Recipe: It's Always Better Bacon Wrapped

Another Recipe! From the cookbook Hot, Sticky and on Fire by Ted Reader comes this gem with minor modifications courtesy of my friend Heather. This dish is perfect for those lovely summer days sitting in front of the soothing glow of a flickering campfire (Now, I know those days are few and far between here in Calgary, but for the readers in sunnier pastures, give it a shot, you won't be disappointed).

So what fancy ingredients are required? Well. As the name suggests, bananas and bacon. Lots of bacon.

4 Bananas

4 - 8 Slices of Bacon*

Pepper

The Sauce

Step 1: Partially cook the bacon. Make sure it is still flexible enough so that you can wrap it around the bananas. Remember crispy bacon, though tasty, is not good wrapping bacon. You will likely want to soak up all the fat that will inevitably be oozing out of the meat.

Step 2: Peel bananas and wrap them with the bacon from Step 1. For a standard sized banana, it will take about 1 to 2 slices of bacon to fully cover it. But my banana is exceptionally large (That's what she said), and thus required at least 3 or 4 slices. Unfortunately for me, I did not purchase enough bacon (I know it's hard to believe but it's true, I wasn't trying to be cheap) and due to time constraints, I did not have enough time to buy more. I settled with two slices of bacon per banana and loosely wrapped them around (Mistake #1). Instructions in the book also calls for toothpicks to hold the bacon in place; however, I only had cocktail sticks with the fancy plastic at the ends. And since I had to throw these into a raging fire after, I felt that it was probably not the best idea to have small pieces of plastic on the end. Though, not properly securing the bacon around the bananas was also not the best idea (Mistake #2). So... Note to readers: buy toothpicks with no fancy plastic at the ends. You'll thank me later.

Step 3: Throw these bad boys onto the grill. Turn them occasionally to prevent burning. Grill until bacon is crispy. As it turns out, flipping the bananas over without completely destroying it is a much harder task than I had anticipated (Likely due to the lack of skill more than anything). As the banana cooks and slowly caramelizes, they become rather tender and mushy. And thus trying to pick them up with tongs and turning them was a nightmare. I was turning my hand (and body) ever which way to try to flip the bananas without squishing them. The result? Squished bananas and looking like I'm severely handicapped. 

Sprinkle with pepper for taste. Baste with the special sauce during the final few minutes (Instructions to follow).

Step 4: Serve with sauce and ice cream (Not shown).

Definitely could have used a toothpick or box of toothpicks here

So you may be wondering "How do I make the special sauce?" Patients, Young Grasshopper, ingredients and instructions are as follows:

1/2 cup Corn Syrup

1/2 cup Honey.

2 oz Bourbon or Navan <-- This is the secret ingredient! Shhhh...!

1 sprig Thyme

2 tbsp. Water

Pinch Cracked Black Pepper

Step 1: Take a saucepan. Throw everything into it. Crank up the heat and let it boil. Stir occasionally to prevent burning. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Remove and let cool. 

Step 2: There is no Step 2!

Taste wise, this recipe was a striking success. Looks? Not so much. But that’s likely due to:

1. Lack of bacon
2. Lack of toothpicks
3. Lack of skills

Probably in that order. In reverse. Give it a shot. Let me know how it turns out!

An Apple A Day

Another recipe! This time an apple caramel dip. Special thanks to my friends Tammy and Ryan for sharing this with me.

This is an amazingly easy to make dessert slash appetizer slash eat whenever the hell you want dish. It’s awesome. Just listen to these testimonials.

"I want to make sweet love to your apple dip" - AK

"This is so good. You're so talented!" - Anonymous

No, anonymous friend, as you will see, this dish requires no skills whatsoever. You basically dump everything in a dish and BAM! You’re done. But thank you. You are too kind. 

The ingredients:

1 Block of Cream Cheese

1 Pack of Caramel Dip (6 little cups)

1 Bag of Skor chips

Apples. Lots of Apples.

Step one, what you want to do is grab a dish and plop the cream cheese in there. I usually use the regular kind. Sometimes the light, if I'm vegging out on the couch on a Sunday afternoon. Take a spoon or pie knife or whatever you can scour in your kitchen and smear that cream cheese evenly in the dish.

Step two, scoop the caramel and spread it over the cream cheese. I usually get the kind in the produce department. They normally come in a 6 pack. Like my abs. 

Step three, pop open that bag of Skor chips and sprinkle over top. Skor chips can be found in the baking aisle right beside the chocolate chips. 

Step four, slice up some apples. I usually use granny smiths as they are more tart and goes really well with the sweet caramel and Skor chips. To prevent the apples from browning, you can soak them in lemon juice. You can decorate it around the plate as I have done here or plop them in another bowl. 

