A Bacon Wrapped Life (previously Lady in Pink)
What started as an outlet for random rambling and general blogging (and a fun surprise from a wonderful boyfriend!) has become primarily a venue for even more enjoyment of food, with a bit of my random life excitement popping in–thus the name change.
Contrary to the beliefs of many friends, I don’t always cook with bacon, cheese, or other random sources of fat (although these are all delicious and often considered!). I appreciate my increasing ability to cook with lots of different veggies, leave meat out all together sometimes, create healthier versions of old recipes and just generally bring health and wellness intomy life.
All that being said, I love to indulge, to succumb to temptation, to provide temptation, to jump into a giant hypothetical vat of whipped cream and absolutely gorge myself…OK, so this is where all those previously-mentioned misconceptions come from. Along with my indulging, I also love to exaggerate. 🙂 If I had to identify my “food philosophy,†it would be this: Food makes me happy and I want to use food to make you happy! I am enthralled not only by the flavors, textures, scents and other sensations of food, but also by the science, history, sociology, psychology of food. Food is a key part of every aspect of life, and in times when more and more people have harmful relationships with the source of nourishment and life and can no longer take enjoyment in the act of eating, I think it is extremely important to recognize and remember the vital role that food plays in our lives.
Indulgence is also not such a stable relationship either, and part of my challenge as a cook and a consumer is to work this indulgence into an overall healthy approach to eating. My boyfriend, Matt, and I work on this issue together and I am so grateful that we have each other for support and the mental and emotional nourishment that supplements the physical nourishment we get from our food. We both LOVE to eat, and luckily we both hate mushrooms…it works out nicely.
I recently finished my MA in English, so I’m also just getting past my college mentality towards food–fit in whatever you can, whenever you have time. I’m currently working as an undergraduate admissions advisor at a small, private, naturual health sciences university. I love student affairs and am excited to be at this early stage of my professional career with lots of hopeful options down the road. In this job, I have had the opportunity to expand my advising experience and work with a huge variety of students so far, but I have also been exposed to a community of physicians, students and other faculty/staff members who are very involved in the field of natural health. This hugely affects my perspective on food at this point in time; in a very short time I have absorbed a ton of amazing information and ideas about whole foods nutrition and overall wellness with an all-vegetarian cafeteria at my fingertips. When I am at work, it’s very easy for me to push my own boundaries in terms of food knowledge and comfort-levels–something I also plan to be encouraged to do through this blog. I have been in this job for about 6 months now and I can’t wait to see what else I’ll learn from this healthy community while I’m here!
COMPLETE CHANGE OF TOPIC: Another key thing about my life is my wonderfully adorable dog, Santana. She’s a beagle-chihuahua mix who was a graduation present from my roommate when we finished our undergraduate work. Santana moved with me from KY to central NY, and while I was in graduate school she helped me get through the rough patch of readjusting, making new friends in a completely different program and school and dealing with a crazy crazy grad student schedule…sometimes I’d be home all day reading and writing, sometimes I’d be gone from 8am until 2am the following morning and she was as flexible as a puppy could be–and always excited to see me when I got home! I was questioning my choices a lot and finding it hard to make time for relaxation and enjoyable activities, not to mention eating right and generally watching out for my health. I can’t really explain how vital Santana was to getting through those 2 years. She moved to Seattle with Matt and me and the three months before she got here were brutal (while I was here early doing some job-hunting). She is a trouble-maker, and I sort of love her for it. She fits us, and we love her so much we let her start her own blog. Originally this was Matt’s idea, but yeah, I am that kind of puppy mom…deal with it and just enjoy how adorable she is. The blog does a great job of portraying her very anthropomorphized personality! Ok, I’m done raving about her for now, but I figured it was important to me and thus to the blog. I may even include some puppy-friendly recipes at times!
There’s a lot more “about me†that I could ramble about; as an English student, one of my biggest flaws was editing things down! This blog will likely change as my life continues to shift, but my goal is to be constantly encouraged by the presence of the blog world to continue my quest for healthiness in my happily bacon-wrapped life.
