Anne Can Cook

I know that grilled cheese is not a big deal to make, and it seems like a weird thing to feature on a food blog. The reason I'm including this at all is to comment on my own cooking style.
I am very much a "toss stuff together and see what happens" sort of cook. I often don't post things that I make because they're either A) tried and true recipes that have already appeared here or B) something I have just thrown together. For example, this past Thursday I made spaghetti with spicy cheese sauce, because I had about an once and a half of New Zealand cheddar and an old serrano chile I needed to use. It was really tasty, but I didn't measure anything past the basic roux formula.
Is something I can't necessarily replicate worth putting on the blog? Those sorts of things don't seem like a big deal to me, since they're just me futzing around in the kitchen.
Then I start to feel guilty because I haven't updated in two or more weeks and I really need to stay on top of this because it is a project I care about. How do more legit and serious food blogs do it?

So here we are.

If you haven't gathered this already, I really like dishes that provide a base for various embellishments. Things like pasta and chicken are great because you can season them in a million different ways.

Grilled cheese is like this, too. You can make it with whatever cheese you want. You can add seasonings or not. You can add veggies or meat, or not. The bread is up to you. It's basically a blank canvas.

Here's what I did last night.
Andrew and I went on a country adventure yesterday in which we visited an apple orchard and Minnesota's Largest Candy store. The latter was the significantly more exciting and interesting, and, in addition to all the candy, I picked up some applewood smoked mozzarella and a locally made jalapeno-garlic hot sauce (which is the green stuff at the bottom of the picture).

Since I had this incredibly tasty cheese, grilled cheese seemed like a good, easy option for our late dinner. The bread is Italian sandwich loaf, and there's bacon and the aforementioned mozz AND a sprinkle of Fox Point seasoning. Grill together on a Foreman grill (tip: these are AWESOME for grilled cheese and melts), dip in new jalapeno sauce, eat, be happy.

I also wanted to comment/ask about personal food trends. Do you ever notice that you get really into certain foods? I'm talking about food phases. Lately, I've really been into:
Green Chiles, especially jalapenos and serranos. Poblanos sometimes, too.
Beer, because Minnesota actually has a pretty rad craft beer scene. Plus, my friend Kim's beer blog is inspiring me to understand and appreciate beer even more than I previously did.
Jams and Fruit Butters, which is really weird for me because I'm not a fruit person. This all started back in August when some friends of my got married and handed out homemade preserves as wedding favors. In addition to their apple butter and vanilla-berry preserves, I've also picked up lingonberry jam from IKEA and pumpkin butter. Plus, I have some rhubarb jam from this summer I haven't opened yet. What is the deal?

What are your current food trends? How often do you go through food phases? Is this even a thing?

This week, I did something I've never done before: I mapped out my dinner menu for each night. It went really well for the first few nights. I stuck to the plan, I shopped for the plan when I went grocery shopping. I had my spaghetti and my mom's enchiladas. Tonight, I was going to make those knishes from Broke-Ass Gourmet, when I remembered that I didn't pick up potatoes because my grocery store doesn't sell red potatoes individually. Then I came home from work and discovered that the outlets on one side of my kitchen had stopped working, and, of course, the fridge was without power. So after I fixed that (hello, extension cord), I didn't feel like making knish dough or going to get potatoes or doing much of anything. That's when I remembered I had some all purpose Pillsbury dough in the refrigerator. Assembly to cook time took me all of 20 minutes, and then I had these little puffs of delight:
Cream Cheese Bacon Cups
1 roll of multi-purpose dough, cut into 12 squares
5 pieces of bacon, cooked and crumbled
Onion powder
Shredded cheese
Cream cheese (I used whipped, because I like it)
Penzeys Fox Point seasoning (or whatever you like, but really, get some Fox Point)

Preheat your oven to 375F and grease a muffin tin! Place one square in each muffin indentation and form a little cup. Divide the bacon crumbles evenly amongst the twelve dough cups, sprinkling some in the bottom of each. Add a dash of onion powder to each cup. Add a pinch of shredded cheese (about a Tablespoon) to each cup. Place a dollop of cream cheese on top of each cup. Finally, add a dash of Fox Point on top of the cream cheese.
Bake for about 15 minutes. Remove from the muffin tin to cool.

