Bacon Fail/Prosciutto Win

It's been a while, hasn't it?

It's not that I haven't been eating, so much as I have been completely forgetting to take pictures altogether. And when I do take pictures, I forget to upload them because my htc Whatever S phone won't show the pictures I've taken if the card is too full. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

But I did take pictures of my porc cookery!

When I was at the butcher's getting my all-naturally-raised, hormone-free, free-range. antibiotic-free, locally-sourced meat, I saw that the butcher's had thick-cut "Danish style" bacon. I had no idea what that was, but it looked good. The kid behind the counter -- the butcher's nephew, I believe -- told me it was way better than regular bacon because it was thick cut. So I bought 8 slices.

The next morning, I made 4 slices of bacon. I'm going to admit that I'd never fried bacon before that moment. I had either let Spousal Unit do it, or I'd let my mom do it. So I had to look up how to fry bacon.

The Internets told me that the best thing to do was to make one layer of bacon covering the entire pan, and let the pan warm up with the bacon in it. Then, once the bacon started to sizzle, you let it cook for 6 minutes per side.

I did that. The first problem I ran into was that my bacon was longer than my pan. I had bacon edges running up the sides of the pan. The other problem I ran into was that the pan was not warming up uniformly. This may have been because the slice of bacon on one side was just slightly bigger than the slice on the other side.

The next problem I ran into was that once the bacon started sizzling, it started to attack me! It was spitting grease at me like nobody's business! I put the pan lid up and used it as a shield. I got the baking soda out of the fridge and prepared myself to put out a grease fire.

The source of my humiliation

Fortunately, while I did burn the bacon, I did not start a fire.

The bacon tasted pretty good, even though it was slightly burnt. But I didn't try frying the last 4 slices. Instead we cut them up and used them in black bean soup (not pictured). It made tasty black bean soup.

The next day I decided to try something else to satisfy my still-unrequited desire for bacon: I decided to bake some prosciutto.

My mom had made prosciutto chips as a garnish for salads a few times and they had been really tasty (the only good part of the salads, for the most part). I knew they were baked, not fried, so I didn't have to worry about the prosciutto attacking me with grease. It sounded fool-proof.

And it was!

For the first time ever something I tried from an online recipe worked out perfect! I mean, beside the Martha Stewart one-bowl muffins. Those were good.

But seriously, the prosciutto chips were easy to make and were absolutely fantastic! I just layered the prosciutto on parchment paper and baked them for 10min (I think I baked them at 375F or 400F). Then I took them out, put them on a rack to cool, and ate them.

My redemption.

And so my weekend was a time of sadness and rejoicing.

Breakfast, Lunch and The Redemption of Silvia

I am going to admit something:  I don't care how much everyone says that oatmeal is filling and full of protein and complete and whatnot, but it doesn't fill me up.  I'm, like, hungry about ten minutes after I've eaten a big bowl of the stuff.  So this morning, with my oatmeal and OJ, I had scrambled eggs.  Hopefully the oatmeal's cholesterol-busting abilities negated the cholesterol from the eggs.

OK, oatmeal, mop up that cholesterol!

But whatever.  I wasn't hungry until lunch, which was a good thing because the snack closet was totally bare.  I'm talking all-the-Ritz-crackers-are-finished bare.  I'm talking people walking in my boss's office mid-meeting to eat the chocolates on her desk.  BARE!

A guy brought in a whole apple pie and it was gone in less than 5 minutes.  By the time the people who weren't in the breakroom got the email announcing the pie, it was gone.

Morning brew, water, lunch, snack and afternoon espresso.

For lunch I had leftover fig, mascarpone, parmegianno, prosciutto and honey pizza that I obviously didn't make myself.  I mean, who the fuck keeps mascarpone in their fridge?  And would you buy mascarpone just to make a pizza?  No. Oh, if you don't know what mascarpone is, it's this cream-cheesy Italian cheese that is probably as fatty as butter.  No amount of oatmeal could have undone the cholesterol in that pizza.  

I finished the meal with some crackers I had brought from home (in the paper plate) and an espresso I made using Silvia and the cheap-o Aiello coffee I bought at the grocery store next to the office.  Anyways, I have determined that the problem really is the Black Cat coffee because the cheap-o coffee made a really good espresso.  I even made one for the guy who used to sit in the cube next to me.   Yeah.  Desktop Espresso looked kinda lonely today.