I’ve seen people put a lot of different types of food in waffle irons. Cinnamon rolls, tator tots, etc… Since I am a bacon fanatic, I thought why not try cooking bacon inside a waffle iron? Sure enough it worked! I placed a sheet tray beneath the waffle iron, just in case any grease had dripped down from the sides of the waffle iron. It was pretty sweet.

Start off with your favorite bacon. I like Oscar Meyer.

Place enough bacon to cover the waffle iron completely and a couple strips on top. Close the waffle iron. Let the waffle iron do it’s thing until the bacon is crispy like this picture below.

I normally don’t post any Thanksgiving recipes on my blog because I don’t cook Thanksgiving at all. I normally go over to the in-laws or to my Mom’s house. Usually, I’m asked to bring something with and that is Strawberry Pretzel salad recipe from Paula Deen. Everybody loves it. I decided this year, to do a little bacon inspired Thanksgiving post in honor of 50 Shades of Bacon coming out this year. So far this month we’ve sold over 200 copies of the book!! Thank you to everyone that has been buying it.

This picture has been going around a lot lately. I have no idea where the original source is from. Here’s bacon wrapped turkey. Doesn’t it look delicious?

Bacon, Cheddar and Chive mashed potatoes from Kitchen Comments

I’m not a big fan of green bean casserole so I won’t post a recipe for that at all. But, these bacon wrapped green beans from Our Best bites look scrumptious.

Bacon and Brown Sugar Topped Sweet Potato Casserole from Tracey’s Culinary Adventure’s.

As far as desserts go, how bout a bacon lattace apple pie from Babble?

Also, here’s a Maple Bacon Pumpkin Pie from The Butcher’s Blog. I think I might try making this one myself.I love maple and bacon together!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone has a fantastic turkey day.

Many of you may have been wondering why I’ve had so many recipes about bacon lately. Well, I can finally tell every one today. A friend of mine named Ben, sent me a message one day asking me if I’d help him write a cook book called 50 Shades of Bacon. I loved the title of it, and I love bacon, so I said sure why not?! Let’s do this thing.  It took a lot of work coming up with 50 different recipes that had bacon in it. There was plenty of bacon cooked and bacon grease used. I had so much in the end, I decided to make a bacon scented candle.  Some of the recipes in the book I already have on my website: Bacon Pesto, Bacon and Egg Breakfast Tacos, and Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwich.

This is another recipe from the book: Bacon S’mores. It’s fairly easy to make to. Just dip some bacon in melted chocolate. Wait for it to cool. Make a s’mores like you normally do and use the chocolate covered bacon in place of the chocolate. Mix it up. Use chocolate graham crackers and different flavored marshmallows.

Nutrition info for 1 S’more: Calories: 216.7, Fat 4.7g, Carbs: 41.0g, Fiber: 0.6g, Protein: 2.7g

Here is your chance to win a copy of the book.

1. Leave  a comment on my blog with your name and email address and tell me why you love bacon.

2. Like the 50 Shades of Bacon facebook page and Recipe Diaries facebook page.

Contest ends at the end of August, so tell all your friends about 50 Shades of Bacon!

If you can’t wait to win the copy go ahead and buy a copy on the 50 Shades of Bacon website.

I’ve accumulated a lot of bacon fat lately. It’s for a good cause though…. I looked up how to make your own bacon fat scented candle to use some of up. A lot of websites just called for bacon fat. For some reason, I didn’t find that safe though. Melting bacon grease in a jar? That sounds like a fire waiting to happen. Did another search for making your own wax candles and combined the 2 together. The jar ends up smelling like bacon fat in the end. I wanted to make the wax brown, but didn’t want to go out and purchase some of those colored blocks.

Supplies:

Bacon grease

Candle wicks

pencils

jars

beeswax

Here’s all you do to make your own bacon scented candle.If you go to Michael’s, they have a whole entire section on candle making. I found my beeswax and candle wicks there. Most people have jars and pencils lying around their house already.

