Happy New Year!

Happy 2012 everyone! I hope you're all looking forward to the new year.

I don't usually write about cooking on the blog but this thing I tried last night worked out particularly well so I thought I'd share. For our special New Year's Eve dinner we had filet mignon off the grill with chipotle mac & cheese, salad, bernaise (sp?) sauce, and brussels sprouts with bacon. The brussels sprouts in particular were good and it was a new recipe I hadn't tried before.

I looked online at different brussels sprouts & bacon recipes but none of them really stood out to me, so instead I just roasted the brussels sprouts as I usually do while frying the bacon up on the stove top, then made the sprouts a little crispier by frying them up in the bacon fat while the bacon drained on paper towels. SO if you're interested in the "recipe"...this is what I did...it's going to be very exact and specific, so ya know, be impressed (jk):

you'll need:
1 lb brussels sprouts
4 slices thick cut bacon
olive oil
salt & pepper


preheat the oven to 350*. usually i roast my brussels sprouts at a higher temperature but this seemed to work so i'm just telling you exactly how i did it this time. trim the rough end off all of the brussels sprouts & peel off the first few leaves (they tend to be dirty). slice sprouts in half. drizzle a liberal amount of olive oil on a sheet pan and spread the sprouts out so they all have some room to breathe. toss them around in the olive oil, then sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste. put them in the oven for 20 min.

while the sprouts are cooking, fry up the bacon to your desired level of done-ness (i cooked it over medium-high heat so that the fat didn't get too angry jumping out of the pan), then move to a plate covered in a paper towel to drain. do not drain the fat out of the pan. when the grease has absorbed into the paper towels, chop the bacon into bite size pieces. once the sprouts have come out of the oven, tip them into the pan where you cooked the bacon and toss them around for no more than 5 minutes. you'll be able to tell when they're done to your desired level - i personally like the outer leaves to be pretty brown and crispy, maybe you'll like them to stay more green. do your thing - then drain them on paper towels and toss with the bacon prior to serving.

i never take pictures of my food because it would just be a blurry shot of my hand moving to my mouth, so...use your imagination ;-)

enjoy! happy new year again :-)