Cookie Baking Day with Chef Mitch

The other day my son Mitch came to me with an idea for a cookie, a Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookie. I was intrigued by this idea and decided that we needed to give it a try, mostly because of my family's shared belief that bacon goes with everything. And who doesn't love a Chocolate Chip Cookie!

We hit up our local Target store, not so much because we grocery shop there, but because my daughter had a job interview there and I figured Mitch and I could shop while she had her interview. The whole kill 2 birds with one stone kind of thing. She got the job, by-the-way!

So we came home armed with Bacon and Chocolate CHUNKS. Mitch saw the chunks next to the chips and decided it was time to go big or go home in the chocolate arena. Have I mentioned lately how much I like this kid!?

Okay so I started this recipe by cooking off some diced bacon:

Then I gathered the necessary ingredients to make the Toll House Cookie recipe from the back of the Chocolate CHUNKS bag. And yes, I forgot to put the Vanilla Extract out on the counter before I started, but it was in the cookies, I promise:

Then Mitch and I got busy mixing up the cookie dough. He's getting pretty good at using the KitchenAid!

Here is the dough with the bacon added:

I used my handy dandy cookie scoop and made some nice dough balls on the parchment lined pan. Mitch normally does this part, but today I took over the scooping duty-he has grip strength issues and the scoop was being uncooperative. 

The baked cookies fresh from the oven. You can see the little bacon bit right on the top of this one:

I let them cool a bit then put two on a plate and took them to Mitch, who was spending his baking/cooling time playing on the PS3:

The cookie delivery:

Of course Mitch would never eat cookies on Mom's brand new sofa so he moved over to the dining table for the tasting of his new cookie creation:

Mitch proclaims the Bacon Chocolate Chunk Cookie to be delicious!!!

If you decide you want to try these at home, I just took the Toll House Cookie recipe off the bag and added cooked bacon. Not rocket science. My thoughts on the cookie- It needed more bacon. No, seriously, it was good but could have used more bacon flavor. I looked at quite a few recipes online for this cookie-and yes, there are many. Some called for Maple flavoring, some for bourbon and one even had some of the rendered bacon fat added into the dough but I thought our first try at this should be taking an existing recipe and just adding the bacon and seeing if it was even edible.  I also think they'd be delicious with some candied pecans, because I love candied pecans!

So there we have it, a successful cookie baking day with my favorite young Chef!

Happy Friday Everyone! Have a Wonderful Weekend!!

And for today....

Adapting and changing...

As a homeschooling mom there are many decisions I have to make each school year and which curriculum to use is always the most important. I also love that, as homeschoolers, if something isn't working for us we can change to something else at any point along the way. At the beginning of the school year my 14yo son wanted to move away from some of the online curriculum he had been using since 4th grade, mainly Time 4 Learning, and try something new. So we started the school year using unit studies, workbooks and a rather expensive Christian-based curriculum on cd's, none of which held his interest the way Time 4 Learning did. Being this is my 7th year of homeschooling I have learned that if something doesn't work then put it aside and find something that does, so today marks our first day back on the Time 4 Learning website. Now yes, I realize that their curriculum only goes up to 8th grade and my son is technically in the 9th grade, however, due to his Autism and learning disabilities he functions at different levels than the average 9th grader. I think this change will make our days less stressful and more productive. I'll keep you updated. In the mean time, here is a link to the Time4Learning website.

It truly is "to each, his own" My 18yo daughter loves doing unit studies in fact she loved the Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett so much that she actually asked me to purchase them for her. In her Senior year she used American Government, Scrapbooking, Digital Photography and Pioneers. For my daughter the unit studies provided her with a more research based type of learning experience which is more in line with how she learns the best and is more like what she used when she was at the charter high school she attended for 2 years, the same one her older brother graduated from. The curriculum there was independent study and research based. She would have graduated from the charter school but she wanted to graduate a semester early and not all of the classes she needed to do that were available when she needed them. Their program offers only certain classes in the fall and others in the spring. What I did in homeschooling her was to make her homeschool classes as close to the charter schools as I could. Now I have a brand new college student and she couldn't be happier!

Want List

With my birthday coming up in a few days, My Hubby has been asking me what I would like him to buy me, so here is my Want List:

The Ninja 3 in 1 cooking system. 

This is on my list, the TOP of my list because I have a love/hate relationship with cooking dinner every evening. While we are not empty-nesters (that glorious day is coming soon!) our college kids are almost never home anymore so most evenings it's pretty much Hubby-who now has work hours that can go late into the evening, our 14yo son, who I may have mentioned has Autism and me for dinner. Autism Boy (as he proclaims himself to be) is not a "foodie" so he pretty much eats from his list of about 20 or so foods that don't bother him to eat. (It's sensory integration disorder issue-not related to my cooking...or at least that's what the experts tell me) So anyway, I think that one of these one-pot, dump it in and cook it either slow (if I remember early enough in the day that the family will want to eat dinner) or fast (because I kind of forgot the whole dinner thing, again) would be a valuable asset to our small appliance collection.

Next on my list:

The 5X Lighted, Tri-Fold Makeup Mirror

This baby made the list because let's face it, I'm no spring chicken and seeing the age in my face at 5 TIMES regular magnification will be fun. NOT. But it would be nice to actually be able to SEE my face when I'm putting on makeup, eyeliner in particular, lest I leave the house looking a bit more like Cleopatra than I had intended. Again.

And finally, we're back in the kitchen with this bad boy:

The Cuisinart Elite Collection 12 Cup Food Processor

I currently own a 34 year old Cuisinart food processor that originally belonged to my Mom. And while it still works, and works amazingly, the bowl has finally cracked, there are cracks in the base housing and I've misplace a blade so it's not as useful as it was years ago. Not to mention the darn thing weighs in at about 150 pounds so lugging it from the cabinet to the counter requires either my hubby to be home or a team of at least 3 to pitch in and help. Not that this new one weighs much less, when I was out at Bed, Bath and Beyond with Hubby last weekend, he tried to get me to lift the display model and I couldn't. So I informed him that if you get me one of these bad boys you might as well get the bright red because it's going on the counter and staying there and matching the kitchen color scheme is important to me.

I actually think this would go nicely with the Ninja Cooking System for doing all that choppy prep-work before I toss our dinner ingredients into the pot and I'd really love to have both, but I'm not holding my breath...of course Valentines day IS next month!

We have my son to thank for this post...

I asked my 20 year old son for a blog post idea, and he said one word: PONIES. And by ponies he means My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (aka MLP:FIM). So here you go. My son is a "Brony" (male fan of all this pony stuff) and therefore should be happy with this post...and maybe you will be too.

This is the cast of MLP:FIM

They are ponies and they do fun stuff.

Little girls like them,

as do college-aged boys.

No, I don't get it either.

But what's important is that we don't judge.

Oh yeah, and my son made this MLP:FIM/Beer For My Horses crossover video.

It was featured once on Equestria Daily.

Fans of Country music superstar Toby Keith will totally "get" the video. 

Do you think Mr. Keith will like that I called him a "superstar"?

Okay, that's it. I could go on and on about MLP and how they promote a fostering of good values and friendship and pink things...but I don't feel the need. He said Ponies, and I produced a blog post on ponies so my work here is done. 

Laters Everypony!