Homemade Potato Skins

Cheese, bacon, potato. What's not to love? Throw some green onions and a dollop of sour cream and you've got yourself a well rounded meal. Forget about the calories and just eat yourself happy!

I decided to make a double batch of potato skins because I had two dinner parties last weekend. Let me tell you, they got scarfed down in rapid succession. If I concentrate really hard I can still taste the cheesy bacony goodness.

I really don't even think this requires a recipe.. But here's a willy nilly instruction set...

Bake some russet potatoes and let them cool. Cut in half lengthwise and scoop out the middles, leaving about a 1/4 inch of potato. If you like them skinnier, scrape out more potato. Keep the skins in the fridge until you are ready to use them. If you want to make them ahead, pop them in the freezer in ziplock bags.

Preheat your oven to 400. Line a pan with tinfoil. Place the potatoes upside down, so that the skins are face up. Brush them with olive oil and sprinkle with coarse salt and pepper. Bake for about ten minutes until they are quite firm.

Take them out and flip them akin side down and sprinkle your favourite cheese in each one. Don't be skimpy, there is no such thing as too much cheese! FYI: I used a tex mex mix. Next sprinkle them with bacon. It's obviously best if you fry the bacon and crumble it up, but pre-made bacon bits will do the trick.

Put it all back in the oven for ten minutes or until the cheese is bubbly. Sprinkle them with chopped green onions and serve with sour cream or greek yogurt!

it's bacon, it's mayo!

I love fridge creeping. One of the first things I do when I am in someones kitchen is open their fridge and check out what they've got. Sometimes it's a hunger thing, most often it's a curiosity thing. You can really tell a lot about someone by the state of their fridge. I have no idea what my fridge says about me other than I like sauce and Diet Coke.

Recently in my snooping, I hit the Fridge Find of the Year...Baconnaise! It's bacon flavored mayo. It sounds disgusting, right? More like disgustingly delicious! This blog might be a bit premature as I haven't actually tasted it yet. I don't even own it! I am, however, obsessed with it. I don't really eat that much bacon but only because I find once I start eating bacon it becomes an addictive habit that I am unable to break, so I just stay away from it. Since The Discovery of Bacconaise, everything I eat I can imagine putting bacon mayo on it and how much better it would taste. Creamy and salty and meaty and artery clogging- what's not to love?!

Of course iIdecided to do some research on this salty spread and was elated with my google results. Shall I share? I think I shall.

Into google I type "bacon mayo", first result: www.baconnaise.com/. I spent the next hour and a half (that's 90 minutes) perusing this site and then bookmarked it for future viewing. Here's the scoop: a couple of guys realized they needed more bacon flavor in their life so they mixed together bacon fat with salt and came up with Bacon Salt. It is zero calorie, no fat, vegetarian, kosher and low sodium seasoning! Obviously it took the world by storm and from there they expanded their line to include other bacony items like baconnaise, baconPop(corn) and recently they came out with Ketchup Salt. On their Retail page they have an item listed called BaconAir, bacon flavored oxygen inhaler. I think I read somewhere that it was an April fools joke, but I couldn't resist entering for a Lifetime Supply of BaconAir, so I sent them an email with why I should be the winner. It reads:

I should probably be the winner of a lifetime supply of BaconAir because I want to stay skinny but I love bacon. I think that this contest might be a joke, but hey I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of even a chance that I could win a life time supply of deliciousness. I think I would use it as an inhaler when I’m driving out of the city where it smells like manure. Life would be so sweet (or, more appropriately, salty)! Please pick me. I will share with all my friends and family.

*please note that the last line in that email was strictly added to make me seem like a good person, worthy of winning the contest. There is no way in hell I would share my loot if I did win.

I didn't stop there with my research, ohhhh no! I hit the Royal Bacon Society website then baconfreak.com where iIfound a blog that reports "People in Canada Choose Bacon Over Sex", Maple Leaf Food reports 43% of survey respondents said they would rather have bacon than sex... I bet those numbers would jump drastically if they were asked about bacon mayo! My hypothesis is that 90% of respondents would cut off their left arm and give up sex all together for a plate of bacon and a jar of baconnaise. Just a hunch.

I will leave you with some quotes courtesy of http://www.baconnaise.com/:

"Peanut butter and chocolate. Franks and beans. Cookies and milk. Bacon and anything. "

"I would eat that with a spoon!"

"Baconnaise could be the best condiment ever invented! Sorry, ketchup."

"I don't dine on swine, but wow, that's really good."

That is all. Get gone already. Make yourself useful and find me some bacon salt or something.