This same time, years previous: to read and chai-spiced hot chocolate.

Listen up, people! Do I ever have a good eat for you! It’s the three basic food groups—bacon! cheese! bread!—smashed into one amazing, delectable, and utterly satisfying food. Behold…

Cheesy bacon toasts!

Okay, so its appearance is a bit anticlimactic, I admit. White cheese on white bread and it doesn’t even look very gooey. In fact, it looks dry. Ha! Too bad you can’t taste the picture. Or even just smell it. One whiff and you’d all be digging through your freezers in frantic search of that leftover pack of bacon you just know you have in there somewhere…

I got this recipe from Ruth Reichl’s blog. You know, only the woman who routinely eats the fanciest and most expensive food in the world. When fancy people post simple recipes, I listen. And you should too.

Ruth says these toasts make wonderful appetizers and, to go with the fancy appetizer motif, she gets all trim-the-crusts-off elegant. To which—both the appetizer and the crust-trimming—I say, bah. This is main dish, hearty fare, and the crusts stay on. We common folk like both quantity and crusts, thank you very much.

To make these toasts, just toss raw bacon, cheese, onion, and horseradish in a bowl, mound the cheese mixture on pieces of bread, and pop them into the oven to bake.

The first time I made these toasts, I was worried about two things. One, that the bacon grease would run off my un-sided baking sheets and smoke up the oven, and two, that the tops of the bread would get toasty while the undersides remained soggy-soft.

I needn’t have worried. See, as the toasts bake, the bacon juices seep down into the bread which leads to this fabulous (and very tidy) trick in which the bread actually fries in the bacony juices. This, in turn, transforms the toasts’ raw underbellies into a golden brown and crispy crust. The result is nothing less than toasted perfection.

Cheesy Bacon Toasts 
Adapted from Ruth Reichl’s blog.

These toasts pair wonderfully with any soup or salad. Or how about alongside a pan of eggs? Here’s a crazy idea: two toasts smashed together with a hamburger patty in the middle! Or eat them all by themselves for a quick dinner, perhaps with a glass of wine. Really, any time, any place. Bonus: leftovers make a kicker breakfast.

The horseradish is imperative. I used an extra-sharp white cheddar, which I loved, but next time I might add some mozzarella or Havarti to increase the goo factor. Keep in mind that bacon is easier to dice when still mostly frozen.

Measurements are loosey-goosey. Feel free to play!

6 thin slices of sourdough (or your favorite) bread
6 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, grated
4 ounces frozen bacon, chopped small
¼ to ½ cup minced onion
1 tablespoon drained horseradish
salt and pepper

Put the slices of bread on a baking sheet. In a bowl, stir together the bacon with the onion, horseradish, a pinch of salt, and some black pepper. Add the cheese and toss to combine. Distribute the cheese mixture over the pieces of bread. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Cut toasts into quarters and serve warm.

This same time, years previous: eight, seven, travel tips, gourmet chocolate bark, on babies, dear Mom, ice cream cake, lemon tart, and potatoes with roasted garlic vinaigrette.

1. All day long I keep acting like it’s Wednesday and then “remembering” that it’s really Thursday and then panicking because it means that I’m not going to, preparing for, and doing the right stuff. I did this yesterday, too. And Monday. Monday I even sent someone a Tuesday-oriented email. And then on Tuesday I realized what I had done and had to email them again to explain why the previous email made no sense.

I keep going to the calendar to double-check that I’m going through the right motions. So far so good.
 

(It really is Wednesday, right?)

2. Last night I finished watching the first season of Transparent. I would’ve launched right into the second season but there is no second season (yet). So now I’m irritated. So many questions!

Have you watched the show? In spite of some initial hesitation (that I still feel, on occasion—the show is graphic), I absolutely loved it. Here’s why:

*Flawed characters that aren’t particularly lovable (though there is one that I adore), which makes me connect with them more deeply. As a result, I feel a greater appreciation for people in general.
*Fabulous acting.
*Real bodies and non-classic beauty = a breath of fresh air.
*The show isn’t fast-paced. I read somewhere that someone compared it to Boyhood, and it’s true. It’s just life happening.
*The actors eat all the time! The constant munching is almost jarring, so different is it from what is normally observed on the screen.

(One downside: the occasional sloppy filming. Did this bother anyone else?)

3. My new reading glasses broke. The lens kept popping out so I had to take them back to get fixed and then the store ended up having to mail them off so I am without glasses for a week. I miss them.

4. Rehearsals have started for the next play! This means that I am gone every evening, Monday through Thursday, and then for several hours on Saturday. It’s manageable (and lots of fun), plus, the director is good at budgeting time and not wasting mine, so it’s not too bad.

Still, it’s a shift. Suppers are rushed, and there is no bedtime read aloud. But my husband is getting acclimated to my schedule. A couple nights ago he initiated a different bedtime read aloud; he’s reading Hatchet to the younger two.

5. Practically 3.6 seconds after telling you about my grocery store strike, I went on a disorganized and violent shopping rampage. Something like six grocery stores in two days. The whole debacle was riddled with miscalculations, unwise choices, and weak impulse control and fueled by an upcoming birthday (and the accompanying weird purchases) and a couple other food-related events. I’m taking several days off from food buying to catch my breath, but my rest time is limited. I’m nearly out of butter…again.

6. I used up all the butter on the cake I made for my younger son’s ninth birthday: a picaken, a pie baked inside a cake.

I’ve been wanting to try this Food Event for months and months, ever since I read about it on Jaime’s blog. It sounded so awful that I thought it might be good.

So we made a blueberry pie inside a lemon cake and iced the whole deal with real lemon buttercream (in other words, five egg yolks and a entire pound of butter).

It was as awful as I hoped it wouldn’t be. So much for that.

This same time, years previous: itchy in my skin, chocolate mint chip cookies, in which we enroll our children in school, ruminations from the shower, take two, the perfect classic cheesecake, snowcream, and a bedroom birth.