Grilled Cheese and Bacon Sandwich

the sandwich, minus a bite

I've developed my own way of making a grilled cheese sandwich (with optional bacon) and I finally decided to share.

Yeah, this is a simple recipe, and heck it's a grilled cheese sandwich. I think everyone knows how to make it. But I've missed sharing recipes so I figured why not. And I was enjoying the photography side of things a bit too much, so there are also lots of photos along the way.

the ingredients

Ingredients
Bread
Precooked bacon
Cheese
Olive oil
Minced onions
Garlic powder
Thyme

Instructions

Apply olive oil to one side of each bread slice using a brush.

each photo will just be showing each step, so I'll stop the captions

Sprinkle a generous amount of garlic onto the bread, but a bit less of the onions and thyme.

Put a pan on the stove and set the temperature to the higher end of medium. Let it warm for a minute or so.

Once the pan is warm put one bread slice in, and add the cheese and bacon. Criss cross the bacon while making sure that you can see through the slices. Add a bit more garlic for good measure.

Confession: I really like garlic. I mean, I really like it. As in, when I get my own kitchen again I want to put a shrine to garlic in the corner of it.

Add more cheese on top of that.

Note: I place bacon in the middle of the cheese, and make sure that it can seep through, because that's a good way to hold the sandwich together once it's done. It's just as yummy whichever way you do it, though.

Finally add the other slice of bread, and flip when browned.

Ta da! Yummy sandwich.

Oven baked bacon

My delicious dinner

Oven temp

I was surprised at the idea of cooking bacon in the oven. Who ever heard of such a thing? But I read that it supposedly preserves the flavor, so I decided to give it a try.

The verdict? Not as much fun as cooking on the stove top, and I don't know that I like it better myself. But it tastes excellent, and my mom kept saying that I'd outdone myself. So I think I'll call it a success. Here's how I did it.

Ingredients

Bacon
Elephant garlic (real garlic would also work)
Mushrooms
Cayenne powder

The ingredients, minus cayenne -- it's lonely that it was forgotten :(

Instructions

Preheat oven to 365°f. Or as close as you can guess. (Really, how many ovens will show you exactly where that is?)

Rinse your bacon in cold (or cool) water and lay it in a pan.

Note: I'm not sure how important this actually is, but I also read that this is supposed to reduce how much bacon will shrink as it cooks. In any case, I was impressed at how little the bacon shrunk, but this is also the first time I'd cooked it in the oven. So, I'll reserve judgment on my opinion of rinsing in cold/cool water until further experimentation.

Next dice your garlic and cut up your mushrooms. I intentionally left the garlic in small chunks rather than chopping it finer because I remembered the joy of biting into garlic chunks at a favorite restaurant.

Sharp pointy things...

Scrape the garlic and mushrooms onto the bacon, and rearrange things so that they're underneath. The idea is for the bacon juices to seep into them.

Sprinkle cayenne powder on top.

Ready to cook

Close up

Cook for 10 minutes, enjoying how amazing it smells.

The finished thing

Close up

Doesn't it look amazing? And to my surprise, there wasn't a lot of grease lying in the pan.

I had the bacon with a baked potato. Hey, people put bacon bits on potatoes, so why not serve bacon on the side? And, it was a delicious dinner.

Delicious dinner

Tuna Salad

I'm not abandoning this blog. Honest I'm not. I'm just...distracted.

I thought I'd share a recipe for tuna salad. It's one I learned years ago from my mom, and for ages it was the only fish dish I considered edible. Of course, the "fish diet" my doctor put me on for my wacky cholesterol has forced me to expand my horizons and realize that fish and sea food aren't so bad after all. (Except for cat fish. I don't think that's ever edible.) Since I've only shared one other fish recipe, I figured it was about time for me to share another.

It can be enhanced with chopped apples or nuts, or anything else you think would go well in it. I've even tried mushrooms. I usually just fix it as shown here, though. And it's really convenient to put together in the evening and take it to work the next day.

Ingredients

Ingredients

Packet of tuna
Mayo
Sweet relish
Dill relish
Lemon juice

Instructions

Put your tuna in a bowl, and add a large spoon of mayo. This can be adjusted to taste.

(Actually, everything can be adjusted to taste.)

Add mayo

Add the rest of the ingredients, to taste. I go a bit heavy on the lemon, light on the sweet relish, and heavy again on the dill relish. I actually added more dill after stirring in everything in the following photo.