1. Melt some wax over a double boiler until the wax is completely melted.

2. While the wax is melting, tie the candle wick to a pencil and let it hang in the jar.

3. Stir in some bacon grease to the candle wax. I used about 2 tablespoons.

4. Slowly add in the wax to the jars.

And there you have it folks. Your own bacon scented candle. Another way to save on all those un-wanted extra calories.

Some of you may know this, but I used to work at at a fast food restaurant called Taco John’s for awhile. That was way back when I was a teenager, and didn’t really care about food then. My taste buds have changed a lot. Back then, I didn’t like re-fried beans at all and I love just about any kind of bean.

Anyways…. these breakfast tacos are a replica of the breakfast tacos that are served there. Taco John’s is famous for their potato oles, and I think Lawry’s seasoning salt is pretty darn close to the seasoning Taco John’s use. Plus, who cares if the tator tots aren’t a circular shape like the potato oles. Nothing has to be perfect, ya know.

Recipe Diaries Original

Servings: 6

Bacon and Egg Breakfast Tacos

Print recipe

Ingredients

• 6 large eggs
• 6 small soft shell tacos
• 2 cups frozen tator tots (such as Ore Ida)
• 1 jar con queso cheese dip
• 6 pieces bacon (cooked until crispy )
• 2 tablespoons seasoning salt (such as Lawry's)

Directions

Step 1

Cook tator tots according to package directions. Once the tator tots are cooked, season with Lawry's seasoning salt.

Step 2

In a non stick skillet, cook eggs until their scrambled. Season with Pepper.

Step 3

Assemble the taco. Place eggs, 1 to 2 tablespoons of queso cheese, 4 seasoned tator tots, and bacon onto a warmed soft shell.

Bacon Pesto, sounds pretty nuts doesn’t it? In fact it’s not! I thought Bacon Jam was nuts, until I tried it, and it was fantastic. I have come to the conclusion that you can take pretty much any kind of cooking method like say making jam and or a pesto and add in some bacon to it. It will be good no matter what.

This bacon pesto would be good over pasta or just on top of a bagel with cream cheese. It’s kind of rich, cause I used some of the bacon fat that was still dripping from the bacon and a little bit of olive oil to it. The bacon, peanuts,  and chives could be blended up together just by themselves, and be used in dips. Yum! So many different things you can make with bacon. The sky is the limit!

Recipe Diaries Original

Bacon Pesto

Print recipe

Ingredients

• 1lb bacon (cooked until crispy )
• 1/4 cup peanuts
• 1/4 cup chives (chopped)
• 1 dash salt
• 1 dash pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

Step 1

Cook bacon until crispy. 425 for 20 minutes.

Step 2

Add bacon, chives, peanuts, salt, and pepper into the food processor and pulse.

Step 3

Pour the olive oil into the food processor, while the bacon and peanut mixture is pureeing until the mixture resembles a pesto.

Step 4

Serve on top of pasta or with spread onto bread. Enjoy!

I always hate cooking bacon on the stove top. The grease splurts out at you and spatters everywhere on your clothes. There have been times that I’ve had to use Dawn in order to get the bacon grease stains out. All you do is let the Dawn soak on your stained clothes  for a couple of days and then throw your clothes item in the laundry.

Cooking bacon in the oven is a lot better way to save all that time trying to save your clothes and the clean up! Oh, the clean up is so much better. Sometimes, I’d  just let the bacon grease sit in the pan for a day so that the fat hardens up and the grease is a lot easier to take out of the pan. Oh yah,  I have a bacon fat jar…. I’m one of THOSE people.

Here’s how you cook bacon in the oven. Set your oven to 400. 425 if you like your bacon extra crispy. Put some heavy duty tinfoil on a baking sheet. This helps it so that there’s easy clean up in the end. Lay the bacon down on the baking sheet right next to each other.

They can be overlapping too. I’ve done this before and all of the bacon still ends up cooking the same. Bake the bacon, at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. That’s it, and it’s super easy! No more grease splatters or grease stained clothes. You and your wardrobe will be happy!