Hey, do you like bacon? And do you like pie?

This is BACON PIE.


Ingredients

• 1 lb listeria bacon


• 3 potatoes or so


• 1 onion


• some mushrooms


• sour cream


• spices... well, use your imagination.

Method

1. Slice up your vegetables. I used a mandolin that would be much more useful if it could only stay sharp for more than a few vegetables. (Gonna have to get a real knife sharpener, not just that cheapo-sticko thing.)




2. Lay the bacon from the center to the edge of the cooking thingy. Here I used a glass casserole bowl with lid, but later you'll see that it was probably a bad idea. The original recipe said to put it in an oven-safe frying pan.




3. Place your sliced stuff in the middle. This might have been too much actually.




4. Add some sour cream and various herbs and spices. I forgot to mix them in with the vegetables before that, so don't do what I did. Also, random green stuff.




5. Bring the hanging edges of the bacon together. Now you have a bacon package. Do not eat!



6. Cover it, stick in oven at 400 F, and bake long enough for the potatoes to be probably cooked. Like an hour, maybe.




7. Oh crap, the bacon pie exploded.




8. Well, that's okay. Just flip it over and put it back in for another 10 minutes, without the cover... and you might want to drain it. The bacon underneath wasn't finished cooking anyway. :(




9. Your bacon pie is browned. Time to get it ready! :D




10. Here, we present to the gourmands and discriminating tongues, the finest in contemporary cuisine - a serving of red potatoes, onions, and champignons wrapped in crisped salted pork belly, with a side of crème de blé d'inde. A profound fruity rouge, Rasteau, from the Côtes du Rhône villages (2005) pairs nicely with any provincial meals.

What the hell - this is the first time I made this dish and I didn't know what I was doing. I only did it because of a suggestion from my cap'n Crooks (from PP).

Happy Hallowe'en! Part II!

As I felt the reverberations of pain from a certain blogger of not having a Hallowe'en event, I decided to make some caramel popcorn. Now, not knowing how to make caramel popcorn is never daunting to the caramel popcorn maker, as the treat itself is the golden buttery sugary crunchy tasty reward... OF THE GREATER GOOD. But let us analyse the physics and chemistry of making such caramel popcorn.

Too much sugar, not enough liquid, will make this virtually impossible to stir once the caramel from the pot hits the popcorn. The syrup will harden almost immediately after it's removed from heat, so this is why the last step is:
Bake while stirring. The caramel will melt slightly, enough for the stirring to occur while in the oven. Otherwise, the end result will be:
A big clumpy mess, which will be too hard to clean... normally. But harken, ye sugar lovers - hardened sugar will dissolve in water, and thus:
Stick the pans back in the still warm oven with water of course, and all will melt away like the last snow of spring. (Not the gross black pile that never seems to melt until July, no.)
THIS STUFF IS GOOD. Why? Perhaps it is the combination of fluffy, fresh popcorn covered in a thin, light shell of delectible sugar and butter; formed when the combination of melting and turning each popped kernel caused the white starchy puff to be completely coated in caramelty goodness. I don't need a reason. Whateva.

In the end, the result will be a tasty Hallowe'en treat that will disappear before you like the students who mysteriously disappeared when I asked them to put up their chairs yesterday.

Birthday Mommy

Yesterday, I woke up bright and early at noon, walked to the grocery store (which seems infinitely farther than when I'm jogging by there), and bought stuff for a cheesecake. Then I got caught in the rain on the way back, while my neighbours who happened to be walking down the same way spotted me attempting to jog home. I ran into the pharmacy and bought a box of white almond bark and a lotto ticket. Then I got home and made the cheesecake (which, by the way, can gain interesting texture with a layer of almond slivers on top before baking):

TEH RSUMIST CITRUS CHEESECAKE

2 packages of softened cream cheese (I suppose even the store-brand one)
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1-2 tbsp each lemon and orange juice (fresh squeezed or whatever)
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1-2 tbsp melted butter... make that 1. No, 2. Well, you'll see.

