"No person in the world has more courage than the one who can stop after eating one peanut."

-Channing Pollock

Chicken Breast wrapped in Streaky Bacon

preheat oven to 350º


I used boneless skinless chicken breasts that were all trimmed up. Season with salt and pepper then wrapped with thick cut Bacon (for my British friends this is thick slice streaky bacon). I used 2 of 3 slices of bacon, wrapped all the way around the chicken breast. I did drizzle a little bit of olive oil on the bake pan but to be honest the fat from the bacon will make it not stick to the baking sheet.
Cook for about 40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked thoroughly and the bacon is crispy. Believe it or not but the chicken was remarkably moist- even after cooking so long.

*side note- I'm going to experiment with temperature and time and see if I can get the same results at a higher temperature with a shorter cooking time. Might have to solicit some friends to try this one on as my family gets rather tired of me cooking the same things over and over again trying to get a recipe down pat.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fruit Tart Flag

I'm always striving to make something "different" when having friends over for a social gathering. I've been getting recipe e-mails from Food Network for what seems to be for forever and once I saw this one for the Flag Fruit Tart Well I knew that I was going to make it for our son's graduation party.

I changed a few things from the recipe on Food Network- for one, there's no place (to my knowledge) to buy those mini tart shells so I had to make my own. I bought 2 boxes of those Pillsbury pre-made pie crust (you'll need 3 packages), rolled the crusts out and used a 2½ inch circle cookie cutter and cut 48 of those pie dough circles- which worked great in my Wilton mini tart/mini muffin pan. I baked them @ 350º for 10 minutes. Don't forget to use a folk and poke vent holes for the steam. The mini tart shells popped right out too! Let them cool on a wire rack. The shells can also be made a day or two in advance.

I added in a ½ cup of granulated sugar and a teaspoon of Vanilla, I used whipped cream from a can (use what you have on hand in my motto). The reason I added more sugar is that British version of whipped cream in a can is not sweet as it is back in the USA.

Now for putting it together...I put my mascarpone mixture into a gallon size ziplock bad, snipped of an end and used it as a pastry bag. Unless you do a lot of cake decorating, pastry bags aren't something most folks have "on hand". Squeeze into each little tart shell, smooth over with a frosting knife (a butter knife will do well too). Place your berries and berry slices as the picture shows and there it is!