A Year Without Bacon...

...or any other red meat.

No, this is not some newfangled fad diet that I am putting myself on in hopes of resurrecting my 18 year-old body.  Far from it.  Evidently, I have acquired an potentially life threatening allergy to meat...all because I got bit by a tick.

A tick.

(Cue the "ticked off" jokes now...like I've not been hearing them.)

Behold, the lowly Lone Star Tick.  This little bugger is prevalent across the southeastern United States, and I'm betting you never really thought twice if you got bit by one, other than "eewww, tick!"  Oh, sure, vague musings about Lyme disease may have flitted across your mind, but I'll bet you really thought that nothing was going to happen to you.

Evil Incarnate

Then, one day, you eat a ham sandwich for breakfast, and several hours later, while on the phone with a customer, your throat starts to feel tight, and you have a bit of trouble swallowing.

You wonder what the hell is happening and glug down some liquid Benadryl and start trying to determine if you need to go to the hospital or not, because you might be going into anaphylactic shock...and you have no idea why.

Things calm down after a bit, and you don't really think much more about it, but it does trigger you to make that yearly appointment with your allergist, which was due to happen in December anyway, so a little early is not a bad thing.

While at the allergist, you mention this weird pseudo-anaphylactic incident, that you ate a ham sandwich, and she immediately asks if you've been bit by a tick this summer. Of course you have.  You live in the South, you have dogs, there are trees and shrubbery in your yard, and you go outside.  Then, she says those 7 words that you aren't really sure you heard correctly at first:  "you have an allergy to red meat."

You goggle at her like a prize-winning goldfish and squawk out "what?!" And, she repeats it, a little slower,  You. Have. An. Allergy. To. Red Meat.

Here's the quick and dirty explanation according to researchers at the University of Virginia:

When certain people are bitten by ticks or chiggers, the bite appears to set off a chain of reactions in the body.  One of these reactions is the production of an allergic class of antibody that binds to a carbohydrate present on meat called galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, also known as alpha-gal.  When a person with the alpha-gal antibody eats mammalian meat, the meat triggers the release of histamine.  Histamine is a compound found in the body that causes allergic symptoms like hives, itching and, in the worst case, anaphylaxis (a reaction that leads to sudden weakness, swelling of the throat, lips and tongue, difficulty breathing and/or unconsciousness).

According to my allergist, the key weirdness factor in this is the delayed anaphylactic reaction of the alpha-gal.  It can be hours after you ingest the meat...and evidently the onset of it can be delayed for months as well, which appears to have happened in my case.   (This makes it different from most food allergies that cause a response pretty much on contact.)  I grilled various meats all summer after being bit, and went to the beach for a week and ate nothing but bacon and eggs for breakfast every damn day without any issues whatsoever.  And, then I have a ham sandwich.

There is a test to find out the level of alpha-gal and how you react to certain meats, and I popped positive on it.  My number is fairly low, but the risk factor is there, and enough of a concern that I have an Epipen and instructions to not eat beef, pork, lamb, venison, bison, etc.  Turkey, chicken, and seafood are fine...and no matter what the National Pork Council tells you, pork is definitely NOT the "other white meat."  Also, most people are not affected by milk, cheese, and butter, so those are probably okay to consume.

The only known treatment for this condition is to avoid mammalian (red) meat altogether.  The possible good news is that it might be recoverable from...I have to wait a year and be re-tested to see if I still have alpha-gal in my blood.  And, also avoid being bit by a Lone Star tick.  Being bitten again can bring the reaction back in a more severe form.

The allergist said there are about 35 patients in her practice that have alpha-gal, and they deal with it in various ways.  Several of them were of the "oh hell no, I'm not going to stop eating meat" persuasion, until they had a reaction out of the blue and came crawling back to tell about it.

Honestly, I'm on the fence about it...I find it hard to believe that I'm at that much risk, because I've been carnivoring it up all summer with nary an issue.  And, then, there's that damn ham sandwich and the blood test results.  Part of me wants to throw caution to the wind and say to hell with it and bring on the bacon.  The rule-following part says "you are crazy to even risk it.  Shut up and eat the turkey bacon!" (Note:  I have never ever ever said anything nice about turkey bacon, and I'm not going to start.)

