Charred Bacon Brussels Sprouts Recipe

Brussels sprouts used to be a mystery to me.  Always ordered in the restaurant, never attempted at home, except for a few lackluster attempts that never lived up to the restaurant version's perfection.

What is a perfect brussels sprout? Nutty roasted with crispy charred leaves, a tender inside and no bitterness to be found.

Turns out, with this vegetable, like as is the case with so many others, less is more. Don't fuss with it too much and it'll bring its glory to the surface.

First, bacon makes every delicious. Olive oil and salt with an oven set at 400 degrees is the fool proof method. Lemon juice balances out any bitterness that might occur.  And a dusting of mizithra or other similarly hard and salty cheese rounds it all out.

Turns out, if you pick fresh brussels sprouts with tight leaves and don't cut them in half, the inside of the sprout will steam itself into soft goodness while the outside gets a nice char.

Seriously simple. 

Ingredients
1 lb of brussels sprouts
2 slices of bacon
1/4 a cup of olive oil
2 teaspoons of salt
1 wedge of lemon
2 teaspoons of mizithra cheese


Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Chop the stems off the bottom of the brussels sprouts and remove any yellow leaves. Rinse and let dry.
3. Slices the bacon into slivers and lightly sauté to wick off some of the fat and separate the pieces.
4. Toss the brussels sprouts and sautéed bacon in olive oil and salt.
5. Spread out the coated brussels sprouts and bacon on a cookie sheet and place in the preheated oven.  Let them bake for 30 minutes or until the outer leaves of the brussels sprouts are mildly charred.
6. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and squeeze some lemon juice over the brussel sprouts. Dust with mizithra cheese.
7. Enjoy the wonders of this amazingly simple dish.

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The Great UGLee Pen Review + Giveaway

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

 

 

Trust me when I say, I'm no newbie to the pen game.  I'm a pen user from way back. Click pens, cap pens, colored pens, gel pens, tri colored pens, you name it.  I'm a writing fiend.  But old age and computer use has really slowed my game. I can't even do marathon thank you card writing sessions anymore because the inklings of carpal tunnel start setting in. (See what I did there?)

 

Enter the world of ergonomic pens. Attempts at this genre have been around forever, from the Pilot G-2 to the Dr. Grip and Evo. They all attempt and fail at what the Uglee ergonomic pen succeeds in providing: the perfect grip.  In all the other pens, either the grip is too thin to make a big difference in the padding, or the padding comes loose and unwieldy, others change the shape of the pen so the act of writing isn't familiar but a practice in learning how to write with a un-pen-like instrument.  In the Uglee Pen, the grip covers a long length of the pen allowing for the user to choose how high up or down low the user wants to hold it.  Further, the grip is comfortably squishy while the pen is very light.

 

Now, the Uglee Pen is an inky ball point and I prefer gel.  And it comes in black, blue or red ink and as a crafter, I'd love it to come in a million other colors.  But if I were going to pick up any pen, to say finish up writing the slew of tags on five dozen party favors, I would pick this one because regardless of the fact that it's not gel and not in the perfect shade of gold, my hand isn't going to cramp up and force me to take a break from writing.

 

Which is efficient. And I love efficiency like a fat kid loves cake.

 

Lucky for you, my small but wonderful group of readers, they're going to send the winner of the giveaway below a pen to try so you can see for yourself.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway ends on March 23rd.  And you know what they say: you can't win if you don't enter.  Good luck!

Congrats to Cynthia D.!  She's our winner!

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

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