OPTIONAL:
almond slivers
orange and lemon zest

1. Set oven at 350 F. Use an 8" springform pan, or regular cake pan, or a pie plate. Whatever's clean. And ovenproof.


2. Mix together the crumbs and the butter, and line the bottom of your pan with it. We used to use a pie plate because my mum and sister didn't think of using other things in the house. Then I discovered one day at a restaurant that cheesecakes don't have to look like pies...? Yeah we're really messed up.


3. Using a mixer, beat the devil out of the eggs (lol), and add sugar. Then add the cream cheese. The mixture might be lumpy at first (especially the store-brand one), so you have to keep beating until everything is smooth, otherwise something disastrous will happen!!!1!


4. Add in lemon and orange juice. If I had cleaner fruit and a zester I would have added lemon and orange zest. And if I had found limes yesterday I would have added one too. But I couldn't find squat at the store. >:(


5. Pour batter into crumb-lined pan. Layer optional things on top, like almond slivers. Man, those things are tasty.


6. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the center is no longer gooey.


7. Let the cheesecake cool otherwise you might get an upset tummy. :(


8. Feed to mommy. :)

Put in more sugar if you like a sweeter cheesecake, considering there's not much sugar for the lemon and orange juice in the batter. My mum actually doesn't like sweet stuff (despite her chocolate cravings) so she said this was just right. :)

Then we won the 6/49 :D:D:D:( No we didn't. Now I have to go wash the floor by hand. :(

Arigato, minna-san!

Attribute the absence of posts during long weekends to travelling.

I had some great moments this weekend. One was jamming with Davy on his gui-tars in his fantastic loft downtown Montreal. Not that I know how to jam on a guitar. Jorghnassen kareoked to Davy's strummin' to the oldies. He also invited us to taste the 99% chocolate-with-warning that left some of us (Jorgh and I) quite shocked at its profound... cocoa-ness.

Related to this thought, we made brownies this morning before I came back to Quebec. After a few chunks of semi-sweet melded with oil, flour, eggs, sugar, and even more oil, I wondered why one cannot eat the baking chocolate in a similar fashion as mentioned above. Of course, the answer lies in the fat content and the nature of the product. I also discovered that the cheaper the chocolate, the less you're likely to enjoy it. (Case in point: milk chocolate Easter bunny priced at 89c ... before Easter.)

I also had a nice Schwartz lunch with friends yesterday, followed by a pretty entertaining game of Cranium. Unfortunately, Jorgh and I were an over-powerful team, since we had the greatest factor of communication between ourselves (6 years of experience and counting) compared to Johanne and Rachel's teams that knew each other for barely 5 months. Also, Johanne's boyfriend Francis was clearly more francophone than his anglophone game-handling skills could compete with, which did lead to many hilarious moments for which we all did applaud in merriment and good show. (Push versus pull?)

My most unfortunate change of plans was to discover that the learning center cancelled my Thursday and Friday dates, but wanted me to come in tomorrow. SEE BELOW. Unfortunately this message was left on the answering machine on Friday when I had already left Quebec (and my mum only told me in the evening), and today is a holiday. I hastily left a message on their machine Friday evening from Montreal... So they will probably already have either someone else scheduled for tomorrow, or I will find out in the morning if they confirm this message.

EDIT: No, my mum misheard. It's 2 Tuesdays from now, not tomorrow.

Davy'd Better Watch This Space...

Random Notes

I have yet to finish those tax forms.

I got a phone call this morning from that mess of a school asking me to go all next week. For the hell of it, I told them that I couldn't go on the 5th and 6th, since I already told my other school that I would be there. Lo and behold, they accepted that arrangement. I wonder how desperate they are...

How to cook a steak:
1- preheat frying pan on medium high
2- put oil in pan
3- put steak in pan, about 5 minutes
4- turn steak over once
5- eat
0- buy Schwartz Steak Spice, dammit

What did you do to my pancake!?

This is the hundredth time I mention pancakes. If my blog search worked (which it doesn't, for good reason), it would probably have found more mention of pancakes than any other word in my vocabulary.

