Home for the Holidays

No matter how many hours you spend unpacking and storing things away, moving into a new place never seems to end. Eventually you just give up and stash everything in the spare bedroom, or under the stairs, or in the garage, or all three in our case.

One of the top items we were looking forward too the most about the new house is finally being able to host family gatherings. Our first test was Thanksgiving. We got the keys on Nov 15, and thus had a short amount of time to get enough kitchen/dining/seating supplies moved from the apartment. All the important stuff made it over in time, if you don't consider seating important. So not only did we have the pressure of cooking a turkey and various side dishes, but everyone was essentially huddled around the kitchen watching us prep as we only had a folding table, some folding chairs, and four bar chairs that arrived just a couple days earlier.

So even with the extra pressure of everyone watching us cook, and the fact that we really hadn't used any of the appliances prior to Thanksgiving, everything turned out very well. The turkey turned out nice (it never hurts when you stuff butter and herbs under the turkey skin before cooking), Mary made some excellent vegan cornbread that we turned into dressing, and there was pie...

And frozen pumpkin mousse torte...

And pumpkin creme brulee...

With that trial by fire out of the way, we were ready to up the ante with Christmas.  Mary's family had plans to gather on Christmas Eve, with a total head-count of 19, including 6 kids under the age of 11.  Not only was this going to test our hosting abilities, but also the house durability as there always seems to be an inverse relationship between the size of the child and the mess they can create.

With this size of event, we went the potluck/buffet food service arrangement. In previous years, Mary's family Christmas Eve meals have learned towards and Italian theme, but since Mary is lactose-adverse and her Mom is allergic to garlic, we felt a menu theme change wouldn't hurt. We ended up going with a Latin American/Caribbean themed meal, mostly because we new some great rum and guacamole pairings.

Mary created some cranberry mojitos, Christmas sangria, and chicken tortilla soup, and I tackled carnitas and chorizo tamales, tomatillo salsa, spicy habenero salsa, and a mole sauce.  I had never done tamales before and didn't have a steamer basket, so I had to MacGyver one with a foil pie tin that I punched holes in with a screwdriver. I thought dealing with the corn husks would be my undoing, but it all went really smoothly and were a big hit.

On the sweet front, Mary provided some of her delicious Creme Catalan (a Spanish creme brulee made with lemon zest), and I tried my hand with a sweet potato pie and a dulce-de-leche apple pie. Mary recalled the disaster that was my sweet potato pie last year, but this year I was confident I could redeem myself. Turns out that all I needed to do was omit all the suck and fail, and triple the amount of awesome.

The dulce-de-leche apple pie turned out phenomenal. It is just unfortunate that it will never happen again as dulce-de-leche is easily the most time consuming dessert item ever and it took a quart of whole milk to produce a little under a cup of caramel.

There was also a pecan pie halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas to help bridge the gap between overindulgence holidays. There is still noting wrong with sugar baked with pecans in a pie:

Time to wrap this up, Mary's got the New Year's Eve paella ready to consume!

Happy New Year!

--Isaac.

Halloween Chili

There have been some big behind-the-scene changes to the conglomeration known as Bacon v. Pie. We moved out of our apartment of four years, and into an awesome house. This move is a result of an arduous 18-month process, but well worth it as our kitchen situation has vastly improved (much higher pie-making efficiency). 

So we are backtracking a bit to a time before mortgage loans, moving trucks and 11 days without any internet access...

There are two key ingredients to make a successful Halloween: candy and chili.  The peril of buying Halloween candy too early is that you end up eating said candy and have to buy more. I guess that is a good problem to have though.

Chili on Halloween has been a long-standing family tradition. It is one of those things we always do each year, but no one knows when it started or why, and questioning the reason of chili is just illogical. You shouldn't need a reason for chili.

