Maple Bacon Coffee—Via Uncrate

Hmmm… I like maple flavor, I also like bacon (who doesn’t?), and coffee is just what I drink everyday… but somehow Maple Bacon Coffee doesn’t sound all that appetizing to me. Who knows?? It may taste wonderful. Someone want to try it out and let us know?

From Maple Bacon Coffee…

Even if you don’t have time to cook, you can still start your day the proper way with a cup ofMaple Bacon Coffee ($8). Imbued with maple, bacon, and (obviously) coffee flavors, this unique roast isn’t the boldest or darkest around, but it is the only one that will give you all the flavors of a proper breakfast without having to eat one. [Thanks, Derrick]

Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday—Recipe

The Bloody Mary is one of those drinks that you can really get creative with. I’ve been looking around for a perfect Sunday brunch Bloody Mary that has everything that I would want, but most of them don’t seem to have exactly what I’m looking for. So I sat down and created this recipe from my most wanted list. I really think it is a meal in itself but if you must, order an omelette with it.

When looking around for the right vodka to use in my Bloody Mary, I found Boru Vodka, an Irish (yes Irish) wheat vodka that has a slightly sweet taste. It’s also pretty darn affordable and it makes for a clever name for this amazing drink! Thanks U2!!

Photo by heidi33 from flickr. The picture isn’t the exact drink but it’s just to give you an idea of what it would look like

Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday Recipe
1 1/2 ounces (1 jigger) Boru Citrus vodka
1/2 cup tomato juice
2 tsps fresh lemon juice
Worcestershire sauce—to taste
Bacon Hot Sauce—to taste BaconHotSauce.com
1/2 tsps of grated horseradish
1 celery stick for garnish
1 lemon wedge for garnish
1 large grilled shrimp with a sprinkle of salt and pepper
1 thick slice of bacon cooked extra crispy (or substitute with pepperoni stick)
1 cornichon (gherkin pickle)
2 olives
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Rimming Salt: Mix 3 tbsp of sugar, 1 tsp of sea salt and a small pinch of Cayenne pepper powder.

How to create the drink
Mix the Boru Vodka, tomato juice, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce and Bacon Hot Sauce together over ice.

Wet the rim of the glass and dip it in the rimming salt mix and then pour the drink into the glass. Garnish with bacon slice, celery, shrimp, the lemon wedge. Slide the cornichon and olives can onto a toothpick and add it to the drink.

Enjoy!

Bacon Potato Chips—via Uncrate

I have a soft spot for bacon, and in this case…who can resist “Bacon Potato Chips” right? I found this on uncrate.com. It just looks too good to not mention it to everyone. Check them out!!

With products like Baconnaise, Bacon Floss, and even Bacon Lip Balm, we have to ask: Why didn’t someone think of this before? Who’s Your Daddy Bacon Potato Chips ($5) are exactly what you’d expect — a delicious combination of potato and bacon. Handmade from high-quality potatoes and cooked with a proprietary blend of “bacony goodness,” only those with the strongest of wills are able to keep from eating the whole bag.

http://baconpotatochips.com/

Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon—via Slashfood

Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon Bacon by Mark Ellwood

Photo: Dave77459, flickr

It’s undeniable that there’s something about bacon. Some foodies even refer to it as “meat candy,” and cooks agree it’s a surefire way to improve almost any recipe.

Over the last five years, bacon has become smoking hot at restaurants and stores and has found its crispy way into all kinds of surprising dishes. Chef Heston Blumenthal of England’s Fat Duck — regularly cited as one of the world’s most interesting restaurants — often produces bacon and egg ice cream for his tasting menu. Bacon cupcakes surfaced at bakeries across America. More, in Chicago, has a BLT recipe with cornmeal, tomato and plenty of rashers. In some locations of Texas gourmet grocery chainlet Central Market, there’s an extensive 15-strong bacon menu, featuring regional specials (Wisconsin, Iowa) or flavor twists (cherry-wood smoked, apple-cinnamon). The new restaurant Permanent Brunch in New York’s East Village serves exactly what it says: comfort brunch for lunch and dinner all week long. With that territory comes a menu highlighting an Artisanal Bacon Bar, serving Meacham Ham’s Country Bacon from Kentucky and Missouri’s sugar-cured Burger’s Smokehouse.