These would be really great little appetizers, or you can do what I did and eat them for dinner. I have no shame.

Leeks are new territory for me. I had never had one until one of my shopping trips to Trader Joe's in Minneapolis. TJ's sells pre-cut leeks in packages of two. I thought, why not? I brought a package home to Iowa, and then panicked. The logical thing to do when one panics is, of course, to turn to Twitter. I believe my tweet looked something like this:
"What do I use these leeks for? Should I saute them with my gnocchi? What do I do?!"
Luckily, one of my friends directed me in the direction of Nunkin and her potato leek soup. I asked her for her recipe and she kindly obliged.
I promptly made the soup and it was awesome, much like Nunkin herself. I really cannot say enough nice, glowing things about her, particularly since she is letting me post her recipe here.
Without further ado, here is Nunkin's Potato Leek Soup, as copied and pasted from the original message.
"2-ish T butter
3 leeks, white/light green parts chopped (fairly fine slice)
1 small white onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2-3 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 shallot, chopped (not really necessary, but I have fun shoving onions in this soup)
4 or so red potatoes, peeled (if you feel like it) and diced
4-ish cups veggie broth
roughly 1/3 to 1/2 c heavy cream
some herbs if you feel like it (I like dill or chives or both if I have any on hand)
BACON, cooked and chopped
CHEEBS

In dutch oven or large sewp-making pot or whatever, drop the butter in and let it melt. When the butter has gotten all nice and melty, drop in the leeks and let them cook for a minute or two until they soften. Add the garlic, onion, carrot, celery and shallot, stir it around and let
it hang out for about 5 or so minutes so that all those veggies start to soften and start smelling yummy. Then dump in the potatoes and the veggie broth (and any extra water you might need to make the broth level just cover the potatoes) and any dry herbs you might want to use. Bring it to a boil, drop the heat and let it hang out on the stove for about 45 minutes - an hour or so until everything is nice and soft and falling apart.
When it's hit that stage, remove it from the heat, dump in any fresh herbs you might want to dump in (chives are awesome) and let it cool for a few minutes,
and then blend it either in batches through a blender or with an immersion blender or what have you (you could probably mush it to bits with a potato masher,
honestly). When it's all blended, stir in the cream and adjust the seasonings. I usually serve with a handful of bacon and a handful of cheebs thrown on top, but you could probably mix that in too and it would be good."

I've been tossing in cheese with the cream, and then serving more on top. The more cheese, the merrier.

I have to say that this is some of the tastiest soup I've ever had. It's also relatively filling, which is good because I would be liable to eat the entire pot's worth if it wasn't.

The internet is full of writers. Poets, novelist, writers of short stories, and writers of conversation. And all of those writers have, at one point or another, declared their overwhelming love of bacon. It's been done. Almost everyone loves bacon. It's hard not to. It's crunchy, salty, and a bit sweet. It's perfect alone and in addition to other things people love (burgers, salads, peanut butter, etc).

Allow me to show you something simple and excellent.

This is all you need. A little olive oil, some boneless skinless chicken breasts, and bacon. I used pepper bacon, because I was feeling it. Feel free to use whatever bacon you want. It's bacon. Thought I imagine maple bacon would be quite good as well.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a baking dish. I used a Pyrex pie plate.
Rub the chicken with a little olive oil, then wrap strips of bacon around the chicken. Secure with toothpicks.

I admit, I am bad at keeping an eye on the clock. I think I let this go for about an hour. Just keep an eye on it. You want the bacon to crisp up and the chicken to cook through.

When you pull it out, it'll look something like this:
That's all there is to it. The chicken will be tender and flavorful, and you get bacon. I served a little fettuccine with goat cheese on the side, and I was soooo full.

I still have pepper bacon, so be prepared for it to make another appearance.