One last important note: I love lists! Love them! If it can be said in a list, say it in a list! Here’s a summary about me and my food, in list form:
- A lot of the recipes I use or create are chock-full of indulgence.
- Every once in a while I have the energy to try to clean up around the edges and make something on the fancy side.
- More and more I celebrate new veggie options and other healthy additions to my food life.
- Always I want a delicious and enjoyable experience in the kitchen and at the table–if I don’t like it, I don’t cook it.
- Exception to the note above: If I really like you, I’ll cook whatever you want! Maybe not that extreme, but I love to feed the people I care about, and the act of cooking for them is just as important as eating the finished product.Â
I am excited to dive into the wonderful blogging community and hope that you can find some yummy recipes and fun randomness along the way. I love feedback and new ideas, so bring on the comments! And the bacon!
As predicted, Lady in Pink has taken on a whole new look! Welcome to the all new Bacon-Wrapped Life!! Stay tuned for a post/page that talks about what that means and how it relates to what goes on in the blog. Thanks to wonderful wonderful Matt for putting up with me while he tried to help make my blog a little more personalized!! I spent a good portion of Saturday moaning and groaning that the blog was ruined and it would never look right….after I shut up and waited a few more minutes, Matt had everything where I wanted it!! He’d taken the images and designs I’d made in Publisher and turned them into a blog! Wow! I’m a lucky lucky girl to have a boyfriend who will put up with me when I am whining and complaining!
Another fun blog note, Missy is having another giveaway! This time for Michael Seasons Natural Snacks…these look super yummy, so enter her contest and cross your fingers!!
Speaking of Missy, she does a great job of updating throughout the work day (I take a break from answering emails and working on applications every couple hours to check all the blogs!) and after looking at the pictures of her yummy wraps for lots of recent lunches, I found myself with a crazy craving for spinach wraps!
So we bought wraps instead of our usual bread and made tasty grilled wraps which were filled with:
- Ham
- Turkey
- Center cut bacon (30% less fat than regular bacon!)
- Provolone Cheese
- A tiny bit of light mayo and mustard
- Lettuce
- Tomatoes
- A drizzle of olive oil and red wine vinegar
- Grated parmesan cheese
So delicious! We had it with some store-bought macaroni salad and kettle-cooked potato chips…very satisfying dinner. I had a repeat of it for lunch today (minus the bacon, oil & vinegar, and obviously not grilled) with some honey mustard dressing from the cafeteria. Thanks for the inspiration Missy! Also thanks to the George Forman Grill for the toasty toasty wonderfulness on the outside of our wraps!
Earlier in the weekend we also had another blog-inspired meal! When Dori did her blogger interview a couple weeks ago she had a picture of nachos on her site until the next time she updated. So every couple hours when I made the rounds of blogs at work for a few days I would be greeted by this really tempting picture of loaded nachos! At some point in discussing our love of nachos, we got onto the topic of individually-topped nachos, which I have had at Chili’s before, and that Dori said they now have at TGI Fridays!
So, of course I have been dreaming of nachos for a few weeks. Matt and I even tried to find loaded nachos at the small mexican bar/restaurant down the road (in the middle of my sick day)…no such luck! They have delicious chips and salsa and an amazing black bean dip, but not exactly what I was craving. SO we used cheese, black beans and chopped onions and made these:
We served them with sour cream and salsa (not homemade, because it was a lazy day) on a giant serving platter that we both ate off of. SO satisfying to have a bite of everything on each chip!! Thanks goes to Dori for the tempting nacho picture on her blog for inspiring this one!
Because I have been busy getting work done, we’ve been pretty low key, but we have some fun things on the menu for this week so I’m going to try and get pictures of everything! Plus we’ll be making some more minor changes to the blog design when we have time. Hooray for fun projects and yummy food! Have a great week!
***UPDATE: I fixed my giveaway links, which I had COMPLETELY messed up this morning! Plus, soup and quesadilla picture added below! Sorry for my Friday morning absentmindedness!***
First, a couple more contests to note:
– Yet another Mix My Granola Giveaway. I keep noting these because I LOVE the idea for this product/service/website. Even if you aren’t going to enter the contest, look at all the options they have for mix-ins…so many choices!! So fun! Check out Healthy and Sane for Elina’s Mix My Granola Giveaway!