But why this newfound fascination? Heather Lauer, author of “Bacon: A Love Story”, and the blogger behind baconunwrapped.com, believes that bacon’s fatty goodness is a safe indulgence. “People put it on a mantel the way they don’t other foods,” she swoons. The recent vogue has several sources, she says. The floodgates were opened by the protein-championing Atkins diet, which “made it acceptable to eat excessive amounts of meat”. Fast food chain’s kept the momentum going by fetishizing of the strips as another cultural spotlight — from Wendy’s Baconator to Burger King’s Quad Stacker.

The artisanal smokeries that have sprung up, or been revived, country-wide have boosted bacon’s profile, and then there’s the Food Network. Clearly, the staff-training sessions there take place over BLTs. “You can’t watch that network for a whole day without several mentions of bacon. All the chefs use it all the time.”

If Food Network’s shows aren’t inspiration enough, the boys behind Bacon Salt and Baconnaise run a recipe-heavy rotation at baconsaltblog.com, while baconshow.blogspot.com and iheartbacon.com are also delicious resources. Until someone can find a way to lure Victoria’s Secret into mass-producing the bacon bra we’ve put together a list of our favorite bacon-related products for sale right now. Just don’t ask us to count the calories.

Vosge’s Mo’s Bacon Bar
Off-kilter chocolatiere Katrina Markoff is known for her adventurous hit-and-miss flavors. Her first attempt at combining bacon with milk chocolate didn’t gel, but her swapping out bitter dark to offset the applewood-smoked bacon and addition of alderwood-smoked salt chunks dotted inside produced amazing results. It’s now Vosges’s signature bar.
vosgeschocolate.com, $7.50

Bakon Vodka
In the Pacific Northwest, this brand new hooch brings a new twist to meat and potatoes: made from Idaho’s best, it’s infused with the taste of peppery rashers. Try it in a Bakon Mary, substituting this for plain vodka on a lazy Sunday morning, or slosh some steak in it as a marinade.
bakonvodka.com, $35.99

Sir Francis Bacon Peanut Brittle
The ideal mashup of salty and sweet, this brittle has shards of candy studded with smoked bacon and US-grown peanuts. The package is emblazoned with a cheeky tweaked portrait of the namesake explorer with a snout.
baconpeanutbrittle.com, $14.99

Maple-Bacon Lollipop
Get ready for breakfast on a stick. There are several rival labels jostling to be the Hersheys of maple-bacon lollipops. Das Foods wins for its brand name alone – Man Bait, perhaps the most honest label since Death Cigarettes – but Lollyphile’s organic, sustainable cured bacon swirled with pure Vermont Maple syrup’s a close second.
dasfoods.com, 50 cents/lollipop or lollyphile.com, 4 for $10

Bacon Salt
A pair of buddies came up with this idea at the urging of a vegetarian friend still wistful over her loss of bacon (no wonder it’s both kosher-certified and vegan-friendly).They used the $5,000 that one of their kid’s videos nabbed on a TV show to kickstart the company and now have three core flavors – Original, Hickory, Peppered – as well as limited edition specials like Jalapeno and Mesquite.
baconsalt.com, $4.49

Baconnaise
A customer request started the Bacon Salt boys on a new journey: making a spreadable, sandwich-enhancing goo, heavy on the meat and light on the mayo (More Baconnaise, less Mayocon). It recently launched in both regular and lite versions – though, really, hands up anyone who’s buying the lite?
baconsalt.com, $5.99

Bacon Mints
From Uncle Oinker, this rindless riffs on Altoids combine a mouth-tingling mint flavor with the taste of real bacon.
mcphee.com, $2.50

Bacon Gumballs
To tie in with the new animated movie, ‘Cloud with a Chance of Meatballs’ — about a town where it rains meatballs, among other things — big and little kid Wonkaland Dylan’s Candy Bar expanded its bacon-flavored range of candy with a new milk chocolate bar ($2.95), joining bacon gumballs ($4) and jelly beans ($6)
dylanscandybar.com

Squeez Bacon
Bacon-on-the-go, one-handed: this squeezable bacon is allegedly from Sweden and made from a patented process that keeps the condiment 100% meat. Whether that’s a porker or not, you can add it to burgers or douse a stick of celery or just eat it straight from the bottle. ThinkGeek.com, $7.99