Ingredients about to be mixed

And it's as simple as that! Really easy, but it can take some tweaking before you figure out how you really like it. And again, you can try adding nuts and other stuff to it.

Ta da! Done

I guess you can eat it straight like this, but you can also put it on crackers (it's lovely on saltines) or on a sandwich.

The birth of a sandwich

An experiment

Ingredients

No idea what to call this. If I do make it again I'll do things differently. That being said, I think it's interesting, and it's certainly not bad. It's the first of its kind that I made, so I decided to document it here.

I found this recipe (or something close to it) while I was looking up info on this other recipe. You put a few spoonfuls of this stuff in hot water, and it helps sore throats.

Ingredients

Lemon
Ginger root
Honey

Instructions

Cut the lemon into slices, removing the seeds as you go. Mince (or try to mince) the ginger.

Note: I sliced up two lemons, but I think I only used a little over one whole lemon.

Mincing ginger

Everything sliced and minced up

Put the lemon and ginger in a jar, and try to sort of mix it up together. I didn't get a photo of it at this stage. Oops...

Next, add the honey. To make everything flow more smoothly I heated it up a bit in the microwave, though I guess that isn't necessary. It probably just depends on how much patience you have, and how old your honey is.

To my surprise, the lemon slices and ginger float. Maybe it's just that the honey I used is so liquidy? Anyways, it's not quite as pretty as I expected, but maybe that's just because it doesn't look how I expected it to look.

The finished thing

My conclusions

Very yummy.

I guess that I somehow expected the ginger to liquify in the honey. Don't ask me why. The ginger bits are a little odd when I'm drinking it, but I've found I can just swallow them down as I drink the...whatever it is.

Next time I'll either find a way to mince the ginger smaller, or leave it out entirely.

I may also see if I can find some less liquidy honey, to see if I can keep the lemons from rising to the top. But that's about how it looks, not about the taste or texture.

I'm also wondering if it really needs to be refrigerated...I read it needs to be though, so that's what I'm doing.

The leftover on the cutting board...lemon slices, lemon ends, and seeds

Have you ever fixed this, or something similar to it? Any comments or suggestions?

Sore throat remedy

The ingredients

While looking up teas that might help with a sore throat I came across the honey and lemon remedy. Apparently it is fairly well known, and it could be that most of my readers will respond with "Well duh, you only now found this?" I don't really care though, because I am too happy with my discovery.

At my mom's suggestion, I added whiskey. I do like it without the whiskey, but I think I prefer it with the medicinal booze. By the way, this is the same stuff that I mentioned my boyfriend getting me in this post. :)

I've discovered that if you're fixing this regularly, it may be a good idea to buy extra honey. The honey in the regular little bear containers won't last very long if you drink this several times a day.

Ingredients

1 cup water (equals one mug, basically)
2 table spoons honey
1 table spoon lemon juice
1 table spoon whiskey

Instructions

Heat water as you would for tea. Mix in other ingredients.

Chicken casserole

Yummy

Allow me to introduce you to my mom's recipe for chicken casserole. I finally learned how to fix it, and figured I may as well share it.

Ingredients

Chicken
Stuffing
Cream of mushroom soup
Chives
Basil
Minced onion
Olive oil

Ingredients

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400°f. 

Chop up your chicken, and cook it on the stove with some olive oil and the spices. I used a lot of basil, and less of the onions and chives.

While the chicken is cooking, prepare the stuffing as directed. (Actually, I ignored what the stuffing said about butter, and only used water in it.)

Once the chicken is done, pour the cream of mushroom on the bottom of an ungreased pan. Evenly spread the chicken on top of it.

I may cook more chicken next time, although this was pretty decent.

Chicken and mushroom goodness

Spread the stuffing on top of it all, and cover. I used a glass lid, but you can use tin foil.

The glass lid got steamy from the freshly cooked stuffing

Cook for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven, and enjoy! :)

Fresh out of the oven

I know the above shot isn't great, but I thought it was so funny. You want to know why? The food was so hot that it steamed up the lens on my camera.

On the plate

Sugar waffles

Deliciousness

File this under probably unhealthy, but delicious.

Ingredients

Sugar, lots of sugar
Butter (I used the real stuff)
Waffles

Directions

Spread some butter on the waffles.

