Bacon and Baking

Sunday evening and it's time for a re-cap of my weekend meals. Randy ended up coming down with a pretty nasty cold so we had to put our Friday Don Cherry's meal plan on hold. I was in the mood for some nachos or something like that, so Randy fried up some lean ground beef with some Frank's Red Hot Sauce (Xtra hot) and I threw together some nachos with onion and cheddar cheese:

As you can tell from the pic, the cheese wasn't completely melted so it probably should have stayed in the oven longer. But by this time, we were both pretty hungry and didn't really care. These nachos definitely had some kick to them with the addition of the hot sauce and totally hit the spot for a Friday night. We had them with salsa and of course, our good friend:

On Saturday I was looking to do something with the leftover ground beef from the nachos. I really hate wasting food and I had almost half a pound of ground beef left over in the fridge. Since I didn't have much on hand to use it with, I decided to get a little experimental. I boiled some whole-wheat macaroni and fried up the ground beef. I then tossed the two together along with a couple cups of shredded cheddar cheese, some garlic powder, and a diced tomato. I also had some cream left over from the Quiche Lorraine I made a few posts ago so I poured that over the concoction once I had it in a casserole dish. I topped it with bread crumbs and baked in the oven at 350 for half an hour. This was the end result:

Kind of like a homemade (tastier and much less salty) version of Hamburger Helper. We paired it with...take a guess...a homemade roll!

Kathryn's Burger Macaroni Concoction

Randy really enjoyed this meal (as did I). Nothing beats being experimental in the kitchen with whatever you have on hand and actually succeeding with it. We even had enough left over to have for lunch today and in my opinion, it was even better the second day.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love bacon. If bacon were good for you, I have no doubt that I would eat it for every single meal. Plain bacon, bacon sandwiches, bacon and eggs, you name it. There are very few salty foods I embrace wholeheartedly but bacon is the supreme one. In fact, my sister gave me this shirt a couple years ago and I wear it with pride:

Me showing my support for bacon

So with my love for bacon in mind, I set out to make a Bacon Cheddar Dip to have with some chips on Friday and Saturday night. I combined 1 cup of cheddar cheese, 2 tablespoons of chopped onion, 1 cup of mayonnaise, and 1 and a half cups of cold milk (whisked to make it thicker). Then I fried up five or six pieces of bacon, crumbled them and threw them in the dip, then stirred it all together and put in the fridge for an hour. Holy smokes. Bacony Goodness.

Bacon Cheddar Dip

This dip was amazing. I also added about a tablespoon of sour cream just to thicken it up a bit. Saturday night Randy and I hunkered down to watch The Green Hornet (pretty decent movie, I'm starting to develop quite a liking for superhero movies) and I devoured the better part of this dip with some rippled plain chips and beer. Om nom nom.

Tonight I went with a recipe from Rocco Dispirito. He used to have a reality show about the opening of his new restaurant a few years back (do you remember this, Pamela? I think we used to watch it). Anyway, I picked up a cookbook from him over Christmas entitled "Now Eat This!". It's a really neat cookbook with easy to find ingredients that takes a lot of America's comfort foods and makes them over to be lower calorie and lower in fat. The recipe I went with is called "Salmon with a Mustard Crust and Sauteed Spinach".

This is what the salmon looked like before I popped it under the broiler:

The orange stuff you see on top of the salmon is actually orange slices. Orange slices mixed with some dijon mustard and chopped red onion. Initially, I was pretty apprehensive about putting orange slices on salmon - to me, it just seemed like really conflicting flavours. But I really like the recipes I have made out of this cookbook so far so I figured I would give it a go. The spinach was sauteed with a few bacon bits (bacon...mmm....) and some garlic and I laid the salmon on top and paired it with a simple baked potato.

Salmon with Mustard Crust and Sauteed Spinach

Although it's difficult to tell from the picture, this was one of the nicest presentations of meals I've ever made. And as for my apprehension about orange slices? Completely unfounded. The orange was the perfect complement to the salmon. Sounds almost redundant, but I sometimes find salmon too...fishy. The citrusy orange taste was just enough to keep the taste of the salmon but overwhelm any extra fishiness that would be there were it not for the orange. Delicious! The original calorie and fat counts from this meal (before Rocco's makeover) were 467 calories and 21.8 grams of fat. This version comes in at 242 calories and 8.3 grams of fat (mostly omega 3 fatty acids). Thank you, Rocco!

Today I was jonesin' to have a dessert with my supper and I realized that it has been an incredibly long time since I made a cake. Despite my disappointment with the parfait I made last, I once again went to my Jello/Baker's Chocolate baking tin and pulled out a recipe for a coconut cake. After a few little mishaps (which include a chunk being left in the cake pan and coconut EVERYWHERE), I succeeded in making this delicious treat:

Coconut Cake

My icing job is a little sub-par as I don't actually own a spatula but this turned out to taste really great. My only qualm is that I may have left the cake in the oven a little too long as it was a little crusty on the outsides but wasn't dry on the inside so it wasn't a total bust. The icing is just Cool Whip and Jello Vanilla Pudding and Pie mix which I really enjoyed because it made the cake light tasting and not ridiculously sweet like some cake icing can be. So to cap off our tasty and low-fat salmon, we threw in a slice of cake and a glass of milk:

We also sent about half the cake upstairs to our landlords to keep me from eating it all repay them for the spaghetti they had given us earlier in the week.

I have started reading another food blog and saw a recipe for a ground chicken meatloaf that I am thinking of making for supper tomorrow. It calls for a nice bit of spinach and I have quite a lot leftover.

I should mention that this week's poll is now closed and 50% of voters chose Havarti as their favorite cheese. There was also one vote each for Gouda, Cheddar, Mozzarella, and Other (which I know was Pamela, as she expressed her anger at me for not including Blue Cheese). This week's poll is devoted to food shows. I've been a fan of Man V. Food on OLN for a little while now but I've also recently been getting into watching The Food Network quite a bit. So this week, vote on which food show you like to watch the best.

Shoutouts from the past few days go to: Plain Tostitos, Jolly Ranchers, and random bites of cheese while grating it.

This is Sebastian in his "I'm not lazy, I'm comfortable" typical pose:

Rocco Dispirito Salmon with Mustard Crust and Sauteed Spinach

Serves 4

Nonstick cooking spray

1 small red onion, sliced very thin

1/3 cup Dijon mustard

1 orange, peeled and segmented

salt and pepper

4 salmon fillets

2 garlic cloves, sliced very thin

2 tablespoons real bacon bits

12 ounces baby spinach

1. Preheat the broiler on low. Line a baking sheet with foil - spray it with cooking spray and set aside.

2. In a small bowl, mix the mustard with the onion. Add the orange segments and toss to combine thoroughly. Season the mixture generously with salt and pepper.

3. Lay the salmon on the prepared baking sheet - season it with salt and pepper. Divide the onion mixture amongst the 4 fillets, covering the surface of the fish completely.

4. Broil the salmon until the onion mixture is almost charred and the salmon is just cooked through, about 8 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, heat a large nonstick pan over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, spray it with cooking spray. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until it is fragrantand just beginning to brown, about 1 minute. Then add the bacon bits and spinach and season lightly with salt and pepper. Cover the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, until the spinach wilts, about 3 minutes.

6. When the spinach is cooked, remove it from the pan, blotting with a paper towel to soak up moisture. Arrange on a plate and place the salmon on top and serve.