Oven-Baked Bacon

Bacon is one of my weaknesses. For years, I was a vegetarian, but secretly, on Saturday mornings when T and I would go out for breakfast, I would indulge in a few strips of bacon. There's something about the saltiness of it that I crave and it just completes a Saturday morning breakfast.

But no matter how much I loved bacon, I rarely made it myself. I found it super messy and I hated that hot oil always popped up and burned me and covered my stove top. Baking my bacon though has changed all of this. It is a foolproof way to cook bacon and I always  have perfectly cooked, non-curly bacon that has an easy clean up. The other great thing is that it is one less thing I have to watch on the stove when I am making eggs, pancakes and vegetables. 

Oven-Baked Bacon

Ingredients

• strips of your favourite bacon

Directions

• Line a baking sheet with tinfoil and place a cooling rack on top.
• Lay strips of bacon out on cooling rack in a single layer and put in centre rack of oven. Turn oven on to 400 degrees (do not preheat) and bake for 18-20 minutes or until bacon has reached desired crispness.
• Remove tray from oven and transfer bacon strips to a plate lined with paper towels to remove excess grease.

Bacon, Tomato and Cheese Frittata

Pancakes are our traditional Sunday morning breakfast, but this week, I wanted to be a little less hands on and give this quick frittata recipe a try. It was a nice change of pace and, since we don't eat a lot of bacon, a real treat to have something a little salty and well, let's just say it: greasy. 

I used six eggs which was two more than the recipe called for so it took a little longer to cook, but two of us easily split it. (Split may not be the right word here... there was definitely a hungry man in my kitchen that may have had more than his half!). Overall, a great way to mix up breakfast and give me some time to sit back and relax while this was cooking. A great way to start a Sunday.

Ingredients

• six eggs
• 1 tomato, diced
• 6 slices of bacon, cooked and chopped
• 1/2 cup of shredded cheese (I used cheddar)
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

• In a skillet on medium, melt 1 tbsp of butter.
• In a bowl, beat the eggs slightly, then add the rest of the ingredients and stir.
• Pour in the warm skillet and cover. 
• Cook for 8 - 10 minutes, or until centre is set.

Recipe adapted from Kraft Canada's What's Cooking magazine

Squash Soup with Bacon and Asiago Crumpets

On Sundays I feel that we should be having a full "Sunday night" dinner. But even though I took out a roast out of the freezer yesterday, it still wasn't defrosted in time to make dinner tonight, so we came up with Plan B: Butternut Squash Soup and Bacon and Asiago Crumpets.

Butternut Squash Soup

I didn't have a recipe so I used my basic Leek and Potato recipe and modified it slightly. Here's what I did:

1. Cut one medium butternut squash down the middle and roasted in the oven for one hour.
2. Melted two teaspoons of butter in a large pot and added one diced onion. Let cook for five minutes.
3. Add two diced up potatoes and one and a half cartons of chicken stock. Let boil until potatoes cook.
4. Cut up squash and add to the soup. 
5. Puree with immersion blender.
6. Add 1/2 cup of cream and 1/2 cup of white wine. 
7. Add salt, pepper and splash of nutmeg.
8. Serve in bowls and add a dollop of sour cream.

Overall, a pretty basic recipe and it turned out pretty well. I think this will be a winter favourite.

Bacon and Asiago Crumpets

These were delish! I got this recipe from the Mildred Pierce Restaurant brunch cookbook. They were good and pretty easy to make, but I certainly don't need 12 of them. My husband, T, really liked these though and maybe they won't be around that long.

They had a nice flavour and had a bit of a bite to them with the asiago cheese and the scallions. I think they might be nice in the toaster too for enjoyment throughout the week.

Lessons learned:

• I can make soup without a recipe
• If a recipe calls for crumpet rings, if you don't mind a messy border, you don't need them
• Hillebrand Riesling is our new favourite wine and it went really well with the mild soup