Bacon! This one is for all you bacon lovers out there. After coming across a couple of bacon related products, I just knew I had to do an entire post around those. And there are some weird bacon things out there… I like bacon, but I’m not sure I like it quite this much. If you’re interested in my other Christmas Gift Guides, check out the gift guides for The Fantasy Reader and The Gamer Girl.

Bacon Poster

Show your loyalty to the Bacon Nation with this propaganda poster from etsy store Justonescarf.

Bacon Pillow

I love the description for this product: “There’s conclusive, scientific proof that bacon is an intellectual food. It’s right there in the periodic table! Barium, cobalt and nitrogen. BA CO N. Read it and weep, bacon haters. This pillow makes it very clear that you’re not one to be trifled with when it comes to the ultimate food. Show your brainpower and bacon-lust in one easy decoration!” It’s $35 at YellowBugBoutique.

The Bacon Cookbook

Ooh, more than 150 recipes with bacon? At first glance this looks like quite a gimmicky book, but the recipes actually look pretty decent. It’s £15.59 on Amazon.

Bacon Candle

“I love the smell of bacon in the morning”. Never go without it with this candle from bubbleandgeek ($9.25).

Bacon Knee Highs

Which girl wouldn’t want to wear knee high socks like these? They’re $10 on SockDreams.

Bacon Necklace

A necklace with a strip of bacon AND a fork! It’s £6.37 at Fwirl.

Bacon Scented Gummy Bear Shaped Soaps

Aw, these are so adorable. I wish they were actual gummy bears though, not just soap in the shape of them. There available for only $4 at FrostedCrossbones (awesome shop name).

50 Shades of Bacon

And even bacon jumps on the 50 Shades of Bad Jokes bandwagon.

Bacon Jelly Beans

Try these at your own peril; the Amazon reviews about it are horrendous.

Bacon iPhone Case

Clothe your iPhone in style! For $39.95 this bacon case can be yours!

Bacon Lube

Seriously? This actually exists?!? You can get it on BaconLube.com (obviously) for $11.99.

Bacon Of The Month Club

The ultimate bacon gift: the Bacon of The Month Club. Each month two pounds (= 0.907185 kg) of different kinds of bacon will be delivered at your doorstep. Awesome. They do a lot of flavours, like Cajun, Apple Cinnamon, Jalapeno, Honey BBQ, Maple, Brown Sugar, Vanilla Bourbon, Sun Dried Tomato, Pepper, and Hickory Smoked.

So bacon lovers would any of you be actually happy getting any of these bacon gifts for Christmas? Or is it just too much bacon?

One of the other sessions I held at BarCamp Berkshire last weekend was “Intro to Cooking”. This quickly turned more into a “share your cool recipes and kitchen tips”, and I learnt some great things! One of the recipes I talked about was Spaghetti Tequila which I made last week after experimenting with some ingredients.

Ingredients

• 2-3 avocados
• 400 gr cherry tomatoes
• 300 gr chicken or turkey
• 150 ml creme fraiche
• 1-2 shots of tequila
• garlic
• 1 tea spoon coriander
• 1 table spoon lemon juice
• cayenne pepper
• 200-250 gr pasta (spaghetti, penne, whatever you want)

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta as you normally would.
2. Cut the avocados in squares (if you don’t know how to peel and de-pit an avocado, google it), the cherry tomatoes in halves, and the chicken/turkey in biteable bits.
3. Mix the avocado with the lime juice, coriander and cayenne pepper. Add as much cayenne pepper as you’re comfortable with. If you don’t want it spicy at all, leave the cayenne out.
4. Melt butter in a pan. Add the garlic; once it’s browned, add the chicken.
5. Once the chicken is done (== no pinkish, raw bits), throw in the cherry tomatos and avocado mixture.
6. After a minute or so, once the pan is sizzling again, add the tequila. If you’re not quite sure how much tequila you want, slowly add this in bits, until it tastes as you want.
7. Let it simmer for about 2 minutes, then add the creme fraiche. Let it then simmer for about 3 minutes.
8. Add the pasta and… TADA: Spaghetti Tequila!