– Bridget at Yogurt and Berries is giving away some chocolate goodies!! A great way to stay sane if I’ve ever seen one!
I don’t have any new recipes from this week, because we grabbed food on Wednesday and last night we took our leftovers from Monday and turned them into a casserole. There isn’t really a recipe for this…I literally took everything we had leftover, stirred it all together in a casserole dish and baked it for about an hour or so. The beets tinted everything this really pretty pink/red color and the French bread got nice and crunchy. I didn’t use all of the leftover gravy because there was a lot, but I put in just enough to coat everything and keep it moist. I was really pleased because it mellowed out a lot-not a lot of lemon flavor at all. It was a very comforting bowl of dinner and we used up all our leftovers! Hooray! No pictures 🙁
I do have a meal we made a few weeks ago that turned out really yummy and a nice warming dinner during the cold spell we just got over! Plus, I just realized I never posted it, even though I took pictures!
When I was growing up, we had tomato soup (Campbell’s) and grilled cheese all the time. I have known this meal as long as I can remember, and it was probably one of the first things I could make by myself. I went through a lot of grilled cheese and tomato soup stages growing up. No dipping the sandwich, dipping the sandwich before every bite, crushing Ritz crackers into the soup before eating the sandwich, finishing the sandwich before touching the crackers, the soup could only be mixed with milk, the soup could only be made with water, when I started cooking I had to use exactly half milk and half water, Ritz crackers were not good enough and I needed oyster crackers…I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting. I was pretty obsessive about things like this…I would decide there was a “right” way to make or eat it, and I had to do it that way for a while, until I decided there was a new “right” way. When I was little I didn’t want crusts on my grilled cheese (which I think is a pretty common kid request), and I remember babysitting my younger cousin and being really annoyed that he would want me to cut off his grilled cheese crusts! Except that by then I loved the crusts, so after I’d cut them off his sandwich I would dip them in my soup and eat them myself…think grilled cheese sticks instead of sandwiches. One way or another, grilled cheese and tomato soup has always been one of the most satisfying things for me when it’s cold out, and I assumed that everyone identified with this meal in some way.
Several months ago I realized that Matt had NEVER had tomato soup! I was absolutely shocked…how did you go 23 years without ever having Campbell’s tomato soup and grilled cheese? This was nuts! I quickly taught him the ways…with both Campbell’s and also some more organic, boxed brands perked up with fresh basil from our summer herb box and a few other variations. Matt has always loved grilled cheese (what’s not to love?) and he has really enjoyed pairing it with tomato soup, although he is not a fan of the Campbell’s condensed soup…maybe you have to get hooked on that when you’re little enough to not have a sense of what makes a soup “good”?
So we had a few leftover flour tortillas and cheddar cheese from our taco party, a box of Pacific Natural Foods Tomato Soup from Ken’s Market, and a variety of canned goods (I always stock up on tomatoes, beans, etc. when they are on sale). So we made a new grilled cheese and tomato soup variation! Cheese quesadillas (sprayed with cooking spray and cooked in a frying pan) and Mexican tomato soup (1 box PNF soup + 1 can black beans + 1 can diced tomatoes w/ green chilies + some red pepper for spice).
Delicious and SO easy! This obviously made a ton of soup, but I had it for lunch the next two days at work. I am always blown away by how many meals we can get out a few canned goods and some basic ingredients…it makes my thrifty side smile. Think how cheap that is per meal compared to if we had eaten out each time instead of eating that meal! I’d say the entire meal cost less than $10 and we got 2 dinners and 2 lunches out of it! Crazy!
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Some other fun that will be coming up and I’ll have more info about:
– Blogger Bake Sale, hosted by Meghann. I’m planning to contribute something to go up for sale, so keep an eye out for more info about that! If you’re interested, contact Meghann for more info!Â
– Guest post on Dori’s blog
– All new design for this blog!