This year, the chili included more pork shoulder (pork month!) and turned out so thick that not only could I stand a spoon up in it, but I was also able to use the chili as foundation for a high-rise commercial office building. Meaty goodness. Naturally, where there was chili, there was also chili dogs:

There is a sausage under there somewhere.

On Halloween proper, we were still a little over two weeks away from getting the keys to the house, so Mary's idea was to take some blankets, candy and Fireball, and sit on the front porch to pass out candy. We were successful in meeting some of the neighbors, but were dismayed by the lack of effort put forth in the majority of the costumes. So to you middle/high schoolers thinking you can get some free candy: putting on jeans and a hooded sweatshirt along with your school backpack does not count as a costume. It is both weak and lame and we will award you no further candy.

--Isaac.

Pig n' Pumpkin

With October being National Pork Month, I figured it was once again my patriotic duty to slow cook a dry-rubbed pork shoulder for 10 hours and eat it over the course of a week.

I went the pulled pork sandwich route similar to last year, and I feel it was once again the right decision.

In the spirit of October and Halloween and canned pumpkin being on sale at the grocery store each week, I've been on a torrent of making pumpkin based desserts. To start, multiple dozens of pumpkin cookies have been baked (and consumed too quickly for photographic evidence). Ever since making marshmallows for various camping trips over the summer, I had been toying with the idea of doing some flavored marshmallows, and felt that a pumpkin pie flavored marshmallow would do the trick.

I used some tiny cookies cutters to create the various leaf and pumpkin shapes. Definitely more difficult to punch out shapes from a sheet of marshmallow rather than a sheet of sugar cookie dough.

Following my first attempts at basic cake decorating with marzipan earlier this summer, I had also been looking for a good time to try some sculpting with marzipan. I thought that some simple pumpkin would be a relatively easy first project:

Surprisingly enough, they actually turned out how I intended. I think that for next time, by omitting the strong flavored almond extract and adding in some pumpkin pie spices, these would be really phenomenal if they looked like pumpkins and tasted like pie.

--Isaac.

Changing Seasons

In a last ditch effort to salvage what was left of summer, I wiped away the rainwater from the grill and fired it up. A couple weeks prior, I had dusted off my Himalayan salt block to grill some vegetables. In the process of washing/scrubbing veggie guts off of the block afterwards, the block suffered an unfortunate accident while and was split in twain. How strange it is that a block of salt would erode when exposed to liquid...

Fortunately, the split was clean enough so that I could still grill up a pile of Philly steak meat for some steak tacos...

...and some of those healthy vegetables too I guess...

I trust you won't tell those Philadelphians what I was doing to their cheesesteak meat. I was lacking any sort of Cheese-Whiz or similar manufactured cheese product for a traditional cheesesteak, but I did have plenty of masa to squish out some homemade corn tortillas and make some killer steak tacos with roasted corn and bell pepper salsa:

In a previous post, I had mentioned the Emma Torte in all its chocolaty glory. At the time, I made a patriotic version of the frozen summer dessert, but this time, I went with the tried and true original recipe:

Much more monochromatic, but probably more delicious as I wasn't screwing around with that white chocolate shenanigans. The torte was a birthday request from Mary's mom, and I was happy to oblige. I think the Emma Torte is close to passing up my pies in popularity and dessert requests for family gathering, which is quite the feat (I might add at the risk of blowing out my rotator cuff as I pat myself on the back) as my pies rank up as "really awesomely fantastic" on a scale from 1-to-Fantastic.

--Isaac.
@baconvpie

A New Standard in Pie

As September was the blog's one year anniversary/birthday, I figured the best food to mark the occasion would be a combination of what we are: Bacon and Pie.

As much as I want to make nothing but pumpkin pies for the next three months now that fall is here and pumpkins are on sale at the grocery store, a bacon and pumpkin pie combination just sounded a bit off. Bacon and apples had a much better ring to it, and pears were on sale, so the Apple and Pear Pie with Bacon was the final verdict.

