Half mushed Bacon Peas

What you need: 32oz pea bag, 4 tbs bacon fat or olive oil, 1 med sized onion, 1 tsp ground garlic, 1/2 tsp beef bouillon, 2 tbs water, 8 slices of bacon

Chop and brown the onion with the bacon fat/olive oil in a fry pan.

Add in the peas! I added them while they were frozen... then add in the seasonings (garlic and beef bouillon) and extra water if needed.

In a separate fry pan, fry the bacon! You could do this step first and then just cook the onions in the fat... mmmm tasty bacon fat! Chop the bacon and set aside.

Before mixing in the bacon, I took a hand blender and scooped about 1/3 of the peas and blended it in a cup, then mixed it back in. Then, mix in the bacon!

Viola! The most tasty peas ever!

Late Night Treat - Caviar n Rumchata

The hubby and I thought we'd try cheap caviar and this thing called rumchata that a friend of a friend raved about. Both are interesting... lol. I'd say the caviar is an acquired taste. And the rumchata is a good sipping drink because it's thick and creamy and seems decadently sweet.

Pumpkin Banana Nut Bread

I made pumpkin banana nut bread. It's very similar to my Persimmon Banana Nut Bread.

I used 2 bananas and 7.5oz of pumpkin puree (half of the 15oz canned pumpkin). My bananas were frozen so I microwaved them til they were soft enough to mash.

Mash them together.

Mix in 2 eggs.

Add in a 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 tsp pumpkin spice, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg and a 1/2 cup of melted butter.

Fold in 2 cups of all purpose flour and 2 tsp baking powder.

Mix mix mix.

Fold in 1 cup crushed walnuts.

Place batter in a greased loaf pan and bake in a preheated oven of 350 degrees F for about an hour plus 15 - 30 minutes or so.

Ta da!

It's so pretty and you can definitely taste the pumpkin and bananas. Twas very delicious!

Fried Shrimp!

Fried shrimp is super easy to make. Seriously, all you do is take raw shrimp and prep it the usual way (de-vein, rinse, pat dry), dump it in a fryer (be careful though!) and when it turns pink, take it out. We used Lawry's to salt it along with some crushed black pepper. And if you have lime on hand, sprinkle the juice on top. Deeeeeelicious! We made this as an appetizer to munch on. It was most definitely a wise choice.

Apple Butter

I finally made apple butter! Sadly, no pictures. :(  But it's awfully similar to the persimmon butter method via slow cooker. Easy peasy. Here's what I used:

5 red apples
4 yellow apples
3 granny smiths
1/4 cup water
1 tbs vanilla extract
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbs cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pumpkin spice
1/2 tsp ground gloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Peel, core, quarter and chop all the apples. Place in slow cooker. Add water and vanilla extract. Add in the remaining ingredients. Mix it as best as you can. Cook on high for 4 hours uncovered, stirring at least every hour to ensure it doesn't burn. Once the apples are soft, I used a hand blender and pureed it. Afterwards, it cooked on low heat, uncovered, stirring occasionally. Once thickened, the sauce was canned. Yummy! :D

Pineapple Butter / Pineapple Sauce

So, after making persimmon butter and pear butter successfully, le hubby had the amazing idea of taking any fruit and turning it into "butter." In the grocery store, he pointed out to plums, blueberries, then pineapples. I said no to the plums and blueberries because the butter would be more like a sauce or a jam. But, when he pointed out the pineapples, I said, "Hrm, sure. That just could work." So we grabbed a couple of pineapples and when we went home, I looked up a recipe. I used this one as a guideline: Pineapple Butter with Cardamom and Vanilla.

Ingredients that I used: 2 lbs freshly chopped pineapples, 2 cups chopped pears, 3 tbs lemon juice, 2 tsp vanilla extract, 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1 cup water, and 2 tbs brown sugar (not shown).

Place all ingredients into a pot and cook until the fruits are soft.

All soft!

Took a hand blender and pureed it. It's pineapple-sauce!!

Cook a little longer....

Looks pretty thick. Pretty sure it's pineapple butter! :)

And canned! Twas mm-mmmm goood! And the taste is very exotic and tropical-like! Totally reminds me of hawaii. 

