Bacon egg and cheese sandwich
By Carrie | June 3, 2008
Well, it feels like all we post about is bacon lately. Oh well. Just looking at this picture is making my mouth water, so I have no option but to continue with this post. So, here’s another use for bacon - we made home made bacon egg and cheese sandwiches for dinner one night last week. I totally didn’t know that Oak had gotten some rolls from Rockland Bakery, so we could make these tasty treats at home! These sandwiches are super simple to make - just fry up your bacon and eggs, and then add the cheese on top of your eggs until it melts. Put it all on your sandwich with a squeeze of ketchup (sounds a little gross, I know, but it’s a necessary addition - just believe me!). They’re not just for breakfast anymore!
Topics: cooking | No Comments »
NY find: Bubble tea
By Carrie | May 29, 2008
Well, we can get bubble tea in the Triangle, especially at the Asian shopping centers. But, they are nothing like this true cutesy-pink-Sanrio-inspired bubble tea place in Chinatown. I seized the moment and got a new flavor that I hadn’t had - kumquat and lime. It was quite delicious. Oak’s little sister and father did not approve of the tapioca balls so much - but I agree they are an acquired taste. If you look at the link, you’ll see they also have vending machines with all sorts of crazy Japanese characters. Let me tell you, I was tempted. But $3 for a vending machine item seemed a bit too much.
We also had dinner in Chinatown - at a place called something like “New Wang” that Alex recommended. Despite its silly name (which doesn’t sound so silly in Chinese), it was very tasty.
Later in the evening we walked through Little Italy. I got my cannoli, a black and white cookie for later, and enjoyed the hawkers trying to get us to come to their restaurants. Sorry, we were full! Maybe next time. At night they block off the streets. There was even a small street carnival, complete with an Italian band (the guys wearing the funky red white and green hats). And, you might guess that their hit tune was “New York, New York.” Go figure!
Topics: food, travel | No Comments »
Oak’s makin’ bacon - Batch 2
By Oak | May 28, 2008
Blogging community watch out! To allow Carrie to focus on things other than my favorite animal I thought I would post regarding the next batch of bacon making! After completing batch 1 Carrie and I were satisfied with our first foree with bacon. It did not take us long to decide on doing the Brown Sugar Maple bacon.
I had begun the initial cure of the bacon when I received word that I needed to return to NY. Taking lemons and making lemonade I decided to pack up the pork belly in a cooler and bring it to NY with us. Knowing that I would have the ability to smoke the pork belly on my fathers smoker.
My father would never admit it but he has a sweet tooth when the situation presents itself. Sharing a love for the smoking meats my father was very interested and even insisted on basting the bacon towards the end with more brown sugar and maple syrup! Here my sister is doing some maple syrup basting under the tutelage of my father.
Here’s the finished product. Wow the smoking makes a huge difference, in my opinion it is a required step. I am nearing the bacon flap for which I seek.
Stay tuned in June for the Pignic and my beginning attempts at dry curing sausage.
Topics: blog, cooking, food | 3 Comments »
Northern breakfast: egg sandwiches and bagels
By Carrie | May 27, 2008
Well, we ended up heading up North to Oak’s old neck of the woods for the holiday weekend for some family stuff, but of course, we cannot be stopped in the pursuit of tasty treats. Like the South, the North has its own specialty breakfast items that you can’t get anywhere else.
Actually, these breakfast items are pretty unique to the NY metro area… because I certainly never really ate them growing up. We were more into donuts, but that’s another entry!
First, we had a bacon egg and cheese sandwich on a kaiser roll. According to Oak, this is a typical blue collar breakfast. I don’t care what collar eats them, they are tasty! Even if they don’t have hand-crafted bacon on them. Maybe Oak needs to learn to make kaiser rolls so we can have them at home!
Secondly is the BAGEL. Apparently Oak is the one that introduced me to Real Bagels(TM). Any grocery store bagels, bagels from Brueggers, Dunkin Donuts, and the like… while sometimes acceptable, are not Real. Rockland Bakery is THE place to get the Real Deal. It’s a huge complex that has not only bagels, but breads, pastries, cookies, deli, etc. The best part of a visit is the conveyor belt of freshly baked bagels that is always running. You can grab a fresh bagel and eat it right there! Of course, we bought almost a dozen bagels.. I’m enjoying having them for breakfast for the next few mornings toasted with cream cheese. I still have to get used to lox. I’ll be sure keep you updated on my lox enjoyment level.
