Iced Irish Creamed Almond Coffee

Worst. Drink. Name. Ever. It sounds like an Irishman did something unsavory to it. The drink, however, is what Megan has described as "amazeballs." This is a professional science term. Neil Degrasse Tyson uses it all the time. It is sweet, it has alcohol, and it tastes of coffee. What more could you want? Puppies? It doesn't have puppies. Puppies taste terrible.

HORRIBLY NAMED DRINK THAT TASTES AWESOME:

Coffee ($4.49 for 12 oz.)
Almond Milk ($2.49 for 1/2 gal)
Irish Cream ($8.99 for 750 ml)

First step, make coffee. I used the whole bean coffee, which is the most expensive, but you can use any coffee you like. I also made the coffee a little weak. I imagine this would be even better with espresso, but we do not have an espresso maker. When the coffee is made, let it cool a bit then pour it into your ice cube tray of choice. Place the trays in the freezer and allow to freeze completely. You may notice that my cubes are long rectangles. Well, they're more than just that. They are these.

I have Han Solo frozen in coffeenite. Yeah. Next put in your glass 1 part Irish cream and 1 part almond milk. Stir, then add the coffee ice cubes. As you drink, the coffee melts and releases into the drink. It's great. If you don't drink booze, leave out the Irish cream. If you don't do booze or caffeine, then I'm very, very sorry. And you could use decaff. 

Now, please use the comments to come up with a better name for this drink. That's it. Drink up.

Hot Candied Bacon

So, I hopped on Pinterest after being absent from the internets for a time, and I found something amazing, and by amazing I mean important to absolutely no one but me. Aldi is following my board for this blog. Megan immediately indicated that it probably wasn't really Aldi, as Dwight Schrute is apparently following her. In truth it isn't Aldi, but the PR company ALDI US has hired to run their Pinterest board (Weber Shandwick). This excites me. Not because I believe that Aldi will somehow sponsor me or become involved in any way (seriously, have you read this blog?), but because I can picture the PR folks coming to this blog, finding it amusing, then realizing they can never tell their client about it.

It's been about a week, so I expect the cease and desist letter anytime now.

I've also been told I do not blog enough. It's true I've been posting about once a month for the past two months, but I promise to post more. I have a whole bunch of microwave based posts coming up, and even bumped into someone who wants to guest post. I am so on the ball that I managed to not get any of her contact information. Yeah.

Anyway, how do you follow up two posts about eggs? A post about bacon. Megan calls bacon "meat candy" for good reason, because it is everything that is awesome about meat. It's crispy and it melts in your mouth. We use bacon to make great meats taste even better. Bacon is the official meat of your mom, it was also the first meat in space, and is so good it is now considered vegetarian by PETA. These are all facts that you should in no way attempt to verify. Facts.

HOT CANDIED BACON:

8 slices of thick cut bacon ($5.69 for 24 oz.)
1 cup brown sugar ($1.49 for 32 oz.)
1/4 cup hot sauce ($0.99 for 17 oz.)

Preheat the oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with foil. Fill a bowl with the hot sauce and another bowl with the sugar. If you have metal racks that fit on the baking sheet, I find that those are very useful. If you don't, use a broiler pan.

Take a slice of bacon and dip it in the hot sauce until it is fully coated. Lift the bacon and allow the excess to drain back into the bowl. Now put the bacon into the brown sugar and coat the strip of bacon with it. Now place the strip of bacon on the rack or broiler pan. Keep doing this until you run out of space for the bacon. Sprinkle any excess sugar over the bacon. If there isn't any excess sugar, the excess sugar is in the bag marked "brown sugar." Put the bacon in the oven and let it cook for 20-25 minutes or until done to your desired doneness.

 I used the thick cut bacon, but you can use thin if you like. Maple flavored bacon is great for this recipe. Once the bacon has cooled a bit (it will crisp up as it cools) use some kitchen shears to cut the bacon into bite size pieces. We put this out at parties, and it tends to disappear. The spicy and the sweet mixed with the salty and that it's bacon makes this one of our favorite snacks. Megan was extremely happy as I tried to get the recipe for this right, because we had a lot of sugared bacon around the house. This puts most people in a good mood. That's it. Now go make bacon.