Burger Time

Love love love burgers. Nothing like trying a new combination to make a burger pop. This isn't anything new but the wife wanted a stacked burger. This burger is made up of freshly ground chuck, onions, cheese, bacon and bacon.  

Just getting started. 

Onions are under the cheese.

Time to add some bacon.

Over easy egg.

Assembled.

On a side note the buns are homemade by me. I have been making bread/rolls/buns for just over 2 years now.

Steak and Potatoes

Nothing like having a steak and potatoes. It is one of my favorite meals to have. The steak is fresh sirloin from the Fresh Market. The potatoes are organic russet potatoes cut up into bit sized pieces. The steak was prepared with just salt and pepper. Same for the potatoes. All the cooking was done in a cast iron pan. Medium rare steak and crunchy potatoes. Oh add a small side salad to get some veggies into this meal.

Blueberry Muffins

My little kitchen helper has been bugging me to make blueberry muffins ever since he pasted up a donut for a muffin.  Nothing hard about making these. We used a mix of ap and whole wheat flour to help make these muffins healthier. 

Saint Patrick's Day

I decide to do a full Irish meal this year for Saint Patricks Day. I invited over a few good friends to share in this endeavor. The main dishes comprised of soda bread, colcannon, and a nice bone in leg of lamb. For dessert I made a Guinness chocolate cupcake with Irish cream frosting. Of course there was Guinness beer, baileys Irish cream and Jameson Irish whiskey.

Here is the leg of lamb from the butcher.

Marinade with garlic and rosemary.

Roasted in oven until medium rare.

Soda bread that was cooked in my 12" cast iron skillet.

Colcannon. Which is mashed potatoes with bacon, cabbage and green onions. Oh just for reference 5 lbs is more than enough for 6 adults.

Forgot to take pictures of them frosted but they turned out pretty good. 

Overall everything turned out great. May have to make this a yearly thing.

Vanilla Chia Pudding

The newest crave is chia pudding (vanilla). This is a very basic and easy thing to make. The hardest part might be finding chia seeds at the store. Lucky enough our local gourmet store carries chia seeds. Below you can see that all I did was pour everything into a plastic container. Once mixed, place in refrigerator and let it do it's thing. The next day you should have some wonderful and healthy chia pudding. 

6 tablespoons chia seeds

1 teaspoon vanilla

1.5 cups whole milk

1-2 tablespoons honey

Bacon

Who doesn't love bacon? In our house we love bacon (besides one). We practically eat it once a week. So I figured why not give it a try and make it myself. Another reason was to cut out any nitrites. You know, the pink salt that gives us cancer. That is a debate all in its self.

Now one would think that living in the Midwest you would be able to get pork belly for cheap, not so in Wichita. Either I got we don't sell enough to stock or it was $5 lb. So now I had to switch to plan B, make buckboard bacon. This bacon is  similar in method but you use a pork shoulder/butt instead of the fatter pork belly. So on with the experiment.

This picture shows the meat after I pulled it out of the brine.

Next was to add a small amount of cold smoke to the meat. Another new skill I tried/learned. I went the cheap route and used a soldering iron, aluminum can and some pellets.

After a few hours I ended up with this.

Then it was time to cook.

Overall it came out okay. I would like to try pork belly next. The pork shoulder is a very lean cut of meat compared to the belly. That my be why it was not a 100% to my liking. The up side is there was no nitrites added to this dish. 

Velvet Taco Tots

This is my attempt at making the tator tot side dish that we had on our recent family trip to Fort Worth, Texas. I have to give thumbs up to Velvet Taco for this dish. 

This is a picture from Velvet Taco.

This is my take on the dish.

My egg is still runny but nothing like Velvet Taco. This is now my wife's favorite dish.