2 Things @ Once

Bacon Thursday: Bacon Ice Cream!

Happy Bacon Thursday everyone! And have I got a treat for you.

Actually, it's for me, but I absolutely had to share. Allow me to present the ultimate in sweet-meets-salty:

Maple Brown Sugar Bacon Brittle Frozen Custard!!!!

How awesome is that?! My friend Victoria, a culinary master with a creative streak a mile wide, created a specialty ice cream treat for me based on my love of bacon. I have to say, it's probably one of the oddest things I've ever eaten and I had to laugh as I took the first few bites, because there's REAL BACON in the ice cream!! But I also have to say, it's really good. And complex. There are lots of different flavors and you taste them all in turn with each bite.

I shouldn't be surprised though. I mean, what's not to like, right? Maple? Oh yeah, show me a box of maple candy and I'll show you an empty box. Brown sugar? Everything's better with brown sugar. Bacon? Hell yeah.

This ice cream (I guess it's technically frozen custard, but I'll keep calling it ice cream because it tastes just like premium ice cream) is terrific. Creamy and delicious, full of real maple flavor; that alone would be worth sitting down and devouring the entire pint. But the bacon brittle is the star of the show here.

If you look at it and think, there's meat in that ice cream, you might not get any further, but trust me, it's good. Bacon brittle is the perfect description. The bacon bits are crispy and hard like candy and as the ice cream melts in your mouth, the bacon gets chewy like caramel. As the maple flavor that hits you in the beginning of each bite gives way, you really taste the bacon. And it's good. This is rich stuff, as you can imagine bacon in cream would be--a little goes a long way.

This Creamotherapy takes Bacon Thursday to a whole new level. Victoria, I can't thank you enough!

(And Victoria, you might want to patent this idea. People would buy this. Oh yes they would.)

The Healing Power of Bacon

Happy Bacon Thursday all!

A big thanks to Victoria for this. Somehow she thought of me when she saw it and I can think of no more appropriate recovery gift.

And the free prize inside? A cute puffy bacon sticker. Mine mine mine.

My New Theme Song: This Too Shall Pass

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

I previously mentioned the very clever videos the band OK Go created for their song This Too Shall Pass. I finally got around to downloading the song itself to my iTunes library, and in listening to it anew, I realized the lyrics were especially apropos for me right now.

So here it is again, in case you need a little something to get the weekend off on a positive note. Personally, the marching band version seems to fit my upbeat outlook right now more than the Rube Goldberg machine version. (Which, if you're a fan of and what to know in detail how they did it, there's a great interactive feature on their website here. Click on the map and have fun.)

Operating Room Mix Tape

There is a soundtrack to my life and music is a very big part of it. Music, all kinds of it, elevates my mood, fuels my walk, energizes my life, and speaks to my soul. So, it was very natural for me to want to know what music, if any, would be playing in the operating room during my surgery. What soundtrack would be feeding my subconscious (or should I say unconscious) while I'm out on the table and the medical team is doing their thing all around (and in) me?

I was curious, so I asked, near the end of my meeting with my plastic surgeon. (I kicked myself for forgetting to ask my primary surgeon.) The plastic surgeon was a bit vague. She wouldn't commit any songs or artists, just mentioned that she likes to listen to mellow music and that the team usually plays something more upbeat to get them going for the closing (no pun intended.)

Karen (who was there when I asked the original question) took the idea and ran with it on a recent Facebook post and I'm doing the same here.

So, surgical mix tape ideas?

Everybody Hurts by REM, Bodysnatchers by Radiohead, Brickhouse by The Commodores, How We Operate by Gomez, Comfortably Numb by Scissor Sisters...

You get the idea. Go crazy.

The Met Meets the Lake

Here's my homage to Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog (highly recommended if you haven't seen it) which I shot a few weeks ago after a warm up melted most of the ice and snow off Lake Michigan.

Happy Day Light Savings!

