Everything's GROWING!

It's finally gotten warm enough and dry enough for me to play in the yard and garden.

The garden has lain mostly fallow the past couple of summers, but by golly, I'm going to have a garden this year!  So I got out a couple of days this week and started digging in the dirt and touring the yard.

And like a good tourist, I took a boatload of pictures!  Here we go!

Peonies have flower buds!

A tiny buckeye forest!

A violet carpet! 

Golden forsythia.

One of ninety-six yellow
daffodils in the back.

Asparagus, at last!

Wildlife in the garden!

A fancy daffodil by the porch.

Some random tulip!

The BEST Way to Cook Bacon

Cooking bacon in a skillet is messy, messy, messy, and the bacon usually isn't cooked evenly.  Part is nearly raw and limp, part is too crisp and almost burned, and the rest is how you want it.  Not ideal.

You can cook bacon in the microwave, and it comes out pretty good - evenly cooked and fairly flat, but all those paper towels!  What a waste!!!

You can buy pre-cooked bacon, but it's relatively expensive, and there aren't as many flavor/thickness combinations as there are in raw bacon.

Bacon fat in a jar.

But if you cook bacon in the OVEN, whoa!  It comes out evenly cooked and flat, and you only need one or two paper towels to soak up the excess grease.  Most of the bacon fat stays in the pan, and it's really easy to save it by pouring it into a glass jar and refrigerating it.

You can cook an entire package at one time, and if you're not going to use it all, you can either freeze or refrigerate the cooked bacon and use it one slice at a time.  Just zap it in the microwave and you can make a nice, warm bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.

Some recipes will have you cook some bacon, then add things to the bacon and its fat.  In those cases, I start with some of my refrigerated bacon fat, add some of my pre-cooked bacon, get it hot, and there you are - just continue with the recipe as written.

So here it is...


Oven-Cooked Bacon

1 package bacon (1 lb regular thickness or 1 1/2 lb extra thick)
sheet pan (well, technically a half-sheet pan!)

Lots of ingredients, right?  Well, it's not really a recipe - more like instructions!

So, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and set the rack in the lower third of the oven.  (If you want the bacon extra crispy, put the rack in the lowest position).  Separate the bacon slices and place them on in the sheet pan in a single layer.  You can shove the slices as close together as you possibly can - just don't overlap them.

Put the pan in the oven.  Cook about 20 minutes for regular bacon, and about 30 minutes for extra thick.  Check it about 5-10 minutes before it's supposed to be done.

While the bacon is cooking, put one or two paper towels on a plate.  When the bacon is finished, carefully remove the pan from the oven.  There will be lots of bacon fat in the pan and it is HOT.  Don't get burned, and don't spill it!

Using tongs, remove the slices of bacon from the pan and put them on the paper towel-lined plate to soak up the excess fat.  Store or serve.

If desired, let the fat cool for several minutes.  While it's still liquid, pour it into a GLASS jar.  Put a lid on it and refrigerate.  Use it where you usually use bacon fat or shortening for cooking.

Kitchen Window Hydroponics

The celery after 4 days.

The scallions after 4 days.

Remember setting a stalk of celery in a glass with some water and a little food coloring and watching the daily progress of the color rising up the stalk?  How about putting the very top of a carrot in a little pan (usually from a frozen pot pie!) of shallow water and growing feathery carrot tops?  Or growing the seeds from lemons, oranges, and grapefruit in little paper cups of dirt?  Or suspending an avocado seed in a glass of water and seeing it sprout?  Those were some of the fun things Mom used to allow us to do in "her" kitchen!

Well, while I was waiting for the weather to dry out and warm up so I could dig up the garden and start planting my little seeds, I indulged in what I like to call "kitchen window hydroponics."

I've seen some pictures people have posted online of celery and scallions (green onions) growing on their kitchen counters and I decided to give it a try.  I had celery and scallions, so when I cut up the celery (I'd made Buffalo wings and needed celery and bleu cheese dressing, natch!), I saved the bottom, stuck in some toothpicks, and suspended it in some water in a tiny bowl.  When I needed some scallions for a recipe, I cut off all the green and some of the white, left them bundled in their rubber band, and put them in a coffee cup with a little water.  I change the container and water at least every other day to keep things from getting slimy and gross.

The celery, 3 days later!

The scallions, 3 days later!

It's amazing how quickly growth starts.  I mean, I could see things starting the very next day!  It's kind of exciting, watching these vegetables regenerate.  When the scallions get a few inches taller, I'll cut them off again and use those new tops.  I'm reserving plans for the celery, but it actually has stalks already.  We'll see how big it gets and what I'll be able to use it for.  FUN!!!

Maple Glazed Salmon (A Sheet Pan Recipe)

When it was difficult to find chicken at the grocery store, I grabbed a couple of packages of wild-caught salmon.  I put them in the freezer until I could decide what to do with them.  That Girl had told me about a salmon sheet pan dinner, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I'd like to give it a try.

I'd never made a sheet pan dinner.  They got really popular a couple of years ago and there were sheet pan dinner recipes in magazines and on the internet, and people shared them like mad!  I never got into the craze then, but last week I was ready to take the plunge.

I started with oven roasted potatoes (click here for the recipe) on my sheet pan.  While they were cooking, I opened a package of frozen green beans and dumped them into the bowl I had used for tossing the potatoes in olive oil and seasonings.  I added a tablespoon of oil and some more salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

After the potatoes had been in the oven for 20 minutes, I took them out, turned on the broiler, shoved them to one side of the pan, dumped the beans on the other side of the pan, and put the salmon in the middle.  It all went under the broiler for 9 minutes.  Done!  Here's the recipe for the salmon itself.  You can substitute sweet potatoes, broccoli, carrots, or whatever you want for the potatoes and green beans, but you'll have to adjust the roasting time depending on what you're cooking.  Just make sure to put the salmon in at the point where there's about 10 minutes left of the typical roasting time.

If you want, you can cook the salmon alone and use other cooking methods for your sides.


Maple-Glazed Salmon (A Sheet Pan Recipe)

1 1/2 to 2 pounds salmon fillets (4-5 fillets)
1/4 c maple syrup
3 T Dijon or coarse-ground mustard (I had neither, so I used horseradish mustard instead)
1/2 t salt
1/4 t pepper

Take the fillets out of the package, rinse them, then dry them off with a paper towel.

Turn the broiler on high.  Mix the remaining ingredients together, place the fillets at least 1/2 inch apart in a sheet pan sprayed with non-stick spray, spread the glaze evenly over each fillet.

Broil 7-10 minutes about 4-5 inches from the broiler element.  The glaze will caramelize and the salmon will be pink and opaque and will flake easily with a fork.