If only I lived in New York! I came across this New York bakery called Ruby et Violette and they do these amazing sounding cookies and brownies. They’ve currently got 40 flavours to choose from, but they change their favours throughout the year doing over 100 different flavours! And those flavours sound AWESOME.

The best thing is that they’ve got boozy cookies. My favourites (as much as I can have a favourite without actually having tasted them) are the Black Russian and Champagne Strawberry. Kahlua in cookies? Why have I never attempted this before? The other boozy flavours are Creme De Menthe, Mimosa, Pina Colada and Rum Raisin.

Besides those cookies, here are my other favourites:

Stuck on You – Butterscotch, caramel, marshmallows and chocolate. Nuf said?

The Breakup… His Story – This is the answer to any bad day. Oatmeal, peanut butter, caramel, dark chocolate and smoked salt. The result: Breakup?…What Breakup?

The Breakup… Her Story – Each side of a breakup has similarities – in this case, oatmeal, peanut butter and caramel – but it’s the subtle differences that really matter. Her Story has the sweeter twist of maple syrup and white chocolate topped with maple sugar crystals.

Exotic Seduction – Who would have thought curry and chocolate would marry well? Luckily – we did, because this is unbelievable.

First Kiss – Intensely rich, deep dark chocolate, topped with sea salt for that extra bite of flavor.

Rose – Dark chocolate creates a delicate harmony with crystallized rose petals.

Don’t they sound amazing? I need to go to New York now to try these cookies! They ship to anywhere in the US, but they also have a cafe in NY (which also sells ice cream and more).

Check out more flavours on Ruby et Violette’s site.

Last Tuesday I got to go to my first Qype event. Now I’ve been a member of Qype for some time now, but have mainly used it to see other people’s reviews. I never took the time to write anything up myself, so this will finally be my first Qype review!

The event was at the Bayswater branch of All Star Lanes, a 50s style diner and bowling alley. I had passed this place so many times when I used to still live in Notting Hill (it was on the route of my 24 hour bus), but from the outside it just seems like any other bowling alley. It was such a nice surprise to discover it was so much more! Inside everything has a 50s theme; the waiters and bar staff have 50s inspired outfits, the diner has nice low comfy booths and a black and white checkered tile floor, and the whole place is decorated with paintings of pinups.

We started out with drinks in the main bar area, where there were several round red booths (each fitting about 8-10 people). Once everyone had arrived, the 20 or so of us settled down in the diner where All Star lanes had provided us with our own menu:

There were a couple of yummy sounding starters to choose from, but I couldn’t resist the Spiced BBQ Wings, Celery and Blue Cheese Dip:

This turned out to be so messy, but so very tasty. The wings could have been a bit spicier for my taste (but then I’m a sucker for extremely spicy food). The celery and the blue cheese dip were a nice addition to the wings. I could have easily survived the night on only this; it’s a larger starter than I was expecting.

For my main I chose the “2009 UK Chilli Championship winning Chili Con Carne”:

It was a good chili, nice and spicy with bits of mushrooms and peppers. I wasn’t much a fan of having the chili and rice served in two sperate bowls though.

After the lovely dinner, we all headed to the private function room for bowling and karaoke. It’s a nice room for parties; on one end you’ve got two bowling lanes, on the other a nicely lit bar area with your own private cocktail bar and karaoke machine. I liked the idea of combining bowling and karaoke; instead of just waiting for your turn to bowl, you can enjoy singing along to the usual karaoke. I attempted a couple of songs; singing Build Me Up Buttercup with LJ, and trying to Lady Gaga’s Poker Face with Dan.

