Maple Bacon Scones

The must-use ingredient in this week's recipe contest between The Grody Gourmet and me was maple syrup, a tribute to Amy's recent trip to her home state of Vermont. If you look at her blog, you'll notice that while I call it a friendly competition, she refers to it as "death match." That's how she is.

I am not a big fan of maple syrup so this challenge perplexed me, until I remembered an episode of No Reservations in which Anthony Bourdain (swoon) went to Portland and ate a maple donut with bacon at Voodoo Doughnuts. Inspiration! Which led to this:

Maple Bacon Scones
2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp. kosher salt
2 Tbsp. maple syrup
4 Tbsp. butter
1 cup heavy cream
4 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled

Combine dry ingredients in food processor. Add butter, cut into 1" squares, and process until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add syrup, cream, and most of the bacon bits (reserve a few Tbsp. for sprinkling on top of the finished scones); pulse until dough forms. Turn dough onto floured board and roll out to a round about 1" thick. Cut into 8 wedges and place on a prepared baking sheet about 1" apart. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Glaze
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tsp. nonfat milk
2 tsp. maple syrup
Combine all ingredients and drizzle over top of cooled scones. Sprinkle reserved bacon bits on top and let glaze harden.

A photo of me putting scones into the oven, for no other reason than Max was home sick that day and loves pushing the camera buttons.

Friendly Competition: Maple Syrup

Amy of the Grody Gourmet just got back from a vacation to Vermont and has requested maple syrup as the ingredient in this week's recipe contest.

Our concoctions will be posted Friday and I'd love to see your favorite recipe using maple syrup as well. If you send it, I will post...along with a link back to your blog or shop.

Quinoa Pizza

This girl loves animals. She has such a soft spot for them that when she buys a stuffed animal, she always chooses the one with the ripped seam, or the eye that is scratched, because that one won't be chosen by anyone else.

This girl told me when she was 7 years old, "Sorry Mom but I think I'm going to be a vegetarian when I start 3rd grade." She was serious. This girl is now 12 years old and except for a rare indulgence in a piece of bacon or the chicken fingers at Islands, she eats no meat.


It's a challenge to keep her protein intake high, and though she does eat a good amount of beans and cheese, I'm always on the lookout for other sources. Recently, I discovered quinoa and am amazed at its nutritional benefits--for us, the biggest benefit is that it's a complete protein.

Of course, the trick with kids is always getting them to eat the good stuff. This week, with Elise in mind, I've developed a quinoa pizza. I made the pizza dough in the bread machine (but easy enough to buy premade pizza dough and knead in 1/4 cup of raw quinoa).

Amy at the Grody Gourmet warned me when we chose this ingredient for this week's friendly competition that I had to "rinse the heck out of it." (She didn't actually say "heck" but this is a family blog.) The grain is apparently coated with a natural toxin that is bitter if not rinsed thoroughly. So while I rinsed the grain in a mesh strainer, I also rubbed it between my hands while the water was running. I did this for a good two minutes to wash away any trace of the bitterness (or poison, if you're concerned about that type of thing).

I don't know if this counts as an official recipe, because rather than showcase the ingredient, I kind of snuck it in, hoping it would fly under the radar and end up in my kids' bellies against their better judgment. It did. Suckers.


Quinoa Pizza
For the crust, make your own or use your favorite pre-made dough (Trader Joe's sells it for a buck or two) and add in 1/4 cup of uncooked (but well rinsed) quinoa. Knead it into pre-made dough and roll out as usual. I made my own dough in a bread machine and added the quinoa at the very beginning. Bake the crust for 5 minutes at 400 degrees.

For the pizza topping, brush the crust with some fresh garlic and olive oil. Sprinkle on some mozzarella and fresh grated Parmesan. Saute about 10 finely chopped brussels sprouts in 2 Tbsp. olive oil. Add 1/2 cup cooked quinoa, 1 cup ricotta cheese, and 1/4 cup more Parmesan. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Put blobs of this mixture here and there (mush them down a little) on your pizza, and bake the whole thing at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes, until it looks bubbly and pizza-ish. Yum! This was surprisingly delicious and I can't wait for lunch tomorrow so I can eat the leftovers.


If you like quinoa and want another idea for a simple, tasty recipe, here's one submitted by my new Etsy friend Natalia at Full Circle Images, who took the cool quinoa photo from my Monday post.

Natalia's Quinoa Salad
Cook quinoa like usual (just like rice, in boiling water until the water is all gone). Turn off the heat and add in green beans and dried cranberries. I always add extra cranberries for added sweetness. You can also substitute the green beans for okra and it's delicious! Then add in a dressing that is 1 part balsamic vinegar and 2 parts olive oil. Mix it all up, cool in the fridge, and serve chilled. It's super easy, super yummy, and very healthy.

Natalia's note: I'm one of those cooks that eyeballs all the measurements, so I honestly don't have quantities of each ingredient. but this recipe is so easy that it really is just to taste. I would suggest going a little easy on the dressing because otherwise the oil becomes overpowering.