Bacorn
Made from hull-less popcorn from a local farmer at New York’s Greenmarket in Union Square, this is a gourmet honey caramel popcorn studded with bacon chunks and chile pinon nuts. There’s also a homier but heartier riff on the same recipe from Nashville’s Loveless Café, ‘Piggy Popcorn & I Don’t Share!’ Roni-SueChocolate.com, $5; HamsandJams.com, $6.95

Pieroguys Bacon Pierogies
That pierogies are boiled stuffed dumplings, like Slavic dim sum, typically served by Jewish grandmothers across Eastern Europe didn’t stop this Kansas-based company from offering a non-kosher modern version filled with potato, cheddar and bacon. Pieroguys.com, $4.99 for six

Maple Bacon Morning Coffee
Forget Raspberry or Mocha – Florida-based Boca Java offers a sizzling flavored coffee that’s like an English breakfast in a steaming cup, using its classic A-grade Arabica bean base. Bocajava.com, $7.49 for 8 oz.

Review: Five Guys

Prompted by Chuti’s post about In-N-Out burger, I decided I wanted to head to my favorite burger place… Five Guys.

I first ate a Five Guys on a business trip to Columbus, OH. My coworkers took me there raving about the burgers and fries. Since then it has blossomed into quite a large chain all over the US. I visited two different Five Guys over the past two weeks to write this review. Last weekend, I took my dad who had never been to get his unbiased opinion and today I took my partner to make sure we got a good sampling of the menu (hee hee).

The decor of Five Guys is very simple and clean. White and red tiles on the walls, exposed red ventilation ducts and a fully open kitchen so you can see exactly what they are doing. The walls are simply adorned with signs displaying some of the awards they’ve won and boy have then won a lot of them.

Now the menu is pretty straight-forward. Four burgers the Hamburger, Cheeseburger, Bacon Hamburger and Bacon Cheeseburger in two sizes and three hot dogs, two sandwiches and fries. That’s pretty much it. The “Little” burgers are a single patty and the “Regular” burgers are two patties.

All burgers are cooked well done and after you choose which burger you want, you can choose from about fifteen different toppings from Mayo to Jalapeño Peppers to Hot Sauce all for free. It is really nice to be able to get a burger just the way you want it without it costing you a small fortune. Another nice touch is that each burger is cooked and assembled in the open so you can see what’s going on.

The first week we visited Five Guys, I went small and had just a “Little Bacon Cheeseburger”, I had it topped with tomatoes, onions and ketchup. On the second visit, I went big and had the “Bacon Cheeseburger” topped with Onions and Ketchup only. Just for good measure and to be sure we sampled the whole menu, I also ordered a Bacon Cheese Dog! I know it has nothing to do with the food, but I love that the food is served in a brown paper bag and aluminum foil!

Lunch in a sack


My lunch!


Little Bacon Cheeseburger


Bacon Cheesebuger


Bacon and Cheese Dog

The burgers at Five Guys are just outstanding. Yes I know that they are cooked “well-done” but I’ve never had a well-done burger so juicy and moist. They are never burnt, never over done and the cheese is always perfectly melted. The toppings are what makes it your own and the range of toppings leaves you with countless choices. I will say that it is honestly the best burger I’ve ever eaten and very much worthy of all the awards that they have won.

This weekend was the first time I’ve ever had the hot dog and I can say that the hot dog was also out of this world. The hot dog is a beef hot dog and served dog split down the center and grilled. The beef dog combined with the lovely saltiness of the bacon and the ooey gooey cheese was just scrumptious.

So we know the hot dog and burgers are on point but let’s talk about the other star at Five Guys… the french fries. Seriously delicious. They are fresh cut, and fried in peanut oil each time someone orders them. You can actually watch someone come out into the dining area and grab a huge 50lb bag of potatoes (stacked up as part of the decor) to take back to the kitchen when they need more.

The fries are served skin on and come in two sizes regular and large (both served in styrofoam cups). One of the nice extra touches that Five Guys does is no matter how many fries your order or what size, they always throw an extra heaping helping of fries into the bag on top of everything else! The fries are so delicious I could make a meal out of them alone. Piping hot, not over fried and super fresh. Just amazing.

Every time I visit Five Guys I’m blown away by just how good the burgers and fries are. If you have one near you and you like hamburgers and good fries, I highly recommend you go and visit. Be sure to let me know if you agree that it’s one of the best burgers you’ve ever eaten!

Five Guys
Numerous Local Locations
http://www.fiveguys.com