I typically use Granny Smith apples for my apple pies because their tartness pairs well with the extra sugar that gets added in. Since my pears were pretty soft and ripe to begin with, I wanted to get the apple to roughly the same consistency as the pears right at the beginning of the baking process. Cooking down the apples with the bacon (some nice thick-cut black forest bacon) seemed like an obvious and delicious decision.

Overall, the apple-pear-bacon turned out really nice. I went light on the bacon this round because I was worried about making the pie too savory, and I think next time (and there will be many future next times) the pie could have benefited from some more bacon. More bacon is always a good thing.

In other pie-related news, I recently had the privilege of receving my grandmother's pie cookbook (from 1965):

 

It has seen better days, but I think it just adds to the charm. The book's authors were not joking when they claim this as the "complete" pie cookbook as there are over 700 recipes included. Very impressive collection. I thought about maybe trying to bake my way through the book, but then realized that a pie each week would take about 14 years, and a pie a day isn't feasible either. I'm really excited about using and adapting recipes from 45+ years ago and hopefully I can make the book last another 45 years.

--Isaac.

Peach Pie

While the beginning of summer is a celebration of berries, the end of summer is festival of stone fruits - peaches, nectarines, apricots, more peaches, plums, and even more peaches. I guess it is very fitting then that National Peach Pie Day is August 24th. Probably wouldn't make sense to have a peach-themed day in late-November. 

As soon as peaches start showing up at the grocery store, if I happen to get a whiff of the peach pheromones, it is game over. Marketing geniuses they are. Most don't last long enough to make it into a pie. But there are a few lucky ones...

One of my favorite by-products of making a peach pie is the leftover peach skins (I guess peach pits are the only other by-product, but those are inedible, so the skin is kind of left by default). Apparently, I am the only living human being that enjoys eating the peach skins that are left after skinning the peaches. This is a-ok by me, since I'd rather not share them anyways. I've heard complaints that the peach skins are "too fuzzy" to eat on their own, and that it makes me "weird", but both of those statements are false. I just see them as concentrated peach awesomeness. Plus, instead of snitching the peach slices that are meant for the pie, I can eat the peach skins and get my peach fix without taking away from the pie. It is really problem solving more than anything else.

I had skirted around the idea of an official peach pie for a number of weeks, opting for peach cobblers, raspberry-peach pies, and peaches stabbed on a fork, so it was about time for the real deal.

-Isaac

Chocolate Silk Pie

I've always been wary of pies that don't have some sort of fruit or nut or vegetable involved in the filling. Maybe it is because I always cast well deserved judgement at the stacks of chocolate cream or pudding based pies at the grocery store. I always just assumed that these mass produced pies were just simple, effortless instant pudding poured into a stamped out pie shell. 

Well, true to form, I managed to stumbled across a chocolate silk pie that turned out to be the opposite of simple. The directions for the crust had me make chocolate cookies just to crush them and combine with even more butter, form onto the pie pan, and then bake a second time. And then there was some double boilers and a lot of whisking and I'm pretty sure I ended up using every bowl in the cabinet during the process

This chocolate silk pie was supposed turn out a bit denser than a chocolate chiffon pie but with more body than a chocolate cream pie. I'm not sure if the texture turned out as advertized though, mainly because I did not have a spare chocolate chiffon pie and a spare chocolate cream pie just laying around to compare. I do know that it turned out pretty freakin' awesome, and it did well to earn a spot in future pie-making consideration.

--Isaac.

Sweet Swag

The first prototypes of the official Bacon v. Pie merch are hot off the ironing board!

Team Bacon - front

Team Pie - front

Logo - back

And in true BvP fashion, these are also homemade with love, felt letters, and some iron-on transfers.

If you feel the desire to support Team Bacon or Team Pie and want a shirt to show the world your support, let us know, and we can make it happen! More items are being planned and we will post those up as they become available too!

--Isaac

(Go Team Pie!)