Topics: food, travel | 3 Comments »
Oak’s makin’ bacon - Part 2
By Carrie | May 17, 2008
So, unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to post the remaining BaconCam(TM) photos at the time they were taken, so you get the entire remainder of the bacon-making experience in this single entry. I will do my best to summarize the bacon-making process as narrated by Oak.
So, the salted bacon continued to marinate in its own juices for several days - and Oak flipped it a few times during this process. This is what the final bacon slab looked like:
At this point, you trim off the skin and then you can then bake (or smoke, if you’re so equipped) the slab in a very low oven (like 150 degrees) for a long time. The slab comes out of the oven, and you can slice it up to your desired thickness! It’s ready to cook!
Here’s Oak frying up the bacon! Yum!
It gets nice and crispy:
We cut up the bacon and used it in this swiss chard pasta recipe. The swiss chard makes it healthy, right?
Needless to say, Oak is already in pursuit of another hunk of pork belly to make more bacon. We were watching Cook’s tour the other day, and in Portugal these guys were making prosciutto and bacon in a crazy wooden box full of salt. Why do I have a feeling strange meat products will be brewed the moment we get a garage? Oh dear.
Topics: blog, cooking, food | 4 Comments »
Community-supported agriculture
By Carrie | May 17, 2008
I don’t think I’ve blogged about our CSA membership. We’ve always been big on going to the farmers market and getting our weekly load of fresh veggies. Last year when we went on the Piedmont Farm tour, we learned about community-supported agriculture and how helpful it is to farmers. Because people sign up for memberships early in the season, the farms get income when they need it most during their plantings. In exchange for our membership, we get a box full of fresh-picked vegetables from the farm every week!
Our CSA is through Brinkley Farms, and we’re sharing a family membership with some of the 605 crew, though they do individual and couple memberships as well. Monday mornings we get a list of what’s fresh on the farm that week, and Thursdays after work one of us takes a little side trip to RTI (seriously like across the street from IBM), where the CSAs set up their trucks.
Because it’s so early in the season, we’ve been eating truckloads of greens - spinach, chard, lettuces, arugula, collard greens.. and needless to say I’m pretty much religiously looking at Epicurious for recipe ideas. It’s definitely ensuring that we get tons of fresh vegetables in our diets. I’ve never seen Oak eat so much salad!
This week’s loot includes a huuuuge fennel bulb that is now taking over the refrigerator, a delicious head of green oakleaf lettuce, rainbow chard, and a half pint of sugar snap peas. Unfortunately they only had enough for 1 pint of snap peas per box so we had to split them up. Delicious though!
We haven’t completely stopped going to the farmer’s market, but it does give us a chance at some items you might only get if you’re an early bird (which I most definitely am NOT, especially on Saturdays - sorry Oak!).
So, I’ll try to keep taking pictures as the crops get more and more colorful. If you ever get a chance to join a CSA, give it a try!
Topics: around the triangle, cooking, food | 2 Comments »
The origin of everyone’s favorite wiggly dessert
By Carrie | May 15, 2008
Apparently this is my week of nostalgic blog entries. So, in 4th grade, I played the Jell-o girl in our “History of LeRoy” play at Wolcott Street Elementary School. Because of this important acting role (my only roles in plays were in my elementary days.. sigh), I felt it was my responsibility to share with my readers this New York Times article on the origins of Jell-o. Also, if you’re really feeling the need to further explore the history of flavored packaged gelatin, you can visit the Jell-o museum in LeRoy. I wonder if they have a record of 4th grade Jell-o girls past and present. I bet they are completely missing this important piece of Jell-o history. In fact, I wanted to top this entry off with a photo of me as the Jell-o girl, but alas, I have no idea where the pictures are. Time to make Mom dig through the archives..
Topics: food, life happenings | 4 Comments »
Shout it loud and clear!
