For Brant’s birthday, I bought him a geeky t-shirt that has images from the periodic table of elements for barium, cobalt, and nitrogen. The resulting picture? BACON. It’s awesome, and perfect for my bacon-loving hubby. It seem that it’s not just my hubby that loves bacon, though. When I told Amanda about our bacon wrapped chicken bites, her response was, “Bacon! Bacon!”  What should you serve at a party? The answer is clear to me. Bacon wrapped chicken bites are a huge success!

bacon wrapped chicken bites

2 chicken breasts, cut into 1″ cubes
1/2 cup Saucy Mama Sweet Onion Marinade
1 pound thin-sliced bacon

In a medium bowl, marinate the chicken in the Sweet Onion Marinade for 1 hour.

While the chicken is marinating, cut each strip of bacon in half lengthwise, giving you two long strips. Then cut each strip in half down the middle.

Preheat the oven to 375.

When the chicken is done marinating, wrap each piece of chicken with one of the bacon strip quarters and skewer with a toothpick. Arrange on a baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the chicken and bacon are both fully cooked.

My Saucy Mama submissions are due on Wednesday and I still have 2 recipes that I hope to share with you before then! BBQ season is almost over, so if you have any shrimp left in your freezer, pull them out for this delicious recipe! Shrimp marinated in a lime cilantro sauce and then skewered with onions, peppers, and pineapple makes for an easy and tasty dish for your next dinner or event!

lime-chipotle shrimp skewers

36 medium shrimp
1/2 cup Saucy Mama’s Lime Chipotle Marinade
12 skewers
1 red onion, chopped into 1 inch dice
1 pineapple, chopped into 1 inch dice
1 green bell pepper, chopped into 1 inch dice
3 limes, quartered

Shell and clean shrimp. In a large bowl, combine the shrimp with Saucy Mama’s Lime Chipotle Marinade and refrigerate for one hour. Meanwhile, preheat the grill to medium high heat.

Skewer shrimp, onions, pineapple and peppers in alternating order with 3 shrimp per skewer. Place skewers on a hot grill and cook until done, turning as needed. Slice limes in quarters and serve each lime quarter with the shrimp skewers on a bed of rice.

You’ve heard of my entry into the Saucy Mama contest, right? When I received the box that Saucy Mama sent me with all the various marinades and condiments that I could experiment with, my friends were eager to assist me with recipe ideas. The suggestion for this tasty cracker spread came from my friend Stacy. My friend Dave suggested that we use apple slices to balance the heat of the hot wing sauce, and my friend Amanda (our official taste tester) decided that Ritz crackers were the best vehicle for getting this delicious spread into your mouth as quickly as possible.

spiced up cheese crackers

8-10 oz cream cheese (to taste)
1/2 cup Saucy Mama’s Hot Wing Sauce
1 sleeve Ritz crackers
2 medium granny smith apples, cored and sliced thinly

In a medium bowl, combine the cream cheese with the hot wing sauce. Sample the mixture and adjust the amount of cream cheese to taste. Spoon one to two teaspoons of the cheese mixture onto each cracker and top with apple slices.

hot wing melts

(serves 12 as an appetizer)

1/4 cup vegetable oil
6 medium chicken breasts
1 cup Saucy Mama’s Hot Wing Sauce
16 slices White Bread
4 tbsp salted butter
12 oz blue cheese crumbles

Place half the oil in a pan heated to medium high and fry three of the chicken breasts until cooked through, flipping as needed. Repeat with the remaining oil and the remaining three chicken breasts.

Pat the chicken dry and cut each breast into ¼-inch slices.  Toss the chicken slices in Saucy Mama’s Hot Wing Sauce and set aside. Butter one side of each slice of bread. Preheat a non-stick skillet over medium heat. Lay the buttered side of a slice on the skillet and top with chicken slices and blue cheese. On top of the cheese, immediately place another bread slice with the butter side up. Cover the skillet. When the bread is golden brown and cheese is melted, flip the sandwich and continue to cook, covered, until the second side is also golden brown and cheese is melted. Let the sandwiches cool for 1 minute and then cut into quarters and serve hot.

On Friday I got a wireless remote trigger that allows me to take my flash off camera and therefore add far more interesting lighting to my photographs. Our chef friend Dave gave me lots of reasons to try this when he made dinner for us that evening. Here are some of the photos I took of his creations.

Dinner was tomatoes layered with goat cheese and basil and then drizzled with a balsamic reduction; a fried potato pancake; and fish covered with a sherry chocolate sauce.

Oh, and edible flowers. How could I forget about those?

Dessert was apple tart served with ice cream with more of that balsamic reduction sauce that had been spooned over the tomatoes earlier in the evening.

Delicious? I should say so.

What is that you said? You want a friend like Dave? I totally understand. But Dave’s my friend and I’m not very good at sharing.