Summer Creations

Usually when I have time to plan and create a weekend dinner, I start off thinking about dessert first like any rational person might do. A quick search through the fridge yielded the following summer delights: one peach, two pints of raspberries about a day away from joining the Dark Side, and maybe 17 individual blueberries. Not nearly enough for a pie, but perfect for a cobbler:

And yes, it is mandatory that all cobblers have the juice of the fruit inside bubble over and spill down the side of the ramekin while baking. It is one of those unwritten Laws of Baking Delicious Stuff.

Since you technically shouldn't only eat cobbler for dinner (stupid rule), I tried my hand at a summer pasta dish my family routinely made while I was growing up: Portland Pesto. I am pretty sure the recipe is from some regional Oregon/Northwest cusine cookbook (which makes sense because of the name) which in turn was adapted from a local restaurant.'s recipe. I am taking some substantial liberties here as all I really remember about the dish is its name, the pesto, summer sausage, and... maybe some bell peppers? I added in grape tomatoes and olives for good measure:

Interesting tidbit... I never really liked this dish when I was a kid. I just picked out the noodles and the summer sausage. Ridiculous I know.

--Isaac.

Of Strawberries and Pie

So, this is an issue. Clearly people are confused about what the real correct answer is, especially since the option that is leading isn't really an option.

I've tried counting how many years it has been since I made the switch from birthday cake to birthday pie, but then I ran out of fingers and stopped counting. It has always been, and will always be, the Birthday Strawberry Pie, as it is without a doubt, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the pie world. Using fresh Oregon berries surely doesn't hurt either.

Cakes can be made year round, rain or shine, zombie apocalypse or alien invasion. Pies,or rather fresh, seasonal pies, are all the more special because they only peak during certain times throughout the year. To me, this is a no-brainer if your birthday or other special occasion happens to fall during one of the many delicious produce season.

Mary makes just one pie a year, my Birthday Strawberry Pie, since you shouldn't have to make your own birthday pie on your birthday.

Mary, like most novice pie-makers, is always worried about the crust, however she was very pleased with this year's results.

I'd be foolish if I didn't get at least one more strawberry pie made this "summer", so I managed to get one last flat of berries from Sauvie Island.

It is a good thing I got the full flat, because I must have eaten three pints of berries before I even got to the pie-makin'.

So make the switch to pie. It will be fantastic. Just watch out you don't waste your time with the "D"-students of the pie world: banana-cream, Boston-cream or any other "cream" based pies.


--Isaac

This. Is. BBQ! (and pie!)

This is the correct way to do a BBQ:

Brats and halibut on a Traeger. If you throw wet cardboard covered in BBQ sauce on a Traeger for two hours, it would turn out delicious.

Conversely, this is exactly the wrong way to do BBQ:

Nothing to grill, and a torrential downpour in the background. Such is Oregon. The most lame part of that situation with me and the tongs and the rain is that it broke a good five day streak of gillin'. I simply ran out of food to grill. Corn Chex and thin sliced deli turkey meat don't take kindly to the grill.

Luckily, dessert can be made rain or shine.  The obligatory 4th of July BBQ gathering demands a summer berry pie. Growing up, that always meant a raspberry pie, likely because raspberries usually decide they are ready to be picked around that time, but just as likely, we needed to switch it up a bit after eating nothing but strawberry-based items for the previous month.

I made two desserts to bring to my friends annual Independence Day BBQ. The first was a raspberry and peach pie:

I have made raspberry-peach pies in the past, but instead of leaving the peach whole, I pureed it to fold into the berries. It was good, but I'll probably leave them whole in the future.

The second dessert was a variation of the best non-pie, chocolate-based dessert ever: The Emma Torte.  The Emma Torte is a chocolate mousse frozen deliciousness named after my cousin Emma. Legend has it that my mom was making the torte once, and when my cousin asked what she was making, my mom replied "Emma Torte" and so we've all referred to it as such ever since. Because we are silly or something.