Coconut Flour Biscuits

Le hubby was getting tired of the same old keto friendly foodies that I'd make for him to munch on, which was pretty much coconut bread and more recently the time-consuming custard. I felt bad for him so I surfed the net until I found something that had the potential to be delicious yet keto friendly. They are Coconut Flour Cheddar Drop Biscuits! Only, I made a couple of substitutions so it's more like Monterrey Jack Biscuits. heh.

All you need are 4 eggs, 1/4 cup melted butter with 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp Penzey's Bouquet Garni (or onion powder if following the original recipe), 1/3 cup coconut flour with 1/4 tsp baking powder and 3/4 cup shredded Monterrey Jack cheese. Yields 8 small biscuits.

Mix the melted butter/salt/spice with the scrambled eggs.

Stir in the coconut flour and baking soda mixture into the egg mixture. (If it looks kind of dry, feel free to add in 1 tbs of water).

Then, fold in the cheese.

Looks like dough.

I placed our biscuit dough in a muffin pan instead of dropping them on a cookie sheet. You want to spray or oil down any tin you are using really well...

Bake in preheated oven of 400°F for 15-20 minutes. When I first bit into the biscuit, it totally tasted like breakfast sausages. I think it was because I subbed the onion powder with the penzey's bouquet garni spice. It was kind of interesting at first, but easily grows on you. It was definitely a savory biscuit and le hubby enjoyed them! 

Toffee Pretzel Chocolate Bark

This is so easy even a caveman can make it... assuming there's access to a working stove and oven. :D I like this recipe because you don't need a candy thermometer!!! I'm so glad to have stumbled onto this recipe. Poor hubby. He's on keto for all of February and has no idea he's missing out!

8 oz mini pretzels (enough to spread out onto a large baking sheet)
1 C butter
1 C brown sugar, packed
2 C semi sweet chocolate chips

I did a half batch and used regular pretzels. I just crushed them a bit before spreading out on a baking sheet lined with foil. I've read that parchment paper works fine too. You'll want to preheat your oven to 375°F first.

This was 6oz of crushed pretzels. (I used a lil more pretzels)

This was the 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup packed brown sugar. 

Bring it to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to make sure everything is blending together nicely. Once you have a rolling boil going, keep the heat at medium and stop stirring. Let it bubble away for 3 minutes. (Mine turned out a lil darker compared to the original website.)

The butter/sugar mix was poured over the pretzels as best as possible... the gaps were somewhat closed when baked for 5 minutes in a preheated oven. (I probably should've measured out everything proportionally. i.e. 6 oz pretzels, 3/4 cup butter and 3/4 cup packed sugar...)

Sprinkle 1 cup of chocolate chips. Let the chips rest for a minute or two until the chips softens.

Spread the chocolate evenly over the pretzels with a spatula. Then, place it in the fridge for about a 1/2 hour so the chocolate can firm up.

Once everything hardened, I broke them up into handheld pieces. They truly are irresistible! Great for an appetizer, snack, munchies, dessert, you name it! Great sub for dinner... ;D 

Here in SoCal, I kept them stored in a ziploc baggie in the fridge so I don't have to worry about the chocolate melting. But then again, they don't last long!

Pear-sauce

If you've ever had applesauce and really enjoyed it, you'll really like this homemade pear-sauce. It's super easy and all you need are pears and an orange! No sugar needed bc it's super sweet on its own!!

I used 10 ripe pears (from costco). If they are not ripe, they won't be sweet so it's totally worth it to wait until the pears are yellow-green. 

Peel, core and quarter the pears. Then place in a slow cooker.

Scrape an orange with a microplane for 2 tsp of orange zest and then juice the orange, pulp and all.

Add the 2 tsp orange zest and roughly 1/3 cup orange juice. Cook on high for 1 hour with cover to cook the pears. An hour later, break up the pears and stir so as not to burn the edge.

2 hours later, pear sauce should look like this. Cook for another 2 hours on high uncovered.

A total of 4 hours later, add in 2 tsp of pumpkin spice. Continue to cook.

An hour later, I used an immersion blender and blended the sauce. It's beginning to look a lot like applesauce. :)

Ta-da. It was mm-mmm yummy!!

And if you reduce it even further, you can get pear butter!!! I will do that next time for sure!!

Other pear butter recipes:

http://www.gimmesomeoven.com/easy-pear-butter-recipe/

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pear-butter/