You’ve read a lot about our twice-monthly dinners with Dave. This  past week, it was my turn to impress. When my friend Amanda called me on Tuesday to tell me that game night had been moved up to Wednesday, I panicked and resigned myself to serving pasta with a jar of sauce or rice-a-roni or… well, you get the idea. But after dining on Dave’s shark and lobster/steak, could I really stoop so low as making something store bought? Never.

Once I took a deep breath inspiration came fairly quickly. Mashed potatoes were a must. I have 40 pounds of potatoes sitting in the corner of my kitchen. That may seem excessive for a two person household but these aren’t just any potatoes. They’re Butter Golds, and they make the best mashed potatoes ever. Locally, they are also only available for about one month out of the year so when we see them, we stock up and then eat potatoes until we are so sick of them that we think we may never eat another potato again.

My veggie options abounded. As in, I had abundant broccoli and abundant lettuce. And that’s where the abounding ended. Seeing as how a pile of lettuce probably wasn’t going to cut it, I went with roasted broccoli. Delicious, if I do say so myself.

And lastly, I chose this chicken dish. I made this a while ago and it was a hit, but the pictures didn’t turn out. My husband was delighted to hear that this required a remake, as this dish combines some of his favorite flavors into one tasty sauce. And even though I don’t love these flavors on their own (capers? too salty… lemon? often overbearing…) blended together they are definitely tasty! I will gladly make this again and again.

chicken with lemon caper sauce
(from Cook’s Illustrated)

for chicken:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, halved horizontally, pounded to 1/4″ thickness
4 tsp vegetable oil

for sauce:
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 medium shallot, minced (about 3 tbsp total)
1 tsp flour
3/4 cup chicken broth
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp capers, rinsed and chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 tbsp cold unsalted butter

Sprinkle the flattened chicken with salt and pepper.

Heat 2 teaspoons oil in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until smoking. Place 4 cutlets in skillet and cook without moving them until browned, about 2 minutes. Flip cutlets and continue to cook until second sides are opaque, 15 to 20 seconds.

Transfer to large ovensafe plate. Add remaining 2 teaspoons oil to now-empty skillet and repeat to cook remaining cutlets. Cover plate loosely with foil and transfer to oven to keep warm while making pan sauce.

Add oil to empty skillet used to cook chicken and return pan to low heat. Add shallot and cook, stirring often, until softened, 1 to 1 1/2 minutes.

Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, 30 seconds. Add broth, increase heat to medium-high, and bring to simmer, scraping pan bottom to loosen browned bits. Simmer rapidly until reduced to 1/2 cup, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in any accumulated chicken juices; return to simmer and cook 30 seconds. Off heat, whisk in lemon juice, capers, parsley, and butter; season with salt and pepper.

Remove cutlets from the oven. Spoon the sauce over the cutlets and serve immediately.

We are getting skylights installed in our house, and for the past few days, there has been a massive hole in my ceiling while we try to come up with structural alternatives to having my roof potentially fall in. A huge hole in the ceiling means it’s pretty pointless for me to even try to heat our house as all the heat would rise right out of that hole anyway. Needless to say, I’ve been cold lately.

I was especially grateful when Dave invited us over for dinner this week as it meant getting out of my cold house and into his warm one. And we got a free homemade meal to boot!

Dave had told me in advance what he was making. I’m a picky eater and was not convinced that this was going to be a winner. He proved me wrong. It was one of the best meals he’s made for us. It gets five gold stars for aesthetics, too!

Dinner was shark (Dave will have to comment here to let us know specifically what kind – I forget!) wrapped in phyllo dough shaped, of course, like a shark. On the side was a balsamic reduction and pineapple slices topped with a pineapple salsa that was absolutely delicious with the fish.

Our salad was bitter greens with a citrus vinaigrette, cherry tomatoes, and macadamia nuts. In short, we had a little bit of Hawaii for dinner, which was a nice change from the 58 degree temps in my house!

This sure beats sitting at home huddled in a blankie trying to stay warm!

Here is a photo of our friend Amanda stabbing her shark! We were all a little hesitant to destroy Dave’s creation, but he told us that if we didn’t, he would be very mad because it was made to be eaten.

Last Thursday the hubby, my friend Amanda and I met at Dave’s for dinner and games. Dave was out to impress! The main course was Filet mignon, lobster, purple mashed potatoes, and fresh asparagus. I was skeptical about the lobster as I don’t typically like shell fish, but this was done quite well. Dave says that the secret is in cooking the lobster in butter. Hmmm… butter makes everything better!

After an hour or so of letting our dinner settle, Dave unveiled the dessert – chocolate creme brule with fresh berries. On top of that (as if there needed to be more!) for the extra berries he offered a chocolate dipping sauce made by combining melted chocolate with a red wine reduction.

I’m pretty sure I gained five pounds in one night, but it was worth it. Dave should be coming to my house again sometime in the next week or two. I still have not figured out what I’ll be making for dinner, but there’s no way I can compete with this!