Sugared Bacon

At a recent wedding shower I attended at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club, I got a chance to sample the club's sugared bacon. Now, I am a southern girl and love anything with bacon. Add some brown sugar to it, and you don't have to wait for me to grab a plate!

I have been dying to try to make this, so I attempted the recipe (which the club gave to one of the women at the shower) for Easter lunch.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cups Brown Sugar

1 pound Bacon - I used the thick sliced, but I think it would be crispier with thin sliced bacon, which is what you want

 

Prepare baking pans by covering with foil, or using a wire rack coated in cooking spray. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Dredge bacon in sugar. Be sure to be generous with the sugar on both sides. 

Bake Bacon at 350 degrees till brown, turning once, about 8 minutes per side.  

Bacon will be sticky until cool, so place on wire racks. Then transfer to wax paper until needed. 

This recipe be prepared 4 hours ahead and stored in air-tight container. Serve at room temperature.

Happy Easter

Just wanted to wish you

 Happy Easter!

I don't have many decorations around the house, but I do have this as my centerpiece:

The egg garland was $3, after my special 50% off coupon from Michaels, and I wrapped it around my vintage silver candelabra. I also used some multicolored hand-dipped taper candles I bought long ago from Pottery Barn.

I also got some cute hand towels from HomeGoods:

And my favorite, the carrots from Pier 1:

Hope you have a great day!

Dye Free Decorating

My friend Amy sent me this great link to Parents Magazine dye-free decorating for eggs, just in time for Easter this Sunday.  Here are some really cute and easy ways to decorate your eggs (even plastic ones) this Easter with items found around your house, or at your local craft store.

Use Magic Markers:

  Glue on Gems:

Use Colored Tape:

Or Tie with Ribbon:

All photos from Parents Magazine

Go here for these and more of their egg-cellent decorating ideas for Easter!

What To Do With Leftover Easter Candy

Here is what you do with your left over Easter candy (Hershey's Miniatures) and Peeps. I found this on GastroGirl, a site for beautiful food photos and links. It is originally photographed on Eclectic Recipes.  Just brilliant!

Joke of the Week

I got this in my in-box this morning, and just loved it and had to share! Happy Wednesday!

(my favorite wine)

  A woman sitting on the veranda with her husband says, "I love you”.

   He asks, "Is that you or the wine talking?"

   She replies, "It's me............. 

talking to the wine”.

Infused Water

A few months ago, when I started this diet, I was looking for drinks that fit the "healthy" category instead of just plain water. I know some people who love water, and unfortunately, I am not one of them. I need flavor.  And most flavored waters on the market have sucrose or other sugars as additives that are not part of the diet. So I had to hunt down some waters that only include two ingredients: water and natural flavors... sounds easy right? Apparently only Starbucks and Fresh Market carry these, at lease in my area of town. Here is what I found:

Ayala's herbal water was one of my favorites. The lemongrass mint vanilla and the lavender mint are truly heavenly. However, at $2.69 a bottle, and a tiny bottle at that, I could buy almost a gallon of milk. Or an entire bag of dark chocolate Hershey kisses (also on the diet, in small quantities). So I looked at another option:

Hint water is also delicious. They have less exotic flavors than herbal water, but all are crisp and refreshing. And I liked that Starbucks also sells the blackberry flavor of Hint water, so no matter where I was during the day, I could hunt down a flavored water at Starbucks. These too are pricey at $1.50 per bottle. For water.

Since Summer is here fast approaching in Florida, I find myself craving more refreshing and cold water, with a hint of something. So I thought one day, why can't I make these myself? Is there really anything difficult about adding some flavors to water? I mean, why else would such tiny bottles be so expensive?!

And honestly, I cannot tell you why they are so expensive. I can only tell you how to make your own cheaper and much more easily than hunting down your nearest Starbucks or health food store. I debuted my cucumber water and rosemary mint water at the MISRED Bloggers Unite, and have decided that these would be a staple at every event to come this spring and summer!

Here are the four easy steps:
1. Grab a pitcher or bottle to make the water in. I like the clear bottles from Ikea (below) that have their own stoppers, and they are inexpensive enough to buy a few for different flavors. Plus they look pretty in the fridge.

2. Decide what flavors you want to infuse your water with. I have used slices of fruits and veggies like lemon, lime, cucumber, orange peel- just clean them really well, and cut them in long thin slices in order to get them both in and out of the bottle. I like to use about half of one fruit or vegetable for good measure, so for cucumber water, I use 1/2 cucumber sliced longways with the middle seeds removed. If you were using orange peel, then use the peel of half of an orange. Using herbs like mint (spearmint and peppermint), rosemary, and lavender also gives water a great flavor, and I like to use at least 1 whole stem per herb in my waters.  I also recommend only leaving herbs in the water overnight, as they tend to get really concentrated in the water for a really strong flavor.

