New Year, New Recipes

Hello everyone out there in internet land!!

So with the new year and changing up the blog and that jazz, I am also going to start trying out some new recipes. Tonight was day 1 of new things.

Todays recipe is brought to you by: https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/crockpot-bourbon-bacon-pulled-pork/

The main reason as to why I chose this recipe was because while buying ingrediants for dinner last night, I discovered that Superstore has a scoocum deal on whole pork loins. So being the one that loves to have pulled pork, plus I just bought this
 from Bass Pro Shop and cannot wait to try it out.

This was technically a two day recipe as I have to wake up at 4am to go to work. I did the majority of the prep work the night before. There were some minor changes that I made to the recipe, that actually worked out well in my 'flavour'. (Ha! See what I did there?)
My night before prep included the following: I premade the sauce that the pork would be made in. For this recipe I used my whiskey of choice, Jack Daniels, 

for the bourbon that they called for. Along with the sauce, I also rubbed my pork roast and then used my vacuum sealer to seal in the flavour over night.

Bright and early in the morning (okay not really bright seeing as it was 4am and it's winter so the sun rarely comes out), I put my roast in the slow cooker, stirred up my sauce again and dumped it on top. You could definatly smell the whiskey in the mixture. Then I set my slow cooker on low and let it do its thing. 

When I got home, the house was filled with the wonderous smell of whiskey (my drink of choice). It was at this point that the recipe confused me. 

Whenever I normally make pulled pork (venison, etc), I always dump out the liquid that the meat was cooked in. Well with this recipe, from the sounds of it, the author wants you to add the meat back to the liquid. So after texting my best friend, Tara, and discussing pulled pork and how we normally make it, I came to the conclusion that I would reserve some of the liquid and then dumping the rest out. 

So after dumping out the liquid, I shred my pork, put it back in the pot and added the reserved liquid plus my bbq sauce and the bacon. I then let it heat up for a bit longer. Made up some coleslaw, sliced my buns and wham-bam thank you ma'am dinner is served. 

Needless to say it was different from my usual pulled pork recipe. Even Justin figured that out, as he immediately started asking what I did differently (he likes how I usually make my pulled pork). I never did get a response as to whether or not he liked it. He didn't say he didn't like it, so that's a plus. 

So I say give this one a try. You won't be disappointed. 

I Was Bored, So I Made Cookies

I’m an avid printer of different recipes from the many different blogs that I read. So I decided to take some photos of the cookies that I made yesterday and share it with my currently non-existent readers.

This is a cookie recipe that I got in high school. It’s not my normal chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I made a comment that it was yummy so I decided to try it out again. With some modifications. I’m a fan of the “lets add bacon to everything” era that is going on currently. I have made bacon chocolate chip cookies before but I wasn’t happy with the result so I had to try making them again. Although it was a different recipe this time and I changed my method of making the bacon.

Hopefully I can figure out how to make a printable version of the recipe. But for now I will just type it in normally. The pictures may seem kind of in coherent, but this is my first recipe post so bear with me.

  I started off by frying up my bacon. I only had 3 stripes of bacon left in the fridge, so I just used them. Normally I would put about 5 or 6 strips in the mix. I pre cut up the bacon into smaller pieces and then cooked them until they were golden brown.

This is after I have mixed my butter, sugar and other wet ingrediants together.

Everything is all mixed together, excpet for the bacon. You can see the nice golden crispy-ness of the bacon in this picture. There was not nearly enough bacon added to this recipe when I made it. I love me some bacon-y goodness.

Cookies are all mixed and scooped. This is the second sheet of cookies waiting to go into the oven. You can slightly see some of the bacon-y goodness in the dough. Mmmm cookie dough.

Here is all the cookies that the recipe made. The paper originally said that it made one dozen, but then I crossed that out and put down 3.5 dozen. However when I made the recipe this time it only made 2.5 dozen. They were an average size cookie when I made them this time, so I’m going to say that the recipe makes 2.5 dozen, so feel free to double as you please.

I did have a close up of a cookie, but I just looked at it again and it’s really blurry so I’m not including it in this post. That’s what you get when you decide at the spur of the moment to take photos of yourself making cookies and the batteries in your camera are dead, so you’re left taking photos with your Blackberry.  Anyways, here is the recipe for my Bacon Chocolate Chunk Cookies. I hope you enjoy them :-)

Bacon Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Yield: 2.5 dozen
Oven Temperature: 350º F
Baking Time: 14 minutes

½ cup + 2 TBSP butter
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 TBSP yogurt or sour cream (I used vanilla greek yogurt)
1¼ cup flour
1¼ cup quick cooking oatmeal
¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
3/4 cup chopped pecans or ½ cup walnuts
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
5-6 strips bacon finely chopped, cooked to golden brown

1. Cream butter
2. Add sugar and cream until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs and vanilla extract and beat well.
4. Add sour cream and beat until mixed.
5. In a large bowl combine flour, oatmeal, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
6. Add gradually to creamed mixture and beat until blended.
7. Stir in nuts, chocolate chips and bacon.
8. Using an ice cream scoop or two tablespoons, form cookies and drop onto cookie sheets that have parchment paper on them.
  *** The parchment makes it easy to slide the cookies right off the cookie sheet once baked, and saves on clean up time. You can also use the sheets multiple times before having to throw them away.
9. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown.