretty easy (a little time-consuming because you have to fill the ravioli) and SUPER delicious!  You could also buy ravioli and just make this prosciutto brown sugar sauce to coat them, and it would be really really easy. 

We served it with a bagged Pacific salad with a bunch of different greens, soy nuts, carrots and a poppy seed dressing.  Plus we added a bunch of diced tomatoes from our CSA!  It was a nice accompaniment to the ravioli, which had a wonderful balance of the nutty squash, sweet brown sugar, salty prosciutto & parmesan, and a tiny bit of spice from the cayenne!