So, I'm putting on my big girl panties and attempting to go without red meat for the year and hope that I can order up all the Omaha Steaks in the world come next November.  This is going to be extremely tough, and I figured I should write about it so I can sort of keep my own sanity.  (Plus, blog abandonment guilt was starting to get to me, even though I'm really doing it mostly for my own and Lin's amusement.)

Bring on the chicken!  Bring on the turkey!  Hell, this might be the year that I actually try a TurDuckEn!  (Yeah, but I'm not deboning all those birds myself; I'll get one already stuffed.)

Cross your fingers and wish me luck that I make it through the year.  I'm going to miss you, Bacon, so very very much.

The New Favorite Vegetable

"I think Brussels sprouts might be my new favorite vegetable," says The Man. I am still on the fence about this, because macaroni and cheese is my favorite vegetable...wait, are you saying that mac and cheese is NOT a vegetable? Ha! Tell that to generations of Southern cooks and purveyors of the classic "meat and 3" cafe offerings...mac and cheese are always on the vegetable side of the menu.

(Actually, I'm not sure I have a favorite vegetable...one that I prize above all others. I like just about all veggies, especially vine-ripened tomatoes...which aren't really vegetables, but fruit, so go figure.)

To recover from the trauma of the sardines, I sort of went all out in the comfort food direction for Tuesday night's dinner. Those lovely Berkshire pork chops, a creamy Parmesan risotto (yes, it was from a box, but it was still good!), and the baby Brussels sprouts sauteed with butter and bacon. I even gave Mark Bittman the chance to redeem himself with the pork chops...still not forgiving him for the vinegar pork roast.

The problem with grilled pork chops, as my buddy Mr. Bittman says, is that they get dry, and it's because American pork has been bred to be leaner, yadda, yadda. Hence the whole brining thing. But, he says no matter that they have the propensity to get dry, he likes the taste of grilled pork chops and makes and eats them anyway. He's come up with some tips and tricks to try and keep them moist and flavorful...the foremost trick is to get a pork chop that's at least 1-inch thick, because the thinner ones will cook fast and are more prone to dryness.

Behold the Berkshire pork chops from the farmer's market...the $11.99/pound pork chops from the farmers market, which were worth every single penny we paid for them. They were like small pork roasts, and the flavor was amazing. (I forgot to take before shots, but the after shot is pretty sweet, don't you think?)

Bittman suggested that you bring the pork to room temp as you preheat the grill. Then, generously season your chops with salt and pepper, slather them with a tablespoon or two of olive oil and throw a tablespoon or so of lemon juice on them right before putting them on the grill.

Sear them on the hottest part of the grill for about 2 minutes on both sides, then move to a cooler section and cook for about 10-20 minutes, depending on the size of the chops. After they have finished cooking (use a meat thermometer to test the temperature--needs to be about 140 degrees F for medium--pull them off, drizzle a little olive oil over them, and let them rest for a few minutes before serving.

Back to the sprouts...Brussels sprouts have never been high on my list of things to eat. Many times, while on the road, I was asked by my project team what I wanted for lunch. My standard answer was "I eat anything except canned tuna, liver, and Brussels sprouts, so if we could avoid the All Canned Tuna-Liver-Brussels Sprouts Cafe, I'll be fine."

It's not that I don't want to like Brussels sprouts, because I do...they are such wee tiny cute veggies--sort of the Pop'ables of the vegetable food group. (Unfortunately, it seems that Pop'ables have been discontinued...I really liked the Reese's Peanut Butter ones.) But, I've never been able to get past the bitter, overcooked cabbagey taste of them...probably because most of the ones I've ever had have been old and overcooked.

(I also feel the same way about kumquats. They're cute, so they should be tasty. I've not had one in decades, but I vividly remember NOT liking them at all, and feeling very duped when I tried them. Because, they look like miniature oranges and should taste like miniature oranges, is probably what my child mind was thinking, and it was a cruel, cruel joke that they did not. Damn the universe for being so unfair!!)

Enter the bacon. Just about everything on the planet is better with bacon, and what's not better with bacon just needs cheese or chocolate. We have about a half pound of Nueske's bacon left in the freezer from an extremely thoughtful holiday gift that The Man received from my friend Tessa. It is some damn fine bacon.

