Bacon Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

Patrick and I have been pretty well behaved on the food front lately. Notice the recent lack of brownie recipes? What better way to celebrate our discipline than with bacon?

Ingredients
1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1/4 lb bacon, cut into pieces, cooked until crisp, then drained
1 1/2 cup buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, try these alternatives.)
1 egg
1 tablespoon bacon grease
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

How To
Combine the buttermilk, egg and bacon grease. In another bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until everything is just combined-- lumps are fine.

Heat your griddle and grease it with butter. Pour the batter onto the hot griddle. I used an ice cream scoop for uniformity. Once the batter is on the griddle, drop your blueberries and bacon on top.

My mother likes to do it the opposite way-- put the bacon on the griddle, pour the batter over-- but these pancakes take a fairly long time to cook through, so I put them on top.

Flip when the top of the pancake looks dry and is full of little holes. These aren't quite ready to flip...

Cook until both sides of the pancake are golden brown. Serve hot with butter and syrup. These pancakes are Secret Agent Pancakes-- they look like normal, plain pancakes from the outside and then bam! Bacony blueberry buttermilk goodness.


This recipe (which easily doubles or triples) serves two hungry people.

Have you had any good watermelon this summer?

I haven't. All the melons I've brought home have been disappointments-- mealy and dry. I'm bummed.

How do you pick your watermelon? Cherries? Peaches?

Chicken, Apricot and Bell Pepper Skewers

How good do these look? Fresh fruit is a fantastic addition to your grilling routine and tasty on a skewer. Apricots were tasty here but peaches or pineapple would be excellent as well.

Ingredients
1 lb skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized chunks
1 cup cold coffee
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons granulated onion
1 tablespoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon ground ginger
6 apricots, cut into quarters
2 large bell peppers, cut into bite-sized chunks (I used miniature bell peppers here)

How To
Combine the chicken and all the ingredients (save for the pepper and apricots) in a freezer bag. Seal and let marinate in the refrigerator for at least three hours. Drain and stack the chicken, apricots and peppers on skewers. Grill over medium heat until the chicken is is cooked through.


We had our skewers with some grilled polenta. It was a light and tasty dinner that didn't heat up the kitchen. Score!

It Ain't Heavy-- It's My Kitchen...

With every box I pack, I make a negative declaration about our immediate future. We will not be jetting off to snowy landscapes because all our coats are packed. We will not be washing our cars ourselves because Patrick put all the car washing tools in a big box and that big box is now sitting in a storage unit. Today, I started in on the kitchen. In the next thirty days, I will not:

• bake a cake that looks like a sandcastle, giant cupcake, or ice cream cones.
• make waffles, tiny tarts, little loaves of bread, or miniature bundt cakes.
  
• decorate baked goods of any kind-- all my frosting bags, tips, dyes, sugars, dragees and so on are now packed away.

Le sigh.

This picture pretty much sums up my day.

Seemed like the perfect day to go to the Getty...

We were having lunch when the fire started and just as we finished, we were told we had to evacuate. Problem was, the only way down from the Getty was a tram ride (they weren't letting people walk down because there were firefighters and fire on the walking path.) At first, we were waiting diligently with the rest of the herd but then realized two things:

1.) The Getty Center is made almost totally of tavertine and these huge buildings house Renoirs, van Goghs, and Manets. We were really safer inching out of a huge parking garage? I'd rather sit it out under a Warhol, thank you.

2.) We still had half a bottle of wine from lunch.

Julie & Julia -- Will you see it?

It looks kind of awesome.

Still blogging like it's my job...

We're three weeks in to the Great Bloggathon of 2009 and I'm not fatigued yet! Woot woot. I really love having a food blog, I won't lie. It gives me an excuse to try new things and seek out new adventure. Friends and family get excited when I pull out my much-abused little camera. Are you gonna blog about this?

Most importantly, it keeps me writing. I don't know many writers who write less than writing teachers. I remember many heavy-handed warnings against taking the teaching path while I was in graduate school. If you teach, you'll never write again. You'll say you're a writer but all your energy will be used up by little remarks in the margins of bad papers. To a certain extent, that's true but the blog is keeping my hand in. The great American novel may still be bubbling within me. Or many it's the great American cookbook?