It has been a long and busy week. I had no time to spend in the kitchen, or much of anything else. I normally get off work at 4:00pm Monday through Thursday and 1:30pm on Friday. On Wednesday at 3:00pm I got a meeting notice for a 4:00pm meeting. This was an important meeting that I had to attend. I got out of there at 5:30. On the plus side I did get off work at noon on Friday, which gave me plenty of time Friday afternoon to take both of my vehicles in for an oil change. By the time that was done it was too late to do much cooking and I was too tired to try anyways. I did make some good snacks this weekend I want to share.
I was cruising around the internet and came across something I am ashamed to admit I had never thought of. The headline alone really grabbed my attention: Bacon Popcorn. I was sure this would be some bizarre seasoning for your popcorn that would not be something I would actually want to try. The post was about using rendered bacon fat to cook your popcorn. “Why have I never thought of this before?” I asked myself.
I told my wife about it. Her first reaction was the same as several women I mentioned this to. “EWWW, yuck,” she said. What could be yucky about bacon? I use bacon grease to cook many other things instead of vegetable oil — why not popcorn? Friday night I made a pan of bacon popcorn. After adding a little salt I tasted the popcorn. I could not taste the bacon at first. I ate a couple more pieces and took the bowls into the living room. By the time I got in the living room there was a light bacon flavor on my tongue. I handed a bowl to my wife and she tried it. She said it tastes like regular popcorn and could not taste the bacon. After eating a bit more she too got a nice mild bacon flavor from the popcorn. The best part of eating the bacon popcorn was after I was done, my hands smelled like bacon. I hated to wash my hands after that.
The other good snack I made was vanilla ice cream. We cleaned out our storage unit a few weeks ago and came across our ice cream maker. We had not used that for some time, so yesterday we cleaned it up and made some vanilla ice cream. It had been so long since we used it that neither of us could remember the recipe, so we went online and found the basic recipe and instructions on the internet (at about.com) — there was even a link to instructions for using our Rival Ice Cream Maker.
The only problem with making ice cream is keeping my wife from eating it when it is done churning. She really like the ice cream soft right out of the ice cream maker. I don’t mind the soft ice cream myself, but I prefer to let it set up a bit in the freezer before eating it so it is more like ice cream than pudding. Home made ice cream is the best. It’s as good as or better than even the best ice cream you can buy in the store and it is fun to make.
Now go dig that coffee mug of bacon grease out of the back of the fridge and make some popcorn … you know you want to.
Clacked by Jeff Love
on Apr 18, 2010 @ 09:48 EST5EDT
At least your wife waits until the ice cream has stopped churning. Owen dips in a spoon to snitch while it’s churning. He’s got the perfect angle down pat, so the churning literally dumps the ice cream conveniently onto his spoon!