3. Place the additives in the bottle and add cold, filtered water. You could also add sparkling water to fancy it up!

my cucumber water (l), and rosemary spearmint water (r)

4. Chill overnight, and taste in the morning. If the water has reached your desired flavoring, I would recommend straining the water into another bottle (using a strainer and funnel) and removing the fruit/herbs. If it is not strong enough, leave the water in the bottle with additives for another 12-24 hours. Serve the water straight up or over ice.

There are certainly more recipes online, and some call for boiling the water and adding the herbs and letting it cool down before refrigerating. Some also call for straining minced herbs and fruits as part of the process, but I feel that if you use larger pieces (like an entire rosemary stem or cucumber slices), they are easier to remove and prevent tiny pieces from getting in your drink. They also give the bottles a pretty presentation.

I will be experimenting in the weeks to come with flavored vodkas, as I believe you should be able to infuse them in a similar way. Hope you enjoy this super easy and refreshing treat!

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author, and she has not been paid a dime for her review of these stores or products. Its just an FYI to DIY!

Blushing....

I was highlighted as this week's Freshly Picked Rosebud from the fabulous Kristin and Megan, the Bon Bon Rose Girls.  I had the pleasure of finally meeting Kristin at the Bloggers Unite event last weekend, and she is just as delightful in person as she is on her blog! I absolutely love their daily posts, and really appreciate what they contribute to the blogosphere. They are a daily read for sure!

If you want to become a Rosebud like me, go here for more information about how you can become one too!

Kristin & Megan, thanks for truly making my week! Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Refrigerator Update and Hostess Tip #6

Let's begin at the end-

Hostess Tip #6:

Never leave canned sodas (or carbonated drinks) in a new fridge if you are still unsure about the temperature setting. They could freeze and explode. All.over.the.new.clean.fridge.

And now to the beginning:
If you weren't getting a few laughs from the last post about setting up our new fridge, maybe you can from the fact that we had another issue with it last night. When I organized it, I happened to put the Diet Dr. Pepper soda cans at the top, since we drink them occasionally on the weekends, and I like mine pretty cold. I'm sure you can imagine what happens next, but let me clarify first. This was not the first time that a can has exploded on me, so I cautiously checked them on Tuesday night to make sure they were not frozen. I honestly did not think the fridge was as cold as our last one, so I thought they would be fine to leave them up there for another day and check them later.

Last night, we went to dinner at the in-laws house, so I didn't open our fridge until I was going to bed at 10PM to get some water. When I did, this is what shot out at me:

It was a DDP rocket!!! Seriously, there was this loud pop as I opened the door and  I instinctively curled into a ball on the floor with my arms curled around my head. There must have been some pressure built up in the fridge because it literally exploded open when I pulled on it, and a mangled DDP can with frozen soda still in it landed at my feet. After realizing what had just happened, I stood up from my duck & cover position to find that the entire inside of the clean new fridge had been covered in frozen brown soda. Another mangled can lay on its side still on the top shelf (the first casualty) and a third can lie in wait. I immediately removed the third can and put it in the sink to thaw out, while secretly praying that it too not explode all over my kitchen.

What is really fun about cleaning up after a frozen soda, is that while you are busy pulling out food and removing every shelf of your new refrigerator, the iced pieces of soda begin to melt, since the temperature is rising with the door open. This makes for more of a mess... think slushy. So basically, I cleaned the entire inside of the new refrigerator again last night.

And our ice maker still does not work.  The saga continues....

How To: New Refrigerator and Hostess Tip #5

Sunday = Fun Day 

Not this week, at least. Getting a new refrigerator was not fun.

 Sunday = Nightmare

As you know, we are renovating my brother's house. He inherited some newer stainless steel appliances from my parents house, and so we were getting rid of all his white ones. I also have white appliances at my house (never again!), and our fridge had seen better days. It works perfectly, but the handles and molding have turned a yellow hue, and the front of the left door is rusting to the point that I cannot clean it all off. So, I decided that it would be in our best interest to take my brother's white fridge to replace ours.

Keep in mind, I have never replaced appliances before... I measured the sizes about 20 times, and they appeared to be about the same. The new one is actually a little more shallow than our old one, but about the same size inside. It didn't dawn on me until Saturday that I need to measure the doorways in our house in order to get these in and out... and I came to discover that the only door they will fit through is our front door. If we remove the doors from the fridge first. Not a huge deal, my husband thought. He surveyed our old fridge with his dad and they knew it could be done. So we made plans to bring over the new fridge on Sunday and swap them out.

I got the coolers ready while they went to get the new fridge. I cleaned out our old fridge, keeping only the things we really needed / didn't want to waste from the fridge and freezer, and threw out everything else. I managed to get it all down to two coolers worth, and I added ice, thinking that once we got the new fridge in here, after a couple hours of getting cold, we could just put everything back in. And our coolers are the kind that hold ice for 6 days, so I was confident that our food would be just fine.