I chopped 3-4 slices up and sauteed them to render the fat and get them crispy. I put the bits on paper towels to drain, and set the pan with the bacon fat aside while I worked on the sprouts. While the bacon was cooking, I put a small pot of water on to boil. Then, I pared off the tough bottom core of the sprouts and removed the outer couple of leaves, which sort of came off when I cut off the core. Then, with my paring knife, I made an "X" in the bottom of each one, not going all the way through, to facilitate the blanching. I popped them into the boiling water for 5-6 minutes, then pulled them out and plopped them into an ice water bath to "shock" them and stop the cooking.

After they had cooled, I patted them dry and cut them in half. I heated the bacon fat back up and added a tablespoon of unsalted butter, then sauteed the Brussels sprout halves until they started to caramelize a little bit. And, you know what? They weren't bitter and were darn tasty, if I do say so myself. I'm wondering now if I can use the bigger fresh ones and get the same result by blanching and then sauteeing, or if it really has more to do with the size. I'll keep you posted.

Here's a cool blog post with pictures of Brussels sprouts in progress--very interesting--plus a recipe for Brussels sprouts with lemon-mustard sauce, which I think I might try in the next week or so.

I'm still wary of the kumquats, though...but, maybe, just maybe they will surprise my adult self, and we'll find out they aren't Satan's Citrus after all.

Real Men Do Love Quiche...

At least the one in my house does. I've never seen anyone get as excited about quiche as The Man does. He specifically asked me if we were having quiche on Wednesday, after I had mentioned making it this week while scratching out the grocery list on Sunday in my plague-induced fog. (Yes, what is there to love about a sinus infection? Especially one that affects your equilibrium so much that you are pretty much a spot-on Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator.)

It was weird not going to the grocery store for myself. I felt very incomplete and uncomfortable at the thought of not doing my own shopping...but I wasn't moving off the couch for love nor produce at that point. Besides, who likes to follow someone through the market who is sneezing and snorting and generally making all sort of icky liquidy sounds? Anyway, I got over it, even though it seems I need to give The Man a lesson herb identification. I asked for some fresh thyme and got sage, but it didn't really matter, because the dish turned out kind of icky anyway. (And, I know, I 'm weird because I adore grocery shopping...it's my favorite kind of shopping, even surpassing shoes, and I will cheerfully go multiple times in the week if necessary. Besides, if you haven't figured out by now that I'm weird, you might need to read some older posts!)

We have sort of resolved to eat better (i.e. healthier) this year, so I dragged out my "healthy" cookbooks to get some ideas. There was a recipe for some broiled pork chops with cooked apples that sounded good, so I put those ingredients on the list. Forgot part of the ingredients for the "with cooked apples" part (no, not the apples!), so I decided to punt the apples portion. I was sick, I didn't really care too much about what I was eating, just knew I needed to eat something besides hot Tang. (Don't laugh...it's actually kind of tasty when you are sick. And, if it's good enough for astronauts...)

The spice rub for the pork chops called for paprika, salt, pepper, dried thyme, and a little allspice. The allspice sooooo did not work with this at all, or at least to my Tanged-out tastebuds. The Man said it was fine, but to me, there was some sort of unholy wang to my beloved pig, and I just wasn't happy with the entire meal as a result. (I know, why was I cooking when I was sick? I had to do something to get off the couch that day, so cooking was it. I was starting to feel like Kirk and the tribbles, because I was comatose on the couch with poodles all on top of me for hours.)

Rambling on now to the actual topic of this post--the quiche in question. I put eggs and a pie crust on the list, because I sure as heck wasn't making my own pie crust, and The Man wanted to know if I was baking a pie. When I said "quiche," he really did get excited and wanted to know when we were having it. And, on Wednesday, he called me and asked if we were having quiche for dinner that night.

Quiche really is simple to make, and I think it's a great meal for any time--breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A few eggs, some cream, a few other ingredients, cheese, and viola! Tasty good stuff. We made Quiche Lorraine in Pantry class, which classically, is bacon, cream, and eggs--no cheese. Why the hell they left out cheese, when the French never seemed to shy away from anything with fat in it, is a mystery to me.

Our neighbors, B&G, keep a small flock of hens in their backyard. (We live in the county; they can do that. The Man is eternally afraid that I will insist on installing a goat or llama in our backyard because "we live in the county.") In the spring, they are inundated with eggs, when "the girls" get back on schedule, and G is most gracious about sharing them with us. They were so prolific last year, that I was making quiche on a weekly basis, and cobbled together this recipe from conglomeration of several different ones

Bacon-Spinach-Mushroom Quiche

Serves 4 (or 1 Man with a small slice for you, if you are lucky!) : )

6 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 cups fresh spinach leaves, chopped
2 cups mushrooms, sliced
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups cream (heavy or light--your preference, or you can use half-and-half)
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup shredded Swiss cheese
1 cup shredded cheese Cheddar or Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 deep-dish pie crust

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Place pie crust in pie pan.

