Categories
Desserts Uncategorized

Bacon Banana Cookies — Sweet, Salty and Smiley

This week, I dared some friends to make a recipe that struck me as being a bit outside the box — strawberry leek quesadillas.  I invited them to write a guest blog post about the experience…stay tuned to see if they deliver the goods!

In the meantime, not to be left completely inside the box, the littlest chef and I made these Bacon Banana Cookies. If you’re a fan of your sweet and your salty in one package, these are for you!

We are celebrating the Chinese/Lunar New Year tonight (more on that menu soon), so I am teaching the littlest chef about the symbolism in the shapes of foods eaten for the Chinese New Year.  These cookies are not Asian by any stretch of the imagination, but they do use bananas, which are shaped like a smile. If eating these cookies makes us smile in the new year, the Chinese would definitely approve!

Categories
Pasta

Ricotta and Chard Cannelloni — Chopping Block Report

Ricotta and Red Chard Cannelloni was on the chopping block on Saturday.  As I started to follow the recipe, it quickly became clear that we were going to part ways.  The original recipe called for twice as much ricotta and half as much chard as I thought was reasonable.  And I really wanted to bring walnuts and bacon into the recipe via a topping to please the carnivore(s) in the house.

So, my version packs a lot more veggies, and offers a smoky crunchy topping of crumbled bacon and walnuts to offer some contrast of textures.  The result, Ricotta and Chard Cannelloni with Walnut Cream Sauce, is something I’ll make again.  This was a great way to use chard, and it was a nice departure from pasta with tomato-based sauces.