Cooking & Crafting: Piggly Wigglies

Last week Justyn mentioned that he was going to a potluck so we decided on making bacon wrapped pigs in a blanket. Instead of wrapping Lil Smokies in crescent rolls, we wrapped them in bacon first. Unfortunately, that means you have to par cook the bacon wrapped sausages first because they won't have enough time to cook when you go to bake them with the crescent rolls wrapped around them.



The last time I made these I used 1/4 of a slice of bacon but Justyn wanted to double it up so they took twice as long to cook.



Since the theme of the potluck is "white trash", I decided to make a little sign to match. I had some jazz music playing in the background which somehow inspired me to make it a little country'ish. I don't know how that worked out but I like it :)

The Trappist

I seriously felt like this week was a nightmare so it was a good thing that we had a trip to The Trappist in Oakland planned. It was nice to go out after a long week and hang out with friends, have some beer and nosheries.

I love this bar. I'm not a huge beer drinker but I instantly fell in love with the first few sips of Russian River Damnation. This was a damn good beer.. full bodied and easy to drink. I also tried a sip of Kris' Mikkeller Monks Brew and decided that it would be next one. Justyn ordered the De Ranke Saison which was suprisingly mild flavored. I really think I'm starting to like craft beers. I guess there's no going back to Miller Lite for me hehe..

To snack on, Kris brought some Blair's Death Rain Habanero Kettle Chips. I took a tiny nibble and my lips were burning for a good 20 minutes after. The guys were popping them like they were nothing. I have a feeling it's not gonna sit so well tomorrow..

Good times...

The food was decent too.

Afterwards we went to Tamarindo which is a tequila bar/restaurant to hang out for a bit before heading home. I'm wiped out but I had to share what was an awesome time before I go to bed.

NAC: Congratulations!

Not much to say but I finally sat down tonight and made a card. I had seen a cute sailboat illustration from Pottery Barn Kids which was the inspiration.

Leyla's Birthday

I was really excited that Leyla's birthday fell on Friday the 13th. Not only was it technically still a work day but it was a great start to the weekend. A lot of great food was made, noteably the beef stuffed blintzes (made by Katia), mac n cheese w/ bacon (made by Leyla) & red velvet cupcakes (made by Alison). I decided to make potstickers and even though they were completely devoured, I still feel like the ginger and garlic overwhelmed the rest of the ingrediants. Time to tweak the recipe and see if I can get it right!

I also got to meet some new peeps and talk to friends that I didn't get a chance to chat with much at OFGs party. Good times. Thanks Leyla and happy birthday!! :)

Eugeapalooza in SF

One of my earliest food friends, Kevyn, tagged me in a note on Facebook about Eugeapalooza which was basically an event for food carts to battle it out to raise awareness for the San Francisco Food Bank. We arrived there way earlier than anticipated so we walked around Lake Merced while they were getting set up.

By the time we finished with our walk, most of the food was ready.

Naturally the first cart we went to was Kev's. He made Chicken Tikka Masala w/ Raita. The sauce had a lot of flavor and the cooling raita was nice. He even brought his son to help serve. Super cute :)

The second cart we hit was called Meat-Cheese-Bacon. He grilled up corndogs which was outside the norm of deep frying them. Later on, I noticed that he was grilling up some sliders but we didn't get a chance to try them.

I don't remember the order in which we tried the rest of the carts but here are the pictures. Everything was super delish. I kept telling Justyn "No, THIS is my new favorite!" everytime we tried something new.

On a side note, I got pooped on by a bird. Right after that happened, I was looking over at the Vietnamese crepe food cart and saw a HUGE ball of fire. One of the burners they were using had exploded and I'm sad to report that a couple of the chicks had gotten a lot of their hair singed off and had to go to the hospital. I hope they're OK though!

Thanks go out to Kev for letting me know about this event. My belly was so full of good food that I went into a massive food coma on the drive home. I had to do everything in my power to stay awake heh.