Friendly Competition: Quinoa

Our bellies are still full of grilled cheese and Amy at the Grody Gourmet and I are ready to cook healthy. We've chosen that supergrain known as quinoa as the featured ingredient in this week's recipe challenge.

I did a little research on quinoa and found that not only is it a complete protein (great for vegans), but it is high in antioxidants, can help people who suffer from migraines, can improve cardiovascular health--and pretty much everything else. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow they announced it could reverse male pattern baldness. Why are we not eating this every day?

As always, we'll post our favorite recipes on Friday, and we'd love to have you join in. If you have a great quinoa recipe, let me know and I'll post a link to your blog as well.

Friendly Competition: Breakfast Grilled Cheese

This week's challenge with Amy at The Grody Gourmet was to come up with a great grilled cheese recipe. For most of the week I was planning to do sort of a chile relleno thing with Anaheim peppers and Monterey Jack cheese. I was toying with the idea of adding mango, when my brain kind of wandered into breakfast territory. What about mango with cream cheese on grilled raisin bread? No wait! Cinnamon bread! After much inner turmoil, I settled on this:

Breakfast Grilled Cheese with Pumpkin Butter

Butter two slices of bread, and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar (1 part cinnamon to 3 parts sugar). Spread the insides of the bread with cream cheese and about 2 Tbsp. pumpkin butter. Grill until it's brown and the cinnamon sugar is caramelized on the bread. It gets all crunchy and awesome. This is a quick and reasonably healthy breakfast food that the kids can finish in the car, if necessary. (Now you know how our mornings go.)


Pumpkin Butter
1 15-oz. can pureed pumpkin
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. pumpkin pie spice, plus another Tbsp. of cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt

Simmer all ingredients on low heat for about an hour, until very thick and the mixture doesn't slide off a spoon.

Friendly Competition: Grilled Cheese

When I was a kid, I had two favorite meals. The first was breakfast: grits and Tang. Remember Tang? The astronauts drank it. The second was a sandwich my dad would make for me at lunchtime on weekends. Grilled cheese and baloney sandwiches with tomato and onion. Hey--don't knock it til you've tried it.

This week, Amy from the Grody Gourmet and I are making grilled cheese sandwiches. If you'd like to play along, come up with your most ingenious grilled cheese recipe and be ready to post it on your blog Friday. Send me the link and I'll post it here as well.

Savory Oatmeal Recipe Challenge

First week of the "come up with a recipe based on a theme and this week's theme is savory oatmeal" challenge is over, and Amy is the big winner--oh wait, make that whiner. She's so afraid she'll lose (though she definitely wants a prize if she does win) that we have dropped the competition aspect and now it's just a big recipe sharing extravaganza. If you come up with a recipe, let me know and we'll all have a big linky party. Amy's entry is up on her site, the Grody Gourmet.

My entry: Savory oatmeal pancakes with zucchini, cream cheese, and prosciutto. I wish I could say the kids just gobbled it up but they did not. They took one polite bite (well, all but one...) and then moved on to bean burritos. I thought it was actually pretty good and really easy on the budget (use bacon instead of prosciutto), though I did eat a bean burrito as well.

For the pancakes:
1/2 cup flour
1 cup oatmeal (1/3 dry steel cut oats), cooked and cooled
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1Tbsp. melted butter
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp. grated parmesan cheese

Mix all wet ingredients including oatmeal, add dry ingredients, and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Lay a few pieces of prosciutto onto a cooling rack over a cookie sheet, and put it in the oven along with the pancakes, to kill two birds with one stone. They'll take about the same time to bake (the proscuitto is done when it's crisp, like bacon). Crumble prosciutto and set aside.

Dice 2 medium zucchinis and 1/2 small onion and saute in 1 tsp. olive oil until tender crisp. Add 1/2 tsp. dried or fresh basil and salt and pepper to taste. Lower heat and add in 2 Tbsp. cream cheese, stirring until it melts and coats the zucchini mixture. Mound this on to the pancake and crumble bits of prosciutto on top.

I waited until my recipe was completely done and photographed before Googling "savory oatmeal" and wow, there are a lot of people who had the same idea. Here was the one I'm most likely to try, from Martha Stewart.

Friendly Competition: Oatmeal

Amy and me on my wedding day, many moons ago.

Starting a new feature with with my friend Amy of The Grody Gourmet --a weekly (I hope) friendly (I hope this even more) cooking competition.

Here’s how it will go:

1. Each Monday, we will announce an ingredient or type of dish that will serve as that week’s theme.

2. On Friday, Amy and I will post our two (one each) best recipes on our blogs.

3. On Sunday, we'll make both dishes and have our families choose a winner. Our judges are husbands and children ranging in age from 8-16, and with a wide variety of pickiness.

This week's theme: savory oatmeal. Want to join in? Let me know and I'll post your recipe on Friday as well. We'd also love for readers to weigh in with their opinions of the finished dishes.