05 November 2010

Pretzels: An Alternative to Bread Crumbs

I picked up some awesome mustard on my recent-ish Palisade adventure. It is made with wine ,so clearly, it’s extra yummy. I knew as soon as I plucked the jar from the shelf that it would taste most excellent slathered on a chicken breast and holding on a pretzel crust. Using pretzels is a fun alternative to using breadcrumbs or panko, and depending upon the texture or flavor you want can add a nice little bit of extra oomph.

I was experimenting with size here, so I must admit that I should have ground the pretzels down a little more. The larger chunks managed to stay on the chicken okay, but got browner more quickly so I didn’t have an even golden color all around. (More like some, ahem, umber or sepia colors…)
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03 November 2010

Fabulous Fall Colors, Fantastic Fall Vegetables

We’re knee deep in Autumn; by now the leaves have changed to a rainbow of colors and are falling all around us. Halloween brought critters in costume, marching through piles of leaves and pumpkins, and wandering away full of sugar. It’s my favorite time of year for many reasons, but not the least of which is I get a cheap thrill out of eating food that matches the landscape around me. The Fall food color-scape is a bevy of rich jewel tones–vibrant reds, brilliant yellows, energetic oranges.

Root vegetables and those that grow low to the ground thrive this time of year, so fill your plates with potatoes, beets, carrots, squashes, and onions. Today’s recipe throws another fall flavor–apple–into the mix and gives this dish even more depth. I served mine with some roasted chicken over brown rice but you could easily make this a vegetarian meal or a Thanksgiving side dish as well. Even better, roast a chicken in the middle of this sea of root vegetables and baste with extra apple cider.
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25 October 2010

Pita Pear Pizzas

If we’re lucky, we’ll still have some delicious pears for a few more months. Pears, like grapes, do best in wine country climates like the Pacific Northwest (or the Western Slope in Colorado), where the combination of hot-cold and wet-dry work together to create supple sweet luscious fruits. Beyond being eaten plain–like an apple–pears work well in hearty salads, warmed as a compote, or baked and softened as a side or dessert.

Or, in our case, on a pita bread pizza! When my friend Cha-Cha and I get together it usually means business. But as two busy girls on the go, we were both exhausted from our respective workdays and wanted something healthy and filling to mow down on as we sunk into the couch to become zombies in the warm glow of the television. Cue the pizza idea–and one that works well with kids or adults alike because of the versatility. When making a mini-pizza you can make it anything you want. I of course, had to make ours a little fancy…just like us.
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19 October 2010

Simple Treat From The Mid-East

I feel a bit brain dead sometimes and need easy, tasty food that serves many purposes and isn’t total garbage. Oh so many times how I’ve succumbed to the “grab n’ go” and ended up later with a tummy ache or belly swollen with too much salt or grease. Last weekend I had some veggies to use up and wanted something fast and light but satisfying. So I made fattoush. How to make fattoush? Well, according to Wikipedia, “To make fattoush, cooks use seasonal produce, mixing different vegetables and herbs according to taste…The vegetables are cut into relatively large pieces…”

Sounds easy enough.

Perhaps you don’t eat a lot of Middle-Eastern cuisine and you aren’t familiar with fattoush? It’s a vegetable-based salad (sans lettuce) that tastes great over couscous (as pictured above) or inside a pita. It’s vegetarian, vegan, dairy, and gluten-free (and probably a whole lot of other things too…). After eating some for my lunch, I took the rest of my fattoush to a Sunday afternoon gathering of ladies, each of whom scooped some up with a pita chip as a nice snack.
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14 October 2010

Stuffed Peaches Won’t Disappoint

Here’s another recipe that came out of my Palisade peach adventure. But this one has a much larger story than just, “Hey, I have some peaches. Cool…”

Eat Denver is an organization of independent restaurateurs in the Denver area. This group takes the idea of being a localvore to a different level–eating local can be about supporting your neighborhood restaurant too. The organization does a few events throughout the year, including something called Harvest Week. During Harvest Week, these chefs create dishes using only locally sourced products. Sort of a think local, eat local, act local, kind of triple threat. One of the dishes that I had the pleasure of eating was at one of my favorite restaurants–Rioja.
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11 October 2010

Party With Some Peaches

“Palisade is the peach capital of Colorado,” tells the Palisade Chamber of Commerce website. But beyond peaches, you can also find apricots, okra, plums, honey, and wine. Oh yes. Palisade is the promised land for lovers of fresh fruits, vegetables, and winos alike. So, to pay homage to the Presidents of the United States of America (the band, not the men), I went to the country and ate a lot of peaches. And then…I brought back a whole case of peaches to cook with.

I took a third of these and froze them–so you can expect some delicious peach pie or cobbler recipes later in the season when you’re craving that fresh-tasting fleshy goodness. But what to do with the rest? I declare this week is peach week here at Bacon & Other Bad Habits. So, Viola!, here is one of the recipes that I cooked up as a result of my peach adventure.
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09 October 2010

Be Nice To Bacon!

Christien Meindertsma: How pig parts make the world turn

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08 October 2010

Good Risotto Gone Bad

We’ve all been there. You read a recipe and think, “Wow, that sounds delicious!” only to end up with a bland or boring concoction that you just wasted 30+ minutes of your life on. It happens to everyone, regardless of culinary savvy. Sometimes it’s the fault of the recipe, sometimes the cook, and sometimes external forces of differing cooktops or oven temperatures; altitude; humidity.

Life in a kitchen is an adventure and the recipe listed below is not exactly what I made. The recipe below is what I wish I had made instead. When my friend, Jess, found the recipe and sent it to me, we were both excited by how low the calorie count was for how rich the recipe sounded. Hell, I even ate dairy because I thought it would be worth it. And to be clear, it wasn’t awful. It just wasn’t the amazing meal we had both envisioned and salivated for.
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30 September 2010

A Grilling Fairy Tale


It’s hard to believe it’s officially Autumn, especially with the heat wave that many of us are feeling. I hear my friends in Atlanta are just as hot as it is here in Denver (still in the record-breaking upper 80s and low 90s). So in celebration, here’s one more Summer-inspired recipe that I’ve decided to tell in a whimsical way like a food fairy tale picture book!
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22 September 2010

10 Foods You Can Actually Eat


It seems like every time I open a magazine or gaze upon the interweb there is another food that I shudder to think about eating. In the past few years I’ve discovered that I get sick (stomach ache, gas, or worse) when I eat certain foods. Still others give me hives or headaches. Every one it seems is vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, intolerant, allergic, and still many other adjectives–all of these terms used to describe our relationship to food.Crack open any Michael Pollan book, as my best friend tells me, and you’ll discover all of our food is almost literally made of corn. Staying in tonight with your Netflix account? Food Inc. has made my brother-in-law think twice about purchasing any meat product at a big box store again.

Today another girlfriend posted this link from the Daily Beast, “Dangerous Ingredients,” verifying that fake sweetners and processed foods are, shocker, bad for you. Photo galleries like this one help us to make informed decisions about the food we eat–where it comes from and more importantly what it does to our bodies. I am certainly not knocking the new food revolution. In fact, I think I might be part of it.

But, that said, are there any foods we can eat?
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