During the bowling and karaoke, we got served some delightful treats. First everyone got a Mint Julep cocktail. The we got deserts in the form of canapes! I had already aten so much, but the canapes were just way too cute not to try. My favourites were the chocolate mousse with a layer of caramel on top, and the mini waffle with something on top of it (don’t remember what though). Next to that we got a chocolate fudge brownie bite, and this (but again I’m not sure what is was… cheesecake, I think?):

It was a great evening, and All Star Lanes is definitely a place I’ll visit in the future. The food on it’s own wasn’t amazing, but as part of an easily arranged night out, it’s perfect. Dinner, cocktails, bowling, what more do you need? The private function can hold 40-50 people (according to the web site it can hold 80, but I’d say comfortably it would be around 40-50), and I’m thinking I could organize one of the Geeks of London meetups there. Also I really need to come back to try out the Bailey’s milkshake…

Thanks to Qype and All Star Lanes for organizing such a lovely evening!

All Star Lanes Bayswater: official website, Qype page

There’s a cool contest going on, run by Chris Cardinal and Threadless.com. The idea is to turn one of the Threadless T-shirt designs into a cake! To check out all the rules etc head on over to Threadcakes.com.

Here are a couple of amazing cakes some people have created:

Compare with the original design of “I Wish I Were”

Compare with the original design “The Apple”

Compare with the original design “Long Journey”

Compare with the original design “Catburger”

Compare with the original design “She Doesn’t Even Realize”

Compare with the original design “Capistrano Spring Break”

Compare with the original design “Camouflage”

There are loads more in the Threadcakes Gallery, but these were the best ones so far (in my humble opinion). The contest is open till August 3rd, so expect some more amazing cakes in the following weeks.

As some of my Twitter followers may have noticed yesterday I wanted to do something crcreative with butternut squash. I got a lot of replies back suggesting curries, but I settled on something (in my eyes) simpler: gnocchi.

I didn’t make the gnocchi itself from scratch, but everything else (= the sauce) I pretty much did. Here’s how it turned out:

For those of you who might want to recreate this dish, here’s the recipe:

– Gnocchi
– 300 gr Butternut Squash
– 300 gr Mushrooms
– 3 strips of Parma Ham
– 200 ml Creme Fraiche
– Garlic, Thyme and Pepper

First I put the butternut squash for half an hour in the oven (in a buttered oven dish). The gnocchi you just have to prepare as it says on the package (2-3 minutes in boiling water). Then it’s basically just throwing the mushrooms, parma ham and butternut squash together in a pan. After a couple of minutes, add the creme fraiche, the spices and some water, and Tada! That’s it!

Easy, right?

I was in a bad mood yesterday, so Cristiano decided to cheer me up with cocktails:

We took the recipe for the Miss Geeky Moscow Mules and left out anything we didn’t had. We also didn’t have any crushed ice though and no blender, so I had to resort to smashing big ice cubes wrapped up in a towel with one of my high heels. Not the most elegant solution, but highly effective.

So here’s the recipe:

• Crushed ice
• Vodka
• Passion Fruit juice
• Schweppes Ginger Ale

I’m a sucker for Ben & Jerry’s. I like ice cream, but I love love love Ben & Jerry’s. My favourites are Cookie Dough, Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Half Baked (a mix of the previous two). But then I came across a list of the retired flavours… Oh My God! Some of these combinations just sound so perfect!

Here are a couple of the retired ice creams:

Aloha Macadamia
Milk Chocolate Cashew Brazil Nut Butter Ice Cream with Macadamia Nuts in White & Dark Fudge & a Milk Chocolatey Swirl
 
Baklava
Sweet Cream Ice Cream with Praline Walnut Baklava Pieces & a Honey-Caramel Swirl

Tennessee Mud
Coffee Ice Cream with Amaretto, Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey and Roasted Slivered Almonds

Wavy Gravy
Caramel Cashew Brazil Nut Ice Cream with a Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge Swirl and Roasted Almonds

Honey, I’m Home
Honey Vanilla Ice Cream & Chunks of Fudge Covered Honeycomb

White Russian
Coffee Ice Cream with Kahlua Coffee Liqueur

Don’t they sound scrumptious? These are only a small selection of all the retired flavours; the list just goes on and on. I hope they’ll bring some of these back out of retirement, cause I’d love to try them. Now I’ve got a craving for ice cream again!

*sneaking to kitchen and obtaining the treasure from the white jawed ice monster*