The torte usually ends up being light brown due to the chocolate requirements, but with the holiday, I wanted to make it a bit more patriotic, so I substituted in white chocolate so I could make a white layer, a red layer (with raspberry puree) and a blue layer (with blueberry puree):

The bottom layer is a chocolate crust similar to a crust on a cheesecake. Festive, and delicious.

I bet a pie would take kindly to a Traeger real nice...

--Isaac.

His and Hers Birthday Cakes

June birthdays really have some good things going for them. June marks the beginning of summer vacation, the start of berry season, and is home to the summer solstice, which means that June birthdays last longer than any other month if you are just counting daylight hours.

I'm still working to get my marzipan covered cakes looking prettier. To get this practice in, I offered to make some friends "his and hers" birthday cakes as they both have June birthdays.

The first was a Kahlua chocolate cake with a Irish cream filing...

Booze and baking go well together.

The second was a carrot cake with a raspberry filling...

Full disclosure: I didn't choose the flavor combination of that second cake, it was actually requested. Separately the two flavors tasted great though.

When I got back from my store run to get all my cake ingredients, I realized that I forgot a semi-important ingredient: carrots. Fortunately, I had a mostly full, one pound bag of those tiny inch and a half long baby carrots. After thirty minutes of grating, and a couple attempts to take the tip of my finger off, I actually had enough shredded carrot to make the cake. It worked out in the end, I just don't know how I managed to forget to get carrots when I was making a carrot cake.

Now it is back to YouTube to get more marzipan decorating tips.

--Isaac.

Yes, I Think I Will Add Bacon

Remember when MTV used to actually show music videos? Yeah, me neither. It feels like the Food Network has fallen into the same trap. Prime-time on the Food Network is now about "reality" shows and various competitions involving some manner of cooking or decorating or a combination thereof. The actual cooking shows have been banished to the Cooking Channel, which is outside of my cable package range.

That said, the one reality-style show I do enjoy on the Food Network is "Chopped" (competitors must create meals using an atypical mix of mystery ingredients revealed just seconds before cooking) because it is Iron Chef-esque, but without the abuse of hundreds of dollars in truffles. Plus, there is a dessert round and the frequent use of bacon.

Mary had the phenomenal idea of creating a Chopped-style mystery-box of four ingredients for my dad for Father's Day. We spent the better part of an hour wandering around Whole Foods as we figured they would have the highest concentration of "weird" food to choose from. We walked out with: canned hominy, orange cauliflower, enoki mushrooms, and freeze-dried french fries.  Hominy is made from corn, but if you look at the ingredient list on the side of the can, the only ingredient of hominy, is hominy. So, thanks for that. Orange cauliflower is pretty self explanatory, enoki mushrooms are skinny, tall mushrooms without much else going on for them, and the french fries had the shape of a fry, but the crunch of a potato chip.

Usually, the contestants are given 20 minutes to create a meal using all of the mystery basket ingredients, but since it was Father's Day, we allowed 20 hours.

The end result: a chowder using a puree of hominy and roasted cauliflower, with the mushrooms as garnish.

It tasted great and was a solid start to hopefully a series of these mystery-basket challenges. 

In other delicious news, the Organic Brewer's Festival was this last weekend. The weather was perfect, and there were less people this year walking around with their shirts off who shouldn't have been than last year, which was a welcome sight. One of the highlights from the brewfest last year was the discovery of elephants toes: a very miniaturized version of elephant ears. We found the same food truck this year, and to our delight, there was a sign on the side of the truck proclaiming: "Add bacon to any item: 50 cents." Well, we figured (correctly) that the only way to make fried dough covered in sugar and cinnamon better is to add bacon.

The food truck lady thought we didn't know what we were doing when we ordered the elephant toes with bacon. Please lady, we're trained professionals.