So, what are you planning to do with your extra hour of daylight today?

OK Go Does It Again

If you thought the marching band video for "This Too Shall Pass" was clever, you ain't seen nothing yet. I love this group. Love this video.

The Bacon Thursday Taste Test

What began as a random comment posted on Twitter about a month ago has become a weekly event--Bacon Thursday! Thursday is one of the days when I'm "working" from home, so I have the luxury to fry up some bacon for breakfast. I get my bacon from the awesomest butcher around, Holzkopf Meat Market in Edgewater (on Broadway near Granville.) They've recently added a third bacon option to their lineup so I thought it would be fun to try them all together to see which I liked best.

Karen, my partner in all things Holzkopf, needed no convincing to join in on the taste test and since she really does work from home, she was able to make an appearance at Bacon Thursday. We fried up three slices of each of the three bacon varieties: Jones Hickory Smoked, Usinger's Applewood Smoked and Dreymiller & Kray Applewood Smoked.

The Dreymiller & Kray bacon (on the left) looked the most distinct right out of the package. The meat was pinker, looked fresher, and seemed to have a higher ratio of fat-to-meat. The Usinger (bottom right) was the most fragrant and wonderfully smokey. The Jones (top right) looked most like your (above) average supermarket bacon.

Now, how did they taste? The Jones hickory smoked (top) was the mildest. Once cooked up, the slices were widest and the taste wasn't as salty as the others. This reminded me most of the bacon I grew up eating. Tasty but nothing special.

The Usinger applewood smoked bacon (left) was the most flavorful. If you like your bacon to taste like it just came out of the cowboy skillet over an open campfire, this is the bacon for you. You can really taste the applewood and it tastes great. This is the bacon I'll be using this summer when BAT season rolls around. (Bacon Arugula and Tomato--my preferred take on the good old BLT sandwich.)

Karen described the Dreymiller & Krey applewood smoked bacon (right) as more complex and I'd agree. The wood flavor is subtler and the meat didn't taste as salty as the Usinger. We also noticed it tasted great with the coffee we were drinking. My big problem with the D&K is that, in the three times now that I've cooked it up, it gets too crispy, no matter how low the heat I'm using. I prefer my bacon to be softer and chewier; when I was a kid, I'd call it "limber bacon."

So, over all, my favorite would still have to be the Usinger applewood smoked bacon. If I could figure out a way to get the Dreymiller & Krey to cook up on the limber side, it would be a close second. Good thing I've got half a pound remaining in my fridge on which to practice.

Panorama of the Frozen Lakefront

Thought I'd take a break from my BVI trip journal to feature a shot of the ice-encrusted lake from this weekend--to put it all in a little perspective. There's ice as far as the eye can see and none of it moving. Chicago is hiding behind the trees on the right-hand side of the image.

(Click on the image to see it larger.)

Learning Curve, Over the Falls

This past weekend, I spent a bit of time exploring the different ways I could upload and share longer form videos. (Flickr is intended for "long form photos" (less than 60 seconds) and YouTube wasn't the direction I was aiming for.)

I've got a MobileMe account that I'm trying out for free, but there's no way to give photo galleries or videos any sort of description beyond a title and there's no ability for visitors to leave comments. Not great. Plus, I wasn't crazy about the viewing size and quality constraints, so it's not really an option.

I signed up for a Vimeo account two years ago and I'm only now getting around to exploring it. It was a snap to use (though uploading can take some time, so I set it for overnight and left it.) Other than the occasional stuttering of playback, which I think has more to do with my internet/wireless combo, I'm pleased with the way it looks.

I edited this snippet in 2008 as an exercise to get acquainted with iMovie; I used footage of Niagara Falls that I'd shot with my then very new G9. In fact, I'd been shooting photos of the falls for twenty minutes when I suddenly remembered I had the capacity to shoot video at all.

Over the Edge from 2Things@Once on Vimeo.

Click here see a higher res version, without the black bars.