By Carrie | May 13, 2008
Today NotMartha posted this Metafilter link about a crazy Mannequin in a department store TV show from the 80s. Well, this is the second time that the show Today’s Special has come across my thoughts in the past few weeks. My mom also forwarded this email that had a list where you were supposed to add “little known TV shows” and of course this show is what I would have added.
At the time, I had no idea how odd the premise of this show was. The woman that sets up the displays in the department store learns that one of the mannequins in the store can come to life at night. These two human characters have some puppet “side-kicks”, like the mouse that lives in one of the walls and the crazy puppet security guard. I’m also not embarrased to admit that I probably watched the repeats of this show well into my high school years or whenever they took it off the air. That and Full House apparently never grew old for me.
I love one of the comments someone left on the metafilter page: ” And why don’t computers talk? My childhood promised me talking computers…” Well, if I remember correctly, the computer also had a conveyor belt on which sandwiches would come out. Wouldn’t that be amazing?? I’d much rather have my laptop produce a sandwich on command than talk to me!
Topics: blog, culture, humor | 1 Comment »
Sesame Street for Adults
By Carrie | May 9, 2008
On Tuesday night, we went to see Avenue Q at the Progress Energy Performing Arts center in Raleigh. Oak even came because there was promise of inappropriate behavior by puppets. Let’s just say we were not disappointed. I’ve never laughed so much at a Broadway show (besides some sleep-deprived giggle fests that happened during our high school musical shows.. those don’t count though). I had read and heard some things about it before we went, but was still shocked that they “went there.” How on earth did they do any performance of this on national TV for the Tony Awards??
My favorite characters were the “bad idea bears.” These little bundles of delight tell you that,
although you are broke, you deserve to drink beer. And, buying a whole CASE of beer is much economical than a six-pack! Hellow! Their little squeeky “Yaaaaaay!” is also quite fun to impersonate.
Oak’s favorite character was Trekkie monster, the pervert who lives upstairs and looks at porn all day. He is amazingly similar to Cookie Monster, especially his voice. What a coincidence! Or not! 
It’s definitely targeted at the mid to late twenties post-college crowd. English majors might be disappointed to find many digs at their degree, including a song called, “What do you do with a BA in English?” Not that it wasn’t amusing to the rest of us. So, definitely go see it if you get a chance. Yaaaaaay!
Topics: musicals | 3 Comments »
Oak’s makin’ bacon - part 1
By Carrie | May 6, 2008
So, among manufacturing many other meat products such as sausage and corned beef, Oak has decided to take on making bacon, thanks to the copy of Charcuterie that we got from the library. We first learned about this book when we met Michael Ruhlman. Little did we know he was not only a profiler of the food industry, but a master of meat curing as well.
The making of bacon began with a search for uncured pork. Harder to find than one would think. We finally found it at Grand Asia, the local Asian supermarket. (Need an obscure meat product? Look no further). Well, the pork belly got frozen because apparently we needed some other curing products that I don’t remember the names of or completely understand. Anyway, the mystery products were obtained, and the 10-day bacon making process has begun.
To fully document the cure, Oak has invented the BaconCam(TM). Raw meat pictures aren’t the most appetizing in my opinion, but as the blogger of the household I suppose that it is my responsibility to share the BaconCam captures with the community.
Day 1:
The bacon bible and the newly salted pork belly. Oak and I enjoyed the thought of the addition of hot pepper flakes; when Daniela and Alex saw it they did not approve. Oh well. I have a feeling we can eat this much bacon by ourselves anyway.
Day 2:
Oh, the bacon has become more appetizing looking, if that’s possible. As you can see, it has already started to ooze its excess moisture. Dee-licious. But, I can picture my beautiful bacon arriving on my breakfast table any day now…
And, finally, we decided to name our aloe plant Ruhlman because we were trying to come up with a name for it shortly after visiting the bacon. Wahoo! Ruhlman, if you happen upon this site for whatever reason, know that there are worse plants that could have your name. At least aloe plants are ahem, perky and quite hardy. haha.
Stay tuned for more BaconCam output!
Topics: cooking, food | 1 Comment »