And there you have it! Super easy to do. Make it once and you’ll be invited to all the hottest parties. 

Recipe: FUBAR - Edible Carvings

Halloween is here and we had the annual pumpkin carving contest at work this week. Unfortunately for me, I was the first person to send out an email and thus designated captain of the team. We floated a couple of ideas around; Grabbing a tall and skinny pumpkin, carving the Starbucks logo on it, spray foam the top and making a pumpkin spice latte; Grab any pumpkin and market it as a DIY pumpkin carving kit. Bam. Done. What we ended up doing was completely out of left field: A pumpkin pie.  

Since the inception of the blog, F-Log For Thought has always been about the restaurants and their delicious (sometimes not so delicious) foods. But by popular demand (my friend Jon from work), I have decided to share my secret recipe, that I found on the internet. As a first time baker, I was able to easily follow the steps and produced 6 edible pies. If I can do it, you can too!

Alright - the steps. Here is the pumpkin that our work provided us with sitting on my kitchen table. I would say that this is a pretty small jack-o-lantern pumpkin. Normally, pumpkin pies are made with pie pumpkins. They are less grainy and sweeter but according to the site, this will also do.

Step 1 - I took a cleaver I found at home and chopped it in half like a pro. I saw on youtube that it is better if you cut the pumpkin laying sideways. I don't know. I don't think it really matters. I then gutted the pumpkin. To remove the seeds and the stringy pieces, I used a spoon. Ice cream scoops works. You can freestyle this part. Use your imagination. If you like roasted pumpkin seeds, wash and save them. I'm sure there are recipes online. If not, then whatever.

Step 2 - Moving on, I chopped the pieces into smaller manageable piece in preparation to cook them. There are several ways to do this. I tried two methods. They are both pretty easy. You can either put them into a pot with some water and boil them. Or put them in a pot and stick it in the oven at 350F. I can't really tell you for how long because it varies depending on your oven. Just cook it till it's soft. I know it's kind of a subjective term but think of it this way - you have to scoop out the flesh so... if you can scoop it out easily then it's soft enough. Funny story with the oven method. So I filled the pan with my pumpkin pieces, slapped it in the oven and started watching videos on youtube. As I waited for the videos to load, I reread the instructions and realized I was suppose to put the pumpkin in a pot FILLED with WATER and then put it in the oven. Rookie mistake! I looked through the little window on the oven to find some dried up pumpkin, some of the edges were starting to burn. Crap! I quickly unloaded the pan and stuck all the pumpkin pieces into a pot, filled it with 3 cups of water and slapped it back in the oven. I think it still turned out okay so... No biggie.

Clearly not how you were suppose to cook the pumpkin

Getting ready to steam them

Step 3 - Once the pumpkin is soft enough, remove from heat and scoop the flesh out. I used a spoon and a knife to remove the crusty burnt parts. The pumpkin was a little watery but apparently this wasn't a huge issue. Just make sure you are not adding the extra water you used to steam them. I put the pieces into my trusty blender and pureed it until it became super smooth. My little pumpkin yield two giant bowls of pumpkin goop.

Step 4 - Alright. The recipe.

• 1 cup sugar
• 1.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 0.5 teaspoon ground ginger
• 4 large eggs
• 3 cups pumpkin goop from step 3
• 1 can of evaporated milk
• 2 six inch pie crusts

I hit up the grocery store and got all 4 spices from the baking aisle. You can also just get pumpkin spice instead of the 4 separate ground spices. But that's just lame. Thoroughly mix all the ingredients, san pie crust, together. You can use less eggs or evaporated milk to make the filling denser as it is pretty fluffy. Who doesn't love fluffy pumpkin pie? Use less eggs if you don't. 

Step 5 - Once you mix everything together, pour the mixture into your pie crusts. I actually got the wrong pie crusts (Makes you feel super confident in my cooking skills don't it?). I picked up the first pie crust I saw at the store - which turned out to be graham cracker pie crusts... you know... the kind you use for cheesecakes? Yeah. I filled it anyway. It tasted okay so it another option I guess. I wanted to make my own crust but I ran out of time. Set the oven to 425F. Slapped these bad boys in there and set the timer. 15 minutes at 425F and then 350F for 45 minutes to an hour. The actual recipe says to put a knife in it and when you can take it out cleanly then it's ready. My knife didn't fit so I said Eff it and just cooked it for an hour. 

An hour and fifteen minutes later.

Chow time!

I thought it turned out okay. Everyone said it was pretty good or pleasantly surprised. Definitely not known for my stellar cooking skills at the office (I'm actually known as the guy that took a soccer ball to the face, but that's another story). Our pies were auctioned off for a whooping $25! That's 5 times more than what you pay at the store! The winning pumpkin went for $511 but look at it! We may have a pie but we can't compete with this. Happy Halloween!