I am still supply teaching for the colleague of mine who is now confirmed to be out of comission for a few more weeks. She teaches home economics. Which means that ***PANCAKE*** is to be one of the things the students learn to cook.

So I doubled the recipe for "six 4 inch pancakes" to make enough per group of students to sample them. In my typographical haste, I neglected to include small, inoccuous words in the recipe (like "take a bowl" or "use a whisk to beat the egg first before sticking everything in haphazardly like fools") so there was much chaos and insanity. And this was just making the batter over one period.

It was a pity, in fact, that they were not cooking the pancakes during the same class. One group had a disastrous batter that was discovered only after tasting gobs of (unsuccessfully flipped) pancake. After they shed laughter-induced tears and ended their somewhat nauseating episodes with the garbage bin, I asked them what the matter was.

"Oh, it's salty."

I took a crumb and put it in my mouth. If I could go back in time, I would probably have burned it into cinders with my fiery revenge of pancake anguish. Not only was it salty beyond belief, but it was also dripping with oil. The scarred "non-stick" frying pan laid in ruination on the stovetop, disgusted with itself. (I should really throw that thing out.)

"Um... add some sugar." With the rest of the batter, they added in syrup (which didn't do much). It was also recommended that they added more oil (which turned out to be an even worse idea). Anyway, I will give them due credit despite their sad, sad, sad pancake.

Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Do not attempt with crepe recipes.

What I like about my pancake recipe is that I can put any fruit or things in the batter and it will cook thick and fluffy, although the pancake will come out sort of moist and almost gooey in the middle depending on the wetness of the fruit. With chocolate chips though, the pancake will cook much faster, and rise to cover the gigantic blobs of chocolate almost completely. Thus, the pan won't be covered in chocolate goo after flipping and frying.

Crepes won't rise (at all) so if you plan on flipping them, the chocolate will make huge burnt chocolate spots on the crepe and it doesn't ooze like pancakes. Chocolate sauce is more appropriate for crepes.

Ponder Teaching

Read my lips, I'm not the one having the bloody problem, you demented teaching wackos. Two thoughts: I hate the argument that simply because teachers everywhere else have to face total crap means Quebec teachers have to face more crap as well; being the lowest paid to start teaching in the country, it means all the young teachers who aren't intent on staying here for abuse (*cough*) will go elsewhere and be treated (and paid) properly. Also, the BC teachers' strike isn't popular, but imagine the Quebec teachers going on strike too...

I never thought of teaching as a last-resort job. (Indeed, I had once written in an elementary school project that I had intended on becoming either "teacher or violinist.") To me, those who thought that the faculty of education was full of business school or arts student dropouts were terribly, terribly wrong. It's not *full* of them anyway...

Teaching is a very difficult job. The only problems I have are classroom management related, which is common with ~90% of my peers. I am perplexed whenever a student defies me, distracts everyone, or chooses not to work. And this happens all the freaking time. If I really was teaching because I had nothing else I could do, then I'd have dropped out the very first second they put me in the field experience. I know that I am far, far, far from being a competent teacher, but I know in my heart that wanting the vocation and not turning away from it at the very start had me set in the right direction. Who said their development had to be easy or come as second nature? It sounds like a bad anime cliché, but I'm working hard to become the best teacher I can be, no matter what others believe I can't do. (Locke!)

House Party!!!

My colleague and her husband (hi, Martin!) held a housewarming last Friday. I was quite happy to get out of my apartment, but most importantly I was quite excited to see this new house. What a house! Now I wish I had a house (right, Jorghnassen?). House was barely finished a month ago, painted and detailed, and now houses couple and cute, cute bunnies (right, Jorghnassen?). If Jorghnassen comes soon, I'll try to invite ourselves over for another housewarming call. In that case I would drive ourselves over (lOlZ!!!) to the house, as I haven't driven since Thanksgiving.

"House" was written 10 times. "Jorghnassen" 4 times. ;)