I used frozen waffles, and didn't bother defrosting. But I don't think it matters whether they're frozen or defrosted.

Buttered waffles

Put a pan on the stove, and turn the heat up high. VERY high. I set it about as high as it would go. Add a little bit of butter, just to be thorough with the buttery goodness.

Once the butter in the pan has melted, add the waffles and put some sugar on top of them.

With sugar!

When you flip them over, add some more sugar. I added some sugar a few more times.

Hey, there is a very good reason I call these sugar waffles.

Sugar!

The sugar will start to brown. Once this begins, it won't take much time for them to be finished. You'll also have to keep a close eye on them because they can go from nicely browned to overdone very quickly.

Beginning to brown -- pure eye candy at this stage

It'll be done when there's a decent amount of brown on both sides of the waffles.

Done

...and the sugary goodness is ready to be enjoyed!

Yummy...

Tips

• Be sure that you soak the pan and plates afterwards. The browned sugar likes to stick to things, and can be a pain to cleanup if it hasn't been soaked properly.

• The waffles sometimes like to stick to the plates, which can make eating them...interesting. One way to avoid this is by lifting the waffles off the plate immediately after putting them on, and then setting them back down again.

• If you're more of a bagels person than a waffles person, try this with bagels.

EDIT 1/23/2013: I just have to add this pic of sugar bagels. :)

Bagels...

Salmon and shrimp sandwich

Sammich!

I am pleased to bring to you my first recipe from my "fish diet," the diet in which my doctor basically wants me to eat fish and avoid red meat. This is supposed to raise my HDL cholesterol.

I've found fish/seafood that I enjoyed before now, but nothing great that I cooked myself. And by cook, I mean more than just throwing pre-seasoned fish in the oven for 20 minutes. That doesn't really take any work, or artistry. Making this sandwich does require those things.

Before getting on to the recipe, I do want to point out a new page that you may have noticed in the last week or so: it's the recipe page. It has all my recipes that I've shared so far, and everything I share in the future will also go up there.

The ingredients

Ingredients

Shrimp (I used frozen precooked)
Salmon (I used precooked)
Garlic powder
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Parmesan cheese
Bread

Instructions

Put some olive oil in a pan, along with some garlic. I put my shrimp in before the salmon so it could thaw.

Shrimp

Add the salmon once the shrimp seems decently thawed out.

Salmon and shrimp, heating up

Add lemon, to taste. And toast the bread while the fishy stuff finishes heating up.

On the bread

Once the fish/shrimp is decently heated up place it on the bread. Add Parmesan, though I'd recommend using less than is in the photo. The best bits of the sandwich were with light cheese.

Enjoy! :)

Bacon Bleu sandwich

The finished thing

This is my sort of recreation of a sandwich from the fast food place I worked at. This recipe could maybe do with a few tweaks, but it's still pretty good.

By the way, you may be seeing some fish recipes up soon. My cholesterol is way off from where it should be (you should have seen my doctor's face when we discussed it, the HDL is so darn low), so I've been ordered to only have red meat about once a week and start eating lots of fish. Problem is that I'm usually not a huge fan of fish...so I may have to get creative if I don't want my taste buds to totally hate me.

Ingredients

Thin steak
Bacon
Bleu cheese
Onion
Olive oil
Mayo
Shredded lettuce
Sour dough bread, preferably in sub form

For once, no cayenne pepper! Shocking, isn't it?

Some ingredients

Instructions

On the stove

Cook the bacon, and saute the onions in olive oil.

Some stuff on the bread

While they're cooking may be a good time to prep the bread. Put mayo on it (I put it very light) and add the lettuce.

When the bacon was done I cooked the steak in its grease. Be careful not to splash the grease on yourself! I was surprised at how excitable the bacon grease was.

Once cooked, place the steak on top of the lettuce. Add the onions, some bacon, and bleu cheese.

And that's it!

Finished thing, from top

Changes from the original

You can skip this, it's just me documenting how I changed things for future reference.

Brands: obviously, nothing is the same brand.

Onions: the original uses raw onions that have been refrigerated. But they've lost the bite that onions have when they're freshly cut.

Bread: I have no clue what the bread on the original is, though I know it's brought in from Philly. It's whatever they use on the cheesesteaks.

Meat: on the original it's rib eye, and more thinly sliced than anything I could find in the store.

Bacon grease: oil is used on the grill (I think soy oil?), not bacon grease.