Bacon Cinnamon Rolls

Apparently I am on a wicked sweet and salty kick with baked goods. First an apple cheddar pie, now this. Let's rewind shall we? Where did this all get started? I blame it on Alton Brown and Netflix. After a week of binge watching Good Eats, my mind was swirling with ideas. Especially after an episode where Alton makes bacon praline. Bacon praline! For snacking! What?? He's a horrible genius, he is.

So I came up with (what I thought at the time was) a genius idea for a bacon praline and salted caramel cake that substituted half of the butter in the cake itself with bacon fat. I might have been a little...overenthusiastic. I made the cake. I didn't like it. It turned out to be too much. Butter + bacon grease in the cake, butter in the swiss meringue buttercream, butter in the caramel sauce, all topped with a crapton of bacon praline. Too. Much. To. Handle. I had Phillip take the cake with him to work the next day and after the initial shock of realizing there was bacon on a cake, it did receive a warm reception from his coworkers. I still didn't really like it though.

Apple Pie with a Cheddar Cheese Crust

My dear readers, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news? I got a job. The bad news? I got a job.

As some of you may know, I moved from Chicago to New York back in April and left my job there in order to do so. My educational background is in marketing research (I actually have a master's degree that I got when I was 22 years old, if I may toot my own horn for a second...okay, I'm done now) and I worked at small marketing analytics consulting firm during my time in the windy city. It was nice at first, but toward the end I was miserable, which made it that much easier for me to leave and start something new here in Brooklyn. I had been casually looking for another job in the same field, but after I started this blog, most of my time was spent here. In the six months that have passed this blog has turned into my world, a (mostly) productive way for me to channel my energies. I say "mostly" because sometimes I get down on myself for not being good enough, or for taking shit photos, or for whatever else I can nitpick about. The human ability to create stress out of an otherwise completely stress free environment never ceases to amaze me. All tangents aside, I've learned more than I thought I would in this short time, I've met some wonderful people, and I've developed a deep appreciation for what it means to be a food blogger, a recipe developer, a home chef, a photographer.

Unfortunately, what this new job means for me is that I won't have as much time for good old O&O. Believe you me, this is by no means a goodbye. I could be in a hospital bed and I'd still be updating this blog. What it does mean is that I'll be around less often. Currently I try to post once or twice a week, this might slow down to once every two weeks. Especially as the sun will be setting quite early in the coming days, I'll only have time to photograph my creations on the weekends. To give you an idea, let me walk you through how I made and shot this apple pie. I started working on it at 11:30 am: setting up all the ingredients, weighing flour, cutting in butter, grating cheese, slicing apples, accidentally huffing cinnamon, clumsily weaving a lattice crust, taking photos every step of the way, washing my hands a thousand times over (so I don't get flour stuck inside my camera). I worked until I could no longer take photos as the sun was too far gone, around 5:30 pm. And I didn't even get to cut out a slice! I ran out of time.

I won't be able to do that anymore on a wonderfully sunny Tuesday (that's on top of other days that are full of recipe testing and re-shoots, which I'll spare you the agony of reading about...). I'll have to reserve it for Saturdays or Sundays when I'd much rather sleep in and eat breakfast at 2 in the afternoon, then have my early evening bourbon at 4 and watch tv for the rest of the day. Now, instead of lazy weekends, I'll be cooking, taking notes, and taking photos. All because I've carved out a home for myself here, a little blog home in the vast wild west of the internet.

Maine

I spent a week up in Portland, Maine. It was a long overdue vacation that kept getting pushed back due to work obligations and other such life events. It was a splendidly charming town that lived up to every expectation I had. We stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast and took full advantage of the "bed" and "breakfast" part of it all. We walked from one end of Portland to the other on more than one occasion and rarely had a disappointing meal.

It's a really beautiful walking city with some very interesting architecture. The houses up there are so old timey and Victorian looking that Phillip and I kept joking about them being inhabited by Civil War ghosts. It didn't help that the weather was pretty dreary for most of our trip, with wind chimes (which hung on an inordinately large number of houses there) often clinging and clanging due to the strong wind....not that I believe in ghosts, you know.

Most importantly, we ate a lot of seafood, really good seafood. Oh. My. God. The oysters up there are so fresh and so amazing. We went to a place called Eventide that had the most delicious oysters and lobster stew. We went to Central Provisions and had boquerones, tuna crudo, and shrimp a la plancha, among other things, and they blew my friggin mind. Our second full day there, we drove an hour outside of town to go to a lobster place right on the coast only to realize they had closed for the season, their last weekend of service being one week before we got there! So instead of eating lobster rolls, we drove back to Portland and in my zeal to get fresh lobster during this trip (since I was in Maine after all), I reserved two spots on a lobstering boat the next day so we could see the action, after which we went to Portland Lobster Company and finally got the lobstah meal we had been craving.

Outside of seafood, there is this french bistro that we fell in love with. Is it dumb that we were in Portland for six days and both our first and last meal in town was there? Great food, great drinks, unpretentious atmosphere. Plus they had sweetbreads and beef tongue. So much yum. We also had a rough time with some Nashville hot chicken, and ate some great pasta from a little italian place just down the block from our bed and breakfast. It was a great trip, but we were happy to come home to our kitties.

Roasted Beets with Pistachio Vinaigrette

I never really cared for beets until I stumbled upon a lasagna recipe with roasted beets and an herbed béchamel sauce a few years back. I absolutely had to make it as my curiosity overwhelmed my otherwise lukewarm feelings about these vibrantly colored roots. It turned out to be (at the time) the best vegetarian lasagna I had ever eaten. Thus my beet craze began. I'm pretty sure I made that lasagna twice more in the month or two that followed, and I also started ordering beets at any restaurant that offered them on the menu.

There is this pub in Chicago that serves really good British food. You know, the stereotypical stuff: fish and chips, bangers and mash, scotch eggs, bubble and squeak. But though they have their staples, the rest of their menu is ever changing with the seasons. On one serendipitous occasion, I happened to order their roasted beets. It was tossed in an amazing pistachio vinaigrette and topped with a dollop of ricotta. I was through the moon, it was so good.