Boy, was I wrong! Once my husband and great brothers-in-law came back with the new fridge for our house, I thought I was ready for them. I had already turned off the fridge and had a towel ready in case the old fridge leaked water. We had shut off the water line, and the guys helped pull the old fridge out of the cabinet.

Getting the new fridge out of the truck was a job in itself, and then we had to get it up 4 stairs and through our front door. Brothers-in-law make for great laborers! Once it was inside, we figured out how to connect the waterline, but couldn't plug it in. Why you ask? Because when you transport a fridge, you are NEVER supposed to lay it down in the truck, which is what my husband did, because none of us knew this! Apparently, the oil in the compressor will migrate, and if you plug it in right away, it can cause damage to the compressor and ruin fridge. So we had to leave it unplugged until the oil could migrate back down into the compressor.... overnight....

Food sitting in coolers aside, we now had to get the old fridge out. The old fridge, which at this point had completely defrosted, was leaking water all over my wood floors. The old fridge that is too wide that our front door had to be taken off the hinges in order to get it out (PS- we have a really old, glass paned front door that I had bet on getting broken somewhere in this process). The fridge is still sitting on our front porch, looking trashy, awaiting pickup from our local Habitat for Humanity  Outlet. After we got the front door back on, the water and dirt cleaned up from the wood floors, the waiting process began. And we realized that we had nothing to drink or eat... but here is the newest edition to our kitchen:

New(er), shiny, and white! We plugged it in on Monday morning and let it cool down all day. Monday night I put the food back in it.... luckily with such amazing coolers, our frozen stuff stayed frozen, with the exception of some soft frozen yogurt, and our cold stuff stayed fresh.Here is the beautiful new inside after putting all our food back in:

It actually looks full, but I promise you this shot is deceiving. We don't really have much to eat. Its mostly condiments, beer, bread, and some veggies. But we're not done yet.... the ice maker now does not work, and my husband is convinced that the filtered water tastes funny, even though I replaced the water filter. I had to mop the floor twice last night, and I need to remove some more scuff marks from shuffling refrigerators. So more things to work on as the week progresses, not to mention a trip to the grocery store.

The How To's (& How Not's) to Replacing A Refrigerator:

- Prepare ahead of time.  Research online the process of replacing a piece of equipment to see what is involved, instead of winging it like we did.
- Measure, measure, measure. Make sure the new one fits back into where the old one was, and if it fits through the doorways in your house. Figure out if the handles can come off as well- ours did, but if they didn't, we would have had to clear another 3 inches, which meant the fridge would have to go out through a window.
-If you are getting a slightly used fridge, make sure you have a new water filter and that the ice machine works. Repairs can be costly, so they tell me online after the fact. 
-Anticipate the worst, time-wise. I was lucky with the food, but I can see it going badly and having to throw everything out. Also there is no such thing as a quick switch out when it comes to appliances.
-Have multiple people to help. Luckily my husband has strong brothers who could help lift the fridge and wheel it in on a dolly (also highly recommended). We would not be able to do it with just the two of us. I don't care how if you have no steps or if the fridge has wheels. You need multiple people.

And Hostess Tip #5:
If you want to replace your existing refrigerator, go to your local appliance store, buy a new one and have the store deliver it, set it up for free, and remove your old one. (skip other tips above!)

The Starter - Its Story

You may remember this recipe from one of my first blog posts, but I wanted to explain why I featured it at Bloggers Unite and have renamed it this:

Here's the story: Back in March 2009, I helped host a Bachelorette party for one of my college roommates. Since we all now live in different cities, we decided to gather in Orlando, Florida to stay at my roommate Nikki's house overnight and go out after eating appetizers and dinner. I was asked to bring my salsa, which I used to make as a treat for them in college, and decided that they needed to try this new recipe as well.  Long story short, the dip was polished off long before the end of the night, and EVERYONE wanted the recipe.

Now, I love my roomies, but knowing them, I would be asked a million times for the recipe via e-mail or text, and this would probably continue for years.... so, after being a fan of many blogs online, I decided to start my own on which I could post recipes and ideas that my friends wanted to replicate. That way, they could simply look up the website any time, and I didn't have to search for the recipe or try to rely on every detail from memory. And so in the end, this recipe was what started it all.

Thanks to my girls and their addiction... just look what you have inspired!!!

And thanks to Amy again for the original recipe. I think we've sent it around the world a few times by now!

Here is the recipe again:

2 Cans Black Beans, drained
2 Cans White Shoepeg Corn, drained
8oz. Feta Cheese (I use reduced fat feta to save a few calories!)
Bunch of Green Onions, chopped
1 cup Peanut Oil
1 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
1 cup Sugar
Garlic Salt and Pepper, to taste

Combine all ingredients, chill, and serve with white or blue corn chips. This recipe makes a good amount for a large gathering, so I like to half the recipe for a small dinner party appetizer.Enjoy!