I <3 Bacon

I put two special items on my Christmas list this year because so far I just haven't been able to bring myself to buy them. I'd seen them popping up in stores for the last year or two, but I just knew they probably weren't going to be as good as I'd hoped.

Well turns out I DID get them for Christmas, and so now I've had the opportunity to try them guilt-free and not feel bad about throwing them away if they were terrible. Thus far I've had difficulty in bringing myself to using them in fear of ruining a perfectly delicious sandwich or meal, but I HAVE tried them a little. Here are my experiences thus far:

Bacon-Salt: I tried this on some popcorn because I know this same company makes a product called Bacon Pop. It actually was pretty good. X didn't like it at all, but I plan to put it on all my popcorn in the future. I think it'll be a good strategy in the future for ensuring that she doesn't HOG all the popcorn on our movie nights ;) Here are some other ways I plan to try this in the future:

• Scrambled Eggs
• Steamed Veggies
• Sandwiches

Baconnaise: First off I have to say that this doesn't smell anything like bacon to me. Its' like a weird combination of thousand island dressing smell and Worcestershire sauce - but that's still not quite it. I've had it on a sandwich or two and couldn't really taste anything (this could be due to the fact that X says I barely scrape any mayo on my sandwiches anyways). But Friday night I did the ultimate taste test - a Tuna Bacon-Salad Sandwich! It actually wasn't half-bad, and surprisingly enough it actually did kinda taste like bacon. Some other ideas I'm trying to talk myself into:

• Deviled Eggs
• Celery Sticks
• Fry Sauce
• Egg Bacon-Salad Sandwich
• Bacon Dip (yes - dipping bacon INTO it)

If I haven't grossed you out already, why don't you give it a shot and leave a comment with your most disgusting (or even good) ideas on how I can use my new bacon-substitute products? And if you are interested in trying some of these products, just remember what they say - Baconnaise is "For people who want heart disease, but are too lazy to make the bacon". Cheers!

Christmas Tree

Can you believe this is OUR tree? We got a new (used) tree from the classifieds this year, and we bought some nice ornaments from Target. Growing up we've never had a "nice" tree with matching ornaments, and it was always something I've wanted to try. Let us know how you think it turned out!

Christmas is in the Air

Okay, so I know its way past Christmas time, but I still wanted to get this done before it got much later. X spent a lot of time decorating our apartment during Christmas time, and I wanted to share some pictures of everything she did.


This is a Christmas count-down that my cousin Robin gave us for our wedding. When I was growing up we always did a Christmas countdown by adding cotton balls to Santa's beard, so I thought this was a fun tradition that we will be able to add to our Christmas decorations. While we had fun doing it together this year, I think it will be more fun for us later on when we have kids.


The glass block in the back was a gift from our close friend Allison last year for Christmas. X was excited to incorporate it into our decorations this year, along with a miniature Nativity set that we got from my mom. In this picture you'll also note our two Betta fish - this is the last picture of either of them alive.


And this is our miniature Christmas tree - Charlie Brown style. We actually inherited a full-size, artificial tree from my mom when she upgraded her tree, but it was too big for our apartment in its full size. So we just took off the top-most part of the tree and used that for our whole tree. It works just fine. We had a hard time choosing which ornaments to put on the tree (can you find the Christmas Pickle on our tree?) since we have so many - I grew up giving/receiving ornaments with my cousins every year - but I thought it all looked nice for the size of tree we had.

We hope you all had a merry Christmas... 3 months ago!