a very pinteractive valentine's day

inspired by an idea i found via pinterest, i went into super cheesetastic mode this year for valentine's day.  well, sort of. 

i thought it would be super fun to mail silly little presents to the hub's office, just funny things that would bring a smile to his face and give him another reason to shake his head at his loony wife.  so i gathered up a bunch of stuff and created little cards out of them, packaging them up into envelopes and numbering them according to when they'd be mailed out.

here's a few of my favorites, and i totally cackled as i worked on them:

i know, i know.  you're groaning and rolling your eyes in a mixture of amusement and dismay at my corny ass.  it's okay.  i'm pretty sure the hub did too, with each package that arrived at his desk.

and the post office failed me big-time with at least one of these little surprises - as i tracked their progress, i was really annoyed to find that one of them managed to find its way to honolulu, of all places.  it took that particular mailing damn near two weeks before it finally arrived at its intended destination, only 20 minutes away from home.  oh, well.  at least something of ours has been able to enjoy hawaii, anyway.

i managed to keep this up for about three weeks before it petered out - i was spending a shitload of cash on postage and i think the hub got the idea, anyway.  not to mention...well, i didn't even have a grand finale planned at all.  like, i don't have anything but a nice card to give him today!  heh.  he'll have to settle for a nice dinner cooked by yours truly and enjoyed with the girls.

and lest you think i got away with a cookie-free valentine's day:

140 of them.  all requested rather last-minute, as in yesterday.  it made for quite a fun afternoon, but i'm glad i was able to help out.

oh, and sorry, nanette - i'm totally a day late with my contribution to your pinteractive link party.  oops.

such a foodie wan-nabe

so i recently participated in a fun fall gift exchange with some of the ladies on the nest's cooking board. with the help of elfster, we all put in our names and let the system do the name drawing for us and set a deadline of october 3rd to send out our little care packages. of course, in typical wan style, i procrastinated till the very last minute to get mine out.

my own elf, however, was much more on the ball. about a week before the deadline, i picked up our mail and was excited to find a box waiting for me. i ripped the top open right away and totally grinned when i saw what was inside.

i LOVE how i've been gifted that vosges mo's bacon bar from several people in the last few months. it's awesome. and my elf's timing couldn't be better - just a few days before i received this, the hub and i were discussing how nice it was that the weather was finally getting more fall-like. of course, since food is always on the front burner of my mind, i said "oooh, we can make a lot of soup!" heh. thank you to my elf, jerriesgirl!

and then i realized that i needed to get going on picking up items for my own gift exchange recipient. after asking a couple of anonymous questions, i clicked on the amazon store link that contained a bunch of items that she was eyeing. i was all ready to pull the trigger on the order (which would also make it a lot easier for my lazy ass, because i could just have it shipped straight to my draw) until i realized that each item was coming from different vendors - which resulted in shipping charges that cost more than the items themselves! eff that noise.

i ended up picking up a few things from local shops and packed and shipped the box myself. i made this little card and tossed it in.

hopefully she's received it by now, and is pleased with it. i had to make a couple of substitutions - she'd wanted some rose water for baking, but i couldn't find any. but i did manage to find some rose extract, which i figured she could dilute and make her own rose water. i hope.

i recently signed up to be a foodbuzz featured publisher, and have been enjoying the e-mails and stories and links i've been receiving from them. one e-mail a couple of weeks ago offered up some freebie cards, and while i didn't really know if i'd use them, i placed my order anyway. hey, i rarely pass up free shit. and last week, this appeared in the mailbox:

they're SO cute. i seriously don't know if i'll ever have a need for them, but they're adorable. the little case is plastic and the perfect size for slipping into my bag, and the cards themselves are super cute. the backs are adorned with beautiful photos of food and drink:

haha! is that awesome, or what?

bacon ice cream? yup, you read that right.

because we've moved so often (and are likely not done yet), we get our mail delivered to one of those mailbox places. it's pretty close to home, but i still don't manage to get over there to check it but maybe once a week. usually the box is filled with unhappy shit, like bills and junk mail. but when i went late last week, i was excited to find a slip that told me i had a package to pick up as well.

i rushed home to open it, and it was an awesome box of fun from my friend ThatGirl. she'd asked me for my address, so i knew something was on its way, but i wasn't sure what. and inside this carefully packed box:

i found two bags of delicious treats, handmade by TG herself.

and as i dug further into the foam peanuts, i squealed when i found this:

and then laughed as i pulled this out:

she is so thoughtful, and i love her so for it.

i'm also a little embarrassed to admit that i still haven't taken a bite of that long-awaited vosges bacon bar. i've been wanting it for so long, and now that i actually have one in my hot little hands, i guess i'm just prolonging the excitement as much as i possibly can. heh. what a doofus i am.

so to distract myself from the fact that it was waiting for me to dig in, i decided it was time to try a different bacon-related delicacy that i'd already bought the ingredients for. the monkey had forwarded me a link for bacon ice cream, and it looked so simple that i just had to give it a shot. i was actually more intrigued by the link within the comments for homemade candied bacon ice cream, but lacking an ice cream maker as well as the instructions linked within for making it without one, i settled for this quick and easy version.

but i did give it my own little twist - i chose to make candied bacon instead of mixing in plain ol' bacon bits. following the instructions in the second recipe, i laid out five strips of bacon onto my silicone baking mat and sprinkled them with about a teaspoon and a half of brown sugar.

once the oven was ready (i'd set it to400 degrees), i placed that happy-looking tray inside and set the timer for six minutes. while i waited, i laughed at the bean, who'd decided to get inside a paper bag and scoot around the floor.

when the timer went off, i pulled the bacon out, flipped the strips over, dragged them through the syrup created by the melted brown sugar, and sprinkled a little more on top for good measure.

a couple more turns later, it was done to my satisfaction. i set them on a wire rack to cool, and they were all pretty and shiny and smelled so good.

as they cooled and hardened, i pulled out the other two ingredients for my scrump-diddly-umptious experiment.

i chopped up the bacon into little bits:

put the ice cream in a bigger bowl for mixing, and sprinkled the bacon and pecans on top.

the color in this shot is off, but here's my ice cream, all mixed together.

in an effort to conserve space in my tiny freezer, i just put it all back into the original carton.

later that evening, after i'd cleaned up dishes from dinner, i scooped myself up a nice serving of the sweet/salty concoction. i topped it off with a few extra candied bacon bits, and dug in.

i must confess - while i really wanted to love this stuff, i really did - i wasn't exactly bowled over. it was good, don't get me wrong, but not as fantabulous as i'd hoped for. maybe it was the slightly overwhelming sweetness of the dulce de leche flavor (candying the bacon or using sweetened pecans probably didn't help, either). or maybe my taste buds were all set for some homemade ice cream, and even good ol' haagen dazs wasn't good enough. i don't know. in any case, it was yummy enough for me to want to finish it off (although i was good and didn't - yet), but not necessarily to make this particular recipe again. the candied bacon on its own WAS really delicious, though, and that i will definitely repeat. this time, though, i'll just treat it as the pig candy that it is and munch on it solo.

hey, no worries. if at first the bacon ice cream isn't a huge success, try, try again - with more fun recipes incorporating bacon in creative ways! stay tuned.