– A side job doing some editing that will result in a good chunk of income, but will most likely make me super busy for a few weeks and result in a little less posting until it’s finished. Hopefully it will also result in lots to post about once I am finished with the editing!
– We’re getting artichokes in our next CSA box and I have never worked with them before! Excitement and/or chaos should be forthcoming!
– Both Dori and Santana have birthdays TOMORROW, 3/21!!! Happy Birthdays!!!
Today is a non-picture, boring day of food blogging. Pretty yummy though!
– Chocolate Croissant and my twice-weekly white chocolate mocha from Fresh Flours, which we luckily live near!
– Lots of emails, conference calls and applications sent me all the way to lunch without a snack! I was on the phone with my grandma at noon when my tummy went crazy growling at me for some food!
– I couldn’t take any more of the devil rice, so I went with curried lentil soup (w/ oyster crackers!!) and crunchy veggies (carrots, cukes, and broccoli) with the yummy homemade ranch dressing from the cafeteria. Delicious and pretty filling!
– Strawberry fruit leather after lunch to get some fruit and sweetness into the meal! 
– Organic Fair Trade Hot Cocoa from Trader Joe’s (thanks to one of the other advisors!) and Sunny Bears (Whole Foods’ version of gummy bears!) for an afternoon snack!
Now I am thinking about leftovers for dinner! A casserole from Monday’s roast chicken and veggies!
I think my body is extra hungry today after yesterdays crazy swim workout! It has been quite a while since Matt and I have done any serious swimming, and neither of us has ever done super-serious drill-type swimming, so the 45 minutes or so of straight laps and various strokes and breathing exercises and all on top of some random working out before the swim class kicked our butts. I feel great today though, just crazy hungry!! We need to get swimming goggles and I need a swim cap. I have horrible memories of these from being a little kid with tubes in my ears and needing to shove wax in my ears and wear a swim cap anytime I went near the water!!
One of my co-workers said she got this cute swim cap and I have been searching online for a non-boring one! The website that seems to have lots of different choices is Headcovers Unlimited. Any suggestions on cute ones I should try?? I wish I were a little kid so I could try some of the really cute fun ones!
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Another giveaway!! Angela at Oh She Glows is giving away some POM Coupons! I have been on a pomegranate kick lately, so this is especially exciting!
Last Thursday we had Yukon Gold Potatoes and ridiculously adorable tiny Baby Red Beets in our box from Full Circle Farm, so in an effort to use those this week I went with a roasted chicken dinner…a nice, comforting meal for Monday evening. I like to do something substantial either Sunday or Monday so it can be reused later in the week!
I used this recipe from Cooking Light online, but I had two chicken breasts in the freezer (bone-in, skin-on), so I used those instead of a whole chicken. Thanks to my handy dandy meat thermometer, I didn’t have to worry about watching the time too closely because I could rely on the temperature! I like to cook chicken on the bone with the skin on whenever I am doing something like roasting—it keeps so much flavor and moisture in the final product, especially if you’re dealing with white meat! I almost always take off the skin and remove the meat from the bones after the chicken rests, so you aren’t eating all of the fat with the skin or dealing with the bones when you’re trying to enjoy your meal. Having it on the bone does increase the amount of time it will take to cook, but I think it is definitely worth it. When you can monitor the temperature with a meat thermometer and pull it out a few degrees before it’s completely done and let it rest to the final temperature, it is amazingly moist. Matt is a huge dark meat guy and last night he said, “I can’t believe how moist this is! I can actually eat white meat!â€
I rubbed a couple teaspoons of thyme and paprika under the skin of the chicken breast and placed a few thin slices of lemon under there as well. Both breasts went onto a rack in a deep pan and were rubbed with a tiny bit of olive oil. They then went into a 425 degree oven, covered, for 30 minutes. Then got uncovered and cooked until they got to 160 degrees. At that point they came out and rested, covered in foil while everything else finished up. The recipe calls for pan drippings to make a gravy, and breasts let off a lot less in the way of drippings than a whole bird would have. I forgot about this at first, until I opened the oven to remove the foil covering the chicken and got a face full of smoke from the very few drippings burning on the bottom of the pan…to deal with that and avoid setting off the smoke alarm, I added about half a cup of chicken broth to the bottom of the pan under the chicken.