Combine eggs, cream, nutmeg, salt, and pepper (I usually just eyeball the amount of pepper) in a medium mixing bowl and whisk to blend. Add in the crumbled bacon, chopped spinach, 3/4 cup Swiss cheese, 3/4 cup other cheese (I usually use Parm), and the sliced mushrooms.

Pour egg mixture in to the pie crust and sprinkle with the reserve 1/4 cups of cheese. Bake for 34-45 minutes, or until set. Check after 30 minutes or so to make sure the edges of the crust aren't too brown. (I have a handy dandy pie crust shield to alleviate this problem...works much better than me trying to construct one out of tin foil and being increasingly frustrated because I cannot make a circle!!! Plus, my poor pie crust edges need all the help they can get. I cannot flute to save my life...I'm always making "rustic" quiches.)

Let the quiche set for 5-10 minutes and cut into wedges and serve.

This quiche doesn't exactly fall into the "eat healthier" realm, but it could very easily. You could chunk the bacon, use the half-and-half instead of cream, and more veggies. You might be able to use lower fat milk as well, but I'd probably reduce that to 1 cup and you might have to cook the quiche a little longer at a lower temp.

Anyway, I'm almost recovered from the snot monster of love, and am planning next week's meals. No more pork chops with allspice, for sure!

Too Many Cookbooks, Never Enough Time

Or, why the hell do I have all these? (Well, somewhat in my own defense, some of them were gifts.) (And don't get all excite by the picture...those really aren't mine...they're too well organized...but, I bet I have at least 1.5 of those shelves worth of cookbooks.)

I got all kinds of cookbooks--good ones, mediocre ones, probably some bad ones, some old ones (for the historical value!!), ones I had to have for a particular recipe that I saw when I flipped through the book in the bookstore and can't remember exactly which page it was...you know, all those cookbooks!

I've got books from which I've never cooked any recipes, so I'm going to try and rectify this. I'm going to try and cook a recipe each night this week from one of the cookbooks that I've never used before...starting tomorrow night, because I already blew it for tonight.

But, I did use a cookbook that I owned and not something I got online, Food Network, etc. I picked up this little cookbook in the bargain bin probably at Books-a-Million/Titles-a-Thousand, and I think I've only made this one recipe out of it, but I've made it a blue million times...it's a good cold weather starter...now that's finally gotten a little cooler around here. (But, as I flipped through it, I did see another one or two that I thought "hmm...I really should try that one...and that one, too.)

Pasta Fagioli

(from 50 Ways with Pasta by Katharine Blakemore with some modifications by me)

Serves 4-6

1 onion, diced
3 sticks celery, diced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
4-6 slices smoked streaky bacon, rinded and chopped
1 Tbs olive oil
5 cups beef stock
2 tsp dried oregano
2 bay leaves
1 can white beans (navy or cannelloni), rinsed
1 can dark red kidney beans, rinsed
3-5 ounces ditalini pasta or other small pasta (I use more pasta, because I like more pasta)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Procedure

1. In a large sauce pot, sauté onions, celery, bacon in oil for approximately 5 minutes, until onions and celery are soft.
2. Add stock, dried oregano, bay leaves, and beans to pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.
3. Uncover and bring heat up to medium. Add pasta and cook for another 10 minutes until pasta is tender.
4. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with the ubiquitous crusty bread.

The Man loves him some pasta fagioli, especially pasta fagioli that has bacon in it. I always put in the maximum amount of bacon I can, because more bacon = better in my book. The first time I made this recipe, I thought it was a little bland, so I kicked it up a bit and added the oregano, the bay leaf, and the garlic. I think it improved the recipe, if I do say so myself.

I promise tomorrow will be higher on the experimentation scale...I'm doing beef short ribs, which I have never cooked befores, so this should be interesting...very interesting.

Aaaaah, the decadence

of bacon, of course... so, let's celebrate it just a little bit with some random babble about its smoky, tasty goodness.

I love this great blog called Slashfood, with which I usually start my day. They have the occasional feature post known as "Food Porn," and usually involves something that looks and reads as really tasty, and in no way resembles that Kashi Go Lean Crunch that I'm chewing.