Now that I think about it, I believe the last music video I saw on MTV was Limp Bizkit's "Nookie", which would have put the year at... 1999. Yikes.

--Isaac.

Food Fight!: Stuffed French Toast

Mary and I recently had a relaxing weekend in Bend, Oregon with two of our friends (Charlotte and Drew) in which we spent half the time eating, half the time drinking, and the third half sleeping.

When Mary caught wind that Drew was planning on making some sort of stuffed french toast for breakfast on one of the mornings, she issued a challenge, and Food Fight!: Stuffed French Toast was on.
 
Just like any serious and legitimate competition, this Food Fight had an official drink sponsor: The Bloody Mary:

And of course that would be bacon in the Bloody Mary. There is a pickle in there as well, but it is just not as good at swimming.Yes it was all delicious, and yes, it is going to happen again immediately, if not sooner.

Fueled by protein and vodka, the combatants got underway...

Mary was up to bat first with her Banana and Peanut Butter Stuffed French Toast:

Peanut butter and banana is a fantastic combo, nobody can deny that. And if you try to deny it, well, then you're just misunderstanding your own opinion. The key secret ingredient Mary used in the egg batter coating was rum.  Fortunately, she did not employ the cooking method of "one shot for the batter, two for me...". I mean, it was only 11am still.

Drew chose a solid recipe as well with his Bacon and Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast:

He crimped the edges of the french toast "ravioli style" to lock in that gooey-cheesy-bacony awesome. I barely had time to take the above picture before Mary finished polishing it off in record time, so it must have tasted adequate. No longer will mankind have to search in two places at the breakfast table for their bacon and their french toast.

Charlotte and I were the judges, and after not wanting to get in trouble with our respective significant others by not voting for them much debate, we declared a tie. Yes, anticlimactic and lame, but really, the only losers in this contest were the billions of people not in the kitchen eating breakfast with us. However, since people like awards: Mary won "Best Use of Rum", and Drew won "Best Use of Bacon". Trophies are in the mail.

Full disclosure though: Mary probably should have won on a technicality before the Food Fight even got started as Drew forgot to get milk...and bread...and so had to borrow Mary's. Yes, he forgot to bring bread to a french toast cook-off. Must have been day dreaming of eating bacon or something.

--Isaac.

Almond Is My Catnip

If you have ever seen a cat trippin on the 'nip, then you have a pretty good idea of what happens when I come in contact with almond flavoring. If I could wrap almond flavoring around me like a blanket and then submerge myself in a tub full, I would.

And now, with the power of marzipan, I can.

I have always liked the look of a cake decorated with fondant, and have been looking for a good reason to try my hand at this level of cake decorating for a while now, so while it was raining outside all throughout Memorial Day weekend, I was inside baking.

A friend of ours recently had a combination birthday/new business office open house and I wanted to make a cake for the occasion.  I knew that I wanted to attempt a fondant-style decorated cake, but, frankly, fondant sucks from a flavor standpoint. Marzipan is the way to go because it handles essentially the same as fondant, and tastes only about a million times better as it is traditionally made with almonds and almond extract. Marzipan is supposed to be dipped in chocolate and eaten like candy, fondant is just for show, so it is really a no-brainer.

The open house was on Thursday, so I wanted to practice making the marzipan beforehand just in case things went awry.  While making the "practice marzipan", Mary asked if I could make something for her coworkers as they had to work on Memorial Day, so my "practice marzipan" turned into an entire "practice cake". A "two-layer, devils food with marionberry filing practice cake".

It turned out awesome, and got rave reviews from Mary's coworkers, except for the one guy who didn't think to check for toothpicks before eating.

The second cake for the combo birthday/office open house was essentially indentical underneath the hood, just a different paint job:

The logo was based on the business logo...

...and was successfully delivered despite an uncooperating rainstorm to the happily surprised birthday recipient:

All the baking pros on YouTube make draping and shaping marzipan around a cake look easy. Shams and lies. Guess I'll just have to keep practicing on more cakes..