I’m not sure if this slip up affected the pan sauce I made from the drippings, or if there was just an issue with the recipe, but when I followed the recipe straight and tasted it with Matt, it DEFINITELY needed adjusting. It was super lemony and really sweet! It tasted like candy lemon drops…not necessarily bad, but not exactly what I want with a chicken dinner! So I added a bit more broth, a little paprika and a few dashes of a chicken gravy package mix I had in the cupboard (why did I have this?!? It must have been on sale one day? I don’t remember buying it!). Eventually it got better and the flavor complemented all of the stuff on the plate, so it worked out!
Normally, when I make gravy from drippings I skim the fat, heat the drippings to simmering and then slowly add a slurry of cold broth/stock mixed with cornstarch. This is how my mom taught me (with ham gravy at Easter!), and I love it…at my parent’s house, we have a special shaker just for mixing and pouring the slurry! I usually add some herbs if necessary and some white or red wine, depending on the meat. This particular Cooking Light recipe started with flour in a heated pan, whisked with dry white wine and then called for the addition of broth, lemon juice, seasonings, the pan drippings and sugar (if I had left out the sugar, I probably could have avoided the initial candy sweetness).
This method wasn’t really any more difficult than the cornstarch method and I really liked it! I definitely won’t substitute it for my typical gravy, because the two methods result in completely different consistencies. Cornstarch lets the sauce thicken while still remaining a bit on the thinner side, while the flour will let you get to that thick thick super thick gravy stage (the kind you might make with sausage and put over fluffy biscuits for breakfast!).So hooray for adopting new gravy methods!
While all of this was going on, Matt and I peeled the beets and potatoes and cut them into tiny pieces, about 1 inch all the way around. They got tossed with a tiny bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and then roasted in with the chicken. I basically used the root veggie recipe I had made with the pork and apples a little while ago. I should have thrown them in the oven earlier, because in my opinion the beets could have gotten a little softer. I think they ended up cooking for a total of 45 to 55 minutes. They’ll get nice and soft when I use them as leftovers on Thursday! This is quickly becoming my favorite method for cooking root vegetables, and the texture of the Yukon Golds was a really nice, simple combination with the powerful sweet flavor of the beets.
We also had part of a loaf of French bread on hand that Matt and picked up this past weekend. I knew we wouldn’t get through all of it before it went stale, so I turned it into dressing! This was a really basic recipe, again from Cooking Light, that is really similar to the way I make cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving. Since I had less than a whole loaf, it was a little soggier than I would usually like, but it had such a delicious taste with just onions and sage! I didn’t have celery and can never figure out what to do with celery after I use one or two stalks since I don’t like it enough to snack on it. Does it freeze well?? Really nice and basic dressing that soaked up the not-quite-so-lemony sauce and paired well with the strong flavors on the chicken and veggies!
I think all the leftovers are going to get mooshed together into a casserole for after the gym tomorrow night…we went to an intro swim conditioning class at the gym tonight and didn’t get home until around 8pm (we had no desire to cook and grabbed Greek pita sandwiches on the way home!). Swim conditioning was crazy intense, plus I have been pushing my limits a bit all week. Sunday we went to play racquetball and spent 25 minutes on the elliptical machines first…I usually can’t do that machine for so long, so it was a stretch for me. Tuesday was Body Sculpting at work and I went up to 8lb weights for half of the weight portions. And tonight we got to the gym early so I did 20 minutes on a bike, not realizing how much pain my legs would be in after finishing almost an hour of swim conditioning! I will definitely be taking it easy tomorrow, since we’ve got another day of sculpting on Friday.Â
Oh! While I was moving my chicken pictures onto the computer, I realized I did have pictures of the fried rice (the death rice, devil rice or fire rice, as we’ve been calling it since then). It looks good…full of veggies, very innocent…don’t be deceived, it was evil. The potstickers were delicious though!
