Yesterday I stepped away from my desk downtown to walk to Pike Place Market and buy Dark Chocolate-Maple-Bacon Truffles at Rose's Chocolate Treasures. A big thanks to dendacien for alerting me to their existence!

I bought 6 truffles to take to Nikki's "Castle Falkenstein" game. So during game, as we sat around the fire (it's been so gloomy here recently that a fire seemed like a great idea), we each had one.

Consensus: Good, but not overwhelmingly good; not addictively good; not even so good that I would buy them again, considering all the other tempting-looking confections in Rose's chocolates case.

Overall, the maple flavor was too strong; the bacon taste was almost an afterthought. It tasted like maple syrup on your bacon. juniperjournal proclaimed it "breakfast in one bite." The chewy bacon inside was a bit weird, too. I think a dark chocolate - bacon flavor combination could be done much better than these.

They were yummy, and I'm going back to Rose's again... and maybe the next time, dendacien can share some of the deliciousness. :-)

Some coworkers and I walked from the office down to Pike Place Market for lunch today. The weather is glorious, and it felt so good to get out of the office!

Nikki, Dafny and I had fish and chips at Jack's Fish Spot -- greasy and salty and delicious. I ate mine while we were waiting for the others to rejoin us. Jen and Megan went to La Vaca, and tatterdamelion got chicken teriyaki somewhere in the neighborhood. It looked fire-engine red, and Jen (who tried a bite) said that it was not really very spicy (although he had asked for spicy), but it was full of flavor.

After we all regrouped and started walking back, we were ensorceled by the beautiful displays of caramel apples in the window of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Nikki and I split a plain caramel apple -- a sweet, crispy-yet-not-too-hard green apple, drenched in perfect, sticky-yet-not-too-sticky caramel. They slice it for you there, which makes sharing one much easier.

(A Bacon Maple Bar (really!) would also have been acceptable. But driving to Oregon for dessert seemed a bit ambitious. Also because none of us had a car anywhere nearby.)

Right now my office is treating everyone to impromptu root beer floats! They have orange soda, too, in case you don't like root beer. Orange soda + vanilla ice cream = Creamsicle-y goodness.

And, in case all that was not enough sugar -- tonight is Nikki's "Castle Falkenstein" game, and we are having a brownie-off. tatterdamelion is going to make New Mexico Chile Brownies (having toyed with, but then rejected, the idea of Banana-Rum Brownies), and I have already made Orange-Ginger Brownies -- a little orange oil and some chopped crystallized ginger. Mmmm. I almost made Bacon Brownies, but in the end sanity prevailed.

This morning's xkcd comic generated many, many links in the comments to various bits of bacon-y goodness. Here are two that look simply astounding:

• Dark Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes (yes! Chocolate, and bacon, and there's coffee in it, too!!! Triple yes!)
• Bacon Apple Pie. After giving the recipe, the blogger writes:
  

  "So how was it?

  I wouldn’t be posting this if it wasn’t absolutely incredible. It wasn’t greasy like I thought it would be. The flavor was a perfect balance of sweet and salty. I served it up with slices of smoked cheddar cheese for a room full of amused but open-minded skeptics, and the entire pie was gone in 10 minutes."

I also belong to the LJ community bacon_lovers, so I get the inside scoop on all things bacon-related.

Mmmm, bacon.

Bacon.

Vodka.

From BrowniePointsBlog: Homemade Bacon Vodka.


I must make this... maybe I'll pick up some vodka tomorrow on my way back from the salon. That's right, boys and girls -- Vanity and Liquor, combined in one dangerous woman, right here. Watch yourselves.

I need some vodka anyway, so I can begin steeping the crystallized ginger in it for a new batch of Ginger Frappé.

... if by "you," it means "people who actually have some skill with their hands." Then I'll believe this list of 100 things you can make yourself.

Make my own mayonnaise? Sure, I've done that.

Make my own crayons?? Well, maybe.

Make my own house?? No way.

Make my own bacon? Mmmm. This looks amazing.

A bit closer to Christmastime, I'm going to turn to polytrypos and demand that he buy me several of these exotic chocolate bars to put in my stocking. (August is a little bit too far in advance to store foodstuffs.)

Before I die, I must experience at least a few of these taste combinations:

• Black Pearl Exotic Candy Bar: ginger + wasabi + black sesame seeds + dark chocolate
• Calindia Exotic Candy Bar: Indian green cardamom + organic California walnuts + dried plums + Venezuelan dark chocolate
• Oaxaca Exotic Candy Bar: Oaxacan guajillo y pasilla chillies + Tanzanian bittersweet chocolate
• Red Fire Exotic Candy Bar: Mexican ancho and chipotle chili peppers + Ceylon cinnamon + dark chocolate
• Bacon Exotic Candy Bar: Applewood smoked bacon (I am not making this up!) + Alder smoked salt + deep milk chocolate

Bacon Salt.

http://www.baconsalt.com/

"Bacon Salt is a zero calorie, vegetarian, kosher-certified seasoning that makes everything taste like real bacon."

Where has this been all my life???