Now I just need to find some 50 gallon drums of almond extract, and you'll never hear from me again.

--Isaac

Strawberries and Gum

Despite what the 40 degree weather and torrential rain last week may have implied, it is technically almost summer. Even then, the weather in Oregon doesn't start to get nice until after the Fourth of July fireworks are done.

Summer for me means the beginning of Berry Season, which ranks right up their with the start of the NFL season in September and the NBA season in October. I usually start to get impatient around this time for the Oregon strawberries to realize that it is time to ripen so I can make pies with them, and I end up buying the imported California strawberries. The problem with the California berries is that while they can grow to the size of volleyballs, the middle of the berries is generally filled with that un-delicious white pithy core stuff. 

Clearly, the only way to solve this situation is to core out the jumbo berries, fill them with ice cream and then coat the entire thing in chocolate:

I really see no other viable alternatives.

The ice cream was a separate success in itself. I've made a number attempts on soy based ice cream. Each time the ice cream started out great but then froze into a solid, non-dairy, chunk of flavored ice. Adding alcohol to the mix just postpones the inevitable for a day or two.

After some internet research, I decided to give xanthan gum a try. Xanthan gum is apparently derived from the bacterial shell of some microorganism, so I guess it's natural and organic, right? I am not quite sure how someone figured this out in the first place, but it is supposed to act as a thickener/emulsifier. In ice cream, the xanthan gum prevents ice crystals from forming, which helps to make the ice cream actually creamy, and less icy-crunchy. Much to my surprise, it actually worked, and made the soy ice cream seems a little more like the dairy-full kind.

I can picture the dude who first started using xanthan gum in food preparation: after pondering for hours in the kitchen, suddenly slapping the table and yelling: "I got it! Dead bacteria carcasses!"

Delectable.

--Isaac

Consuming Chicago - Part Two: Deep Dish Pizza

I think I figured out why Italians can get so ornery when it comes to us Americans and our take on pizza: they're just jealous they didn't think of it first. We're chowing down on pizza piled with pulled pork, bacon, barbeque sauce, chorizo, artichokes, pineapples, smoked salmon, and every kind of cheese that exists. They're stubbornly stuck on thinking that it is margherita or bust. Foolish. They're missing out on some great stuff.

Chicago has some very solid pizza. And lots of it:

Oddly enough, the pizza was surprisingly light, despite being deeper than the Mariana Trench and filled with all manner of meat and cheese.And due to my recently perfected food math equation: less dense = less calories, thus I am good to go with eating a third of the above pizza.

My own attempt at a Chicago-style deep dish pizza allowed for both the delicious consumption of pizza and the excuse to use my cast iron pan, which I am fairly certain was forged by Ancient Food Titans and imbued with magical properties that make all foods prepared in it fantastic:

Looks like I could have filled the dish up with at least another inch of filling:

You keep keep your mundane margherita, Italy. We'll just continue to duplicate and elaborate over on this side of the world.

--Isaac.

Consuming Chicago - Part One: Chicago Dogs

Well, this was supposed to be the Blazers season where we make it past the first round of the playoffs. Roy was going to transcend to a higher level of existence and learn to score just with his mind, Aldridge was going to get to the All-Star game, and Oden was going to dominate play.

Then reality hit: Roy had double knee surgery and missed a third of the season, Aldridge played like a beast but got hosed on the all-star nomination so that  David Stern could pay off his new house mortgage with some extra advertising revenue that just happened to be laying around (not that I'm bitter), and Oden had some more knee surgery and missed another full season.

One of the highlights to the season was that Mary and I flew out to Chicago to attend a Blazers away game against the Bulls. It was the home opener for the Bulls, and little did we know that the Bulls were destined to have the best record in the league come April and the MVP. In hindsight, the 20+ point blowout in favor of the Bulls makes a little more sense now.