Today, I'm scrolling down and what to my wandering eye doth appear? A post on the glories of bacon popcorn. Bacon popcorn?! Oh, my! They swiped it from another blog, the Nosheteria, where there are directions! Essentially, you fry up a bunch of bacon, drain it, then pop the popcorn in the remaining bacon fat. After the corn has popped, crumble the bacon over it and enjoy. More like wallow around in it! My arteries were hardening at the thought, as my mouth watered and my stomach rumbled like the opening day of NASCAR.

It's damned amazing what you can do with bacon, isn't it? So simple in its preparation, yet complex in flavor. It's smoky and salty, but can be kind of sweet, if it's sugar cured, and nothing smells better than bacon frying. (Although, nothing smells worse than the rancid old smell of bacon fried 2 days ago) Personally, bacon is truly the one thing that always keeps me from turning vegetarian. Because, have you ever had that nastiness that passes for faux bacon? It makes you want to go out and find a bit of leftover pressed board and gnaw on it, like a surly beaver, because anything that tastes that bad will make you surly. Guaranteed. We won't even go into the fact that it in no way remotely resembles bacon in any shape or form. Those bacon dog treats are better than vegetarian "bacon."

I'm not alone with my love of bacon in our household. The Man positively worships bacon, and has said many times, and I quote, "you could wrap a dog turd in bacon, and I'd think really hard about eating it." (Again, probably TMI, but that's life with The Man. Aren't I a lucky gal?) No doubt he could be lured down innumerable rabbit holes by plates of bacon with little signs that said "Eat Me." Not that he would need any encouragement.

For St. Patrick's Day, before we head out to the pub, I have some friends who are going to make something called "Chicken Fried Bacon with Cream Gravy." I know, sounds scary as hell, but you know you really wanna try it...if for no other reason than to say you survived it. Live to tell, as Madonna used to say, live to tell. Maybe we need t-shirts.

Linna sent me something about bacon brittle, which sort of amazed me. But, what could be better than bacon that's been turned into candy? A friend from culinary school worked at a country club in the area that specializes in "caramelized bacon" for their Sunday brunch. It was bacon rolled in brown sugar and fried. Which reminds me of a faux rumaki recipe that I learned from another friend. Rumaki, for the uninitiated, is chicken livers that have been wrapped in bacon and broiled. Personally, this is a waste of good bacon, because I hate chicken livers for the most part...there's the occasional bite of pate that can be tolerated, but little else. To each his own. This "faux" version involved taking a whole water chestnut, wrapping it with a half slice of bacon, and securing it with a toothpick. Put them in a disposable aluminum pan (because you don't want to ruin a good one), cover with a generous amount of brown sugar and broil until the bacon is done. This will make you get religion of some denomination. Trust me.

Bacon can make you do some really strange things, too. I badgered The Man to find me some old school lockers and build me a smoker so I could make my own bacon, a la Alton Brown's "Scrap Iron Chef" episode. That was the best looking bacon I have ever seen, and I wanted some! (I've not given up hope on this yet...I will make bacon, I will!)

The latest bacon craziness came about on Sunday as I thoroughly embarrassed myself in the local Publix deli with a man who was buying 2 pounds of pancetta (Italian bacon--oooh, exotic! and so much of it!) that he was going to wrap around a pork loin and roast. After broadly hinting that I'd like to come to dinner ("So, where exactly do you live?") and him not taking me up on it, I asked him where he got the recipe. "No recipe," he said, pointing at the side of his head, "I just thought it up." If I weren't already married to one bacon-loving fool, I might be persuaded...heck, when bacon is involved, polygamy actually starts to look like a good idea. Then, there's something to be said for living alone and not ever having to share your bacon...ever. I really want to try that pork roast covered with pancetta, though.

And the final entry in today's baconarama celebration involves a local restaurant in the little Alabama town where my mother grew up that has fatback on their breakfast menu. Fatback is bacon for the not-faint-of-heart crowd, and it's one of those really occasional foods, because you are absolutely afraid to have it often. It's quite possible that you might keel over at the breakfast table from having it too often, and who the hell wants their obituary to read "done in by fatback"? It would be an interesting way to go...

Then, there is this option for non-fat Bacon, of which too much might have the same effect as eating that fatback:

Be still, my little pancetta!