A cold, lots of bacon, and an immersion blender

I'm battling a cold and getting high on cough drops. My tastebuds are shot. I'm not complaining, though, because I've felt worse and at least this time I don't feel like there's a brick in my lungs ... and now that I've said that, I may no longer be the only one who's lost her appetite, eh? Sorry.


Anyway. Since I am unable to offer you a life-changing recipe for cough drops, or any kind of cough drop recipe for that matter, I'll have to come up with something else to say. We don't feel like eating anyway, right?


So ... I was reading some of my previous posts and noticed two things. One, I seem to like sharing recipes that call for bacon or pancetta. You must think we have bacon every day! I'm sorry to say that we don't. I do try to keep a pack of bacon stashed away in my freezer, but pancetta is more of a special-occasion guest in our home since it's not quite as ubiquitous over here as bacon is.





When Papo came to visit he consoled us by saying pacetta is just "beh-con" (bacon with an Italian accent) ... not quite - pancetta isn't smoked - but we've gotten into the habit of pronouncing it that way whenever we use it as a substitute for pancetta. It's amazing how far your mind can go in convincing your stomach to believe certain things!


The second thing I observed is that I use my immersion blender quite a bit, and I'm not at all sorry to say that it's absolutely true. If I wore a kitchen toolbelt, I'd place my blender on my right side and brandish it every chance I could get.





If you're thinking of pimping your kitchen with this nifty little thing, try to find one that has a metal wand. This way you can puree hot stuff right in the pot, without worrying about melting or staining any plastic.


Mine is a KitchenAid* and it has not let me down. It boasts 9 speeds and can blend merrily along for 15-20 minutes. It gets pretty hot when it goes for that long (how I know that is a whole other story) so I try not to push it past a few minutes. Be kind to your tools and they will serve you well.


And that, my friends, is the best I can do for now. I promise that next time there will be no mention of cough drops.




*KitchenAid does not sponsor me or this blog in any way (too bad, because if I were into the habit of getting tatoos I'd probably have my arm marked with their logo ... in a heart ... with thorns ... or something).