This Bacon Will Get You Laid

We celebrated my husband's 40th birthday over the weekend. It was a whiskey and bourbon tasting party and I made THE BEST food to go with it. The best of the best was this bacon.

To prepare it, I cut a pound of applewood smoked bacon into bits, placed it in a cold non-stick pan, turned up the heat to medium, and sauteed until it was just barely shy of totally done. (This is how I always cook bacon if I don't need full strips.)

Then I placed the bits on a baking sheet that I'd covered in foil and brushed the reduced glaze all over. Then I sprinkled brown sugar all over and baked for maybe 10 minutes or so until it looked completely done.

I used maybe half the glaze and like a tablespoon of sprinkling sugar. I used the rest of the glaze in another dish. I'll tell you about that another time.

I used the candied bacon bits to top deviled eggs, and put the rest out in a bowl on their own. (We still have some left and I can't wait to use them in a salad!)

I love deviled eggs. And the saltysmokeysweet bacon bits on top put them over the edge. Also, instead of paprika, I dust my eggs with a tiny bit of cayenne. Really wakes them up. If I had fresh dill, I think a bit of that as garnish would have made these pretty much perfect.

In conclusion, MAKE THIS BACON! You'll probably score. Yes, it's THAT good.

Update: Project Hair

I recently mentioned on Facebook that I was going to try this homemade hair regrowth serum. I'm using Jamaican black castor oil and sunflower oil, with coffee, rosemary, and peppermint essential oils, twice a week. It's too early to tell if these scalp treatments are doing anything to stimulate new growth where my hair has gotten so thin you may as well say I have bald spots. However, my existing hair has gotten quite soft and shiny, and I have zero split ends. Also, I think I'm losing less in the shower and I'm definitely cleaning less out of my brushes.

These treatments are a bit of a process. I've been doing it on Monday and Friday mornings for 3-4 hours, and my hair can still be kind of oily those days after washing it out. I can't imagine what a pain it would be if you had long and/or thick hair. (Though I guess if I used a less gentle shampoo, that would help.) And the combination of the ashy smell of the JBCO and the coffee EO makes me smell like a gas station convenience store, which is both kind of gross and kind of oddly appealing.

But!

I've also been applying some straight JBCO with a q-tip to my eyebrows and eyelashes almost every night and there has definitely been some regrowth there. I haven't been able to grow eyebrow hairs in my actually eyebrow line in a couple years, so this is huge for me. And my eyelashes, which tend to fall out frequently and sometimes in clumps leaving bare spots, have not been falling out and the bare spots have filled in.  BIG DIFFERENCE here.

In addition to around my eyes at night, I've been using the same JBCO-soaked q-tip around my hair line. It may be my imagination, but I think there are some teeny tiny baby hairs sprouting. I'll reserve judgment on that. Check out the link above for some before and after pictures (of someone who is not me).

Overall, so far, I think the Jamaican black castor oil is definitely useful in and of itself. The other ingredients for the scalp treatment, I'm not yet convinced. But it's early, and the life cycle of hair on the head is much longer than that around the eyes, so we shall see.

Watch this space.

Best Easy Banana Muffins

I have made these muffins many, many times now and can tell you that they are, for sure, the easiest and best little muffins you could ever make. And so they are also perfect to star as the first post on my sure-to-see-little-action blog, which was created for the sole purpose of having someplace to put things that I want to pin or have pinned. Really, it has nothing to do with you except for the fact that I think you'll really want this recipe because it's a super easy and delicious way to deal with those overripe bananas stinking up your kitchen that your kids made you buy even though you knew they weren't going to eat them.

Um, I don't know how to do those handy little recipe box things yet. So whatever. But I have figured this to the minimum number of tools needed, because I hate doing dishes.


Banana Muffins

Tools
1 large bowl
1/2 cup dry measure
1 cup liquid measure
1 teaspoon measure
potato masher
rubber spatula
muffin tin
small trigger scoop
paper liners
cooling rack

Ingredients
3 large ripe bananas
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup avocado oil (or melted butter or other flavorless oil)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat over to 350 degrees.

Line mini muffin pan with paper liners.

In a large bowl, mash bananas with potato masher until good and mashed. (If you are using small bananas, this comes to about 1 1/2 cups of mashed banana.)

Still with the masher, mix in sugar, egg, oil, and extracts, pausing between each to make sure it is incorporated before adding the next.

Sprinkle flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt over liquid mixture. With a rubber spatula, mix the dry ingredients together a bit and then gently fold into wet ingredients, until not quite completely combined. (To avoid tough muffins, don't do this vigorously.)

Add chocolate chips and stir until evenly distributed. Again, do not over-stir.

With trigger scoop, put one scoop into each lined muffin cup. Bake at 350 degrees in center of over for 10-15 minutes (my oven reliably takes 14 minutes, but I don't have a thermometer in there to confirm that it runs true), until slightly browned on top. Remove from over and leave in tin for about two minutes before turning out onto cooling rack.

This recipe makes 48 mini muffins.

Notes
I think the mini muffins cook up best with this recipe, but you could do full size muffins as well. It makes 12-16 and bakes for I think like 22 minutes.

It also cooks up decently in an 8x8 cake pan for about 40 minutes. You'll want to spray that with Pam or line it with parchment.

But truly, the mini muffins are the best.

Avocado oil is my preferred light oil for everything, but you could use vegetable, canola, or any other light oil you like. Melted butter works too. Melted coconut oil would also work, but note that it would add a different flavor.

Orange extract is not necessary, but it really is the thing that take them to the next level of yummy goodness.