Shifting away from basketball, and instead towards stuffing our faces with food, Mary and I decided that it would be foolish of us to not sample the two delicacies that Chicago has perfected: Chicago-style hot dogs, and deep dish pizza.

The Chicago-style hot dog consist of the following: poppy-seed bun with mustard, white onion, tomatoes, whole pickle spears, celery salt, sport peppers, and the most fluorescent green relish you've even seen. It's like a meat salad topped with mustard. And it is delicious.

Our last day in Chicago became an impromptu tour de force of hot dogs. We thought that the best way to truly enjoy the Chicago-style hot dog was to try them at as many locations as possible. Behold:

Tour Stop Number One: Wrigleyville Dogs

The first stop of the day was in the shadow of Wrigley Field.  It was a solid start of the adventure. The one misstep was the lack of celery salt and the fact that this conversation took place:

Isaac: "One hot dog please."
Dude at the counter: "Do you want everything on that?"
Isaac: "Yes."
Dude "Do you want peppers?"
Isaac (internally): "Did I miss the memo that says 'Everything' doesn't actually mean 'Everything'?"
Isaac (externally): "Yeah...."

Tour Stop Number Two: The Weiner Circle

The Weiner Circle was pretty tough to find: we stepped off the bus, walked about 6 feet, and then were inside ordering. Rigorous. This hot dog was fantastic. It hit all of the necessary ingredients, plus an extra pickle spear, and the hot dog was charred on the grill. This place was not as exciting at 12:30pm on a Monday afternoon as it is after the bars close apparently. Needless to say, their hot dogs are better than their singing.

Tour Stop Number Three: Budaki's

Mixed reviews with Budaki's. The polish dog they used was superb, however they neglected the poppy-seed bun and we got sucked into that strange alternate reality where saying you want everything on the hot dog doesn't actually mean everything. I guess the fact that I burnt my tongue on the hot dog and didn't' even care is testament enough in its deliciousness though.

Tour Stop Number Four: Gold Coast Dogs

We finished strong with our final stop: all the right toppings were present, and "everything" actually meant "everything".  The real story here was that the hot dog was so tasty, that when Mary dropped the last bite of hot dog on the airport terminal gate floor, I still ate it. In my defense, the hot dog fell bun side down, and we were sitting on chairs that were up against the terminal windows, and since the hot dog piece fell between the back of the chair and the window, I figured that area didn't get a whole lot of foot traffic anyways. And I'm alive today to tell the tale.

Clearly, I had to try my hand at reproducing my own Chicago-style hot dogs. So I started with making my own poppy-seed covered buns:

While the relish I ended up using was not the hue of radiator fluid, the final result rivaled the hot dogs we had in Chicago in my opinion:

And just in case you were concerned, I did eat the above hot dog off of a plate like a civilized and sanitary person would, instead of the floor.

--Isaac.

Bacon and Cake

If anyone deserves a high-five and a trophy, it is the guy that decided that what the world was missing was a meal for those times when you want to sleep in, but not miss breakfast, and still work lunch in so that your whole day isn't thrown out of whack.  Thus brunch was created, and everyone everywhere saw that it was good.

The genius behind brunch is that it combines the best of everything: breakfast items, dishes that trend more towards lunches and dinners, and desserts of all kinds. And more often than not, you can tear up a solid brunch and then go into hibernation for the rest of the day.

For the recent birthday brunch my family had for my sister's birthday, my contributions were as follows:

Deviled eggs topped with homemade chorizo...

And topped with smoked salmon...

And because I felt I should represent bacon and baking: devil's food cupcakes, topped with peanut butter frosting and black forest bacon...

Maybe a little more effort could have been put into a more creative name for this meal-time of epic proportions, but when all is said and done, hats off to they guy who came up with the whole brunch idea. Your high-five and trophy are in the mail.

--Isaac.