Bacon Glory

Happy Thursday everyone!

I have a shorter blog today but I REALLY wanted to share this!

The past week has just flown by with work, picking out flooring and other house stuff, and getting the flu.  I’ll be the first to tell you that getting sick that bad…sucks.  There is no better word.  Well….I can think of a few but none are appropriate, whoops!  Oh boy.

So before my 4 day snot-fest and feeling like a semi ran me over, I was perusing Pinterest and saw the most awful for you, delicious looking piece of chicken ever.  So of course I wanted to make it.  The pin didn’t have a link to a recipe but from the picture, you could pretty much figure it out.  

 

Introducing:

CREAM CHEESE BACON

WRAPPED CHICKEN

 

Please take a moment to reread that: CREAM CHEESE BACON WRAPPED CHICKEN

Yes I did die of happiness and the house smelled of bacon heaven. BACON.  Need I say more?  For the sake of the blog I’ll struggle on.  Just look at its glory.

This recipe was fairly easy to recreate.  All you need are chicken breasts, bacon, cream cheese, and shredded cheese if you want to melt a little on top.

I had two large chicken breasts that I thawed and cut in half to make four pieces.  Then I found 2 packages of bacon in the freezer and thawed those beautiful packages out (which I don’t know how those ended up in my freezer because we don’t normally buy bacon, they were probably supposed to be used for fishing bait).  Also, I pulled out a block of cream cheese to warm to room temperature for easier manipulation.  So here is my interpretation to make 4 Cream Cheese Bacon Wrapped Chicken.

Ingredients:

2 Large Chicken Breasts
2 packages of Bacon
1 box of Cream Cheese
Shredded Cheddar Cheese (optional)

Directions:

Preheat Oven to 350 degrees and line a pan with foil.

Slice each chicken breast in half, set aside.  Lay out slices of bacon to wrap the chicken in (see picture) in a cross pattern.  Now, slice 1 or 2 pieces of cream cheese and place in the middle of the bacon cross.  I used 2 slices because I love cream cheese.  Next you choose a piece of chicken and set it on top of your cream cheese.  Once you have everything laid out how you want it, start wrapping the bacon around the chicken one side at a time.    After wrapping your chicken, place it on your pan with the “closed” side down…meaning the side with all the loose bacon ends.  Now that everything is on your pan, place it in the oven for 25 minutes.  Once the 25 minutes is up, flip the chicken so the other side of the bacon can cook for another 25 minutes.  In total, the chicken will be in the oven for 50 minutes.  Take the chicken out of the oven to sit for a few minutes and if you want to sprinkle with shredded cheese, now is the time to do it.  You’re done!

Side note:

For the bacon wrapping, I used 4 slices vertical and 4 slices horizontal on my larger chicken breast cuts and on the smaller ones I used 3 slices vertical and 3 slices horizontal. 



The bacon "cross" (the picture had to be special and not turn)




Pre-Oven tastiness "closed side down"

 

The finished product!

Mother's Day

Sunday was Mother’s Day.

I know Mother’s Day has passed but here are free printables for you!  Things got entirely too crazy for me to post this on time last week, but you can still bookmark it for next year haha (and the tags are great for any gift).

 

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mommas out there!  This year I didn’t want to send my mom the cliché and almost mandatory flowers that happens in our family every year.  I am the only girl, so my dad and brother tend to ask me what I’m doing for mom and they follow up with a card for her.  Good job guys.

SO, in lieu of flowers this year, and wanting to save money, I decided to make my mother’s day gifts.  Also, since I was going to have extra ingredients left over I decided to make some for S.O.’s mom and let the girl’s come over and make a batch for their mom as well.  The girls weren’t completely sold on the idea at first (they were also getting over being sick) but once they realized “hey Steff isn’t completely stupid and this looks fun”, it was a great time!

The afternoon activities included making an All Purpose Spice Rub, Whipped Body Cream, and a Sugar Scrub.  Yes, we taste tested the spice mix and the scrub….some more than others.  (I’m mentally glaring at you Lillie.  Yes you.) I also bought all the ingredients except two items at Dollar Tree.

Funny side story about Dollar Tree!  Standing barefoot, I push 6ft tall.  I love dresses and wearing heels; around 3in…..4in. is a little pushing it.  BUT it was a 4in. heel day, and I rocked those heels and my dress all the way to Dollar Tree.  So - I have my basket filled to the brim and my massive purse in tow about to go check out and I spot on the bottom rack the cutest container.  I juggle my items and bend down to pick the container up and I notice that THERE ARE MORE but they are in the very, very back.  Have I mentioned I also have no shame?  I dropped my purse and basket and dug to the very back of that low shelf.  I popped out of that shelf with my prizes and this older gentleman was just staring at me shaking his head. “You know…in my day, young ladies in dresses and heels didn’t crawl around on store floors”.  I didn’t care.  I had my jars and I WAS NOT crawling on the floor.  That’s gross.

Anyhoo…

These crafts took me under an hour to do all three items, even with everyone helping.

Here are the supplies for each gift:

     Sugar Scrub: 2.5 cups of granulated sugar and ¼ cup of coconut oil (essential oil optional)

     Whipped Lotion: 4.5oz petroleum jelly lotion with coco butter in it and 10oz vitamin E lotion(essential oil optional)

     All Purpose Spice Rub: 1/3 cup coarse salt, ¼ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup paprika, 2 Tbl black pepper, 2 Tbl oregano, 2 Tbl thyme, 1 Tbl cayenne pepper

     Containers for each gift

I found everything at Dollar Tree except coconut oil and thyme, which I found at Walmart.

Putting the gifts together is very easy!

Sugar Scrub

Sugar Scrub Mid Mix

First pour your sugar in a good size mixing bowl.  Then, you need to melt down the coconut oil.  Just pop some in the microwave in 20 second intervals until it’s melted.  After it is melted, pour it into the sugar and mix.  The girls wanted it to have a little color so we added a few drops of food coloring and a little vanilla extract for scent.  Once it is all good and mixed, plop it into its container and seal.  Done!

All Purpose Spice Rub

Throw it all in a bowl.  Give it a good mix and TADA!  Pour it into your container.  I strive for simplicity.

Whipped Lotion

Ok…so I’m not going to lie about this one.  I was kinda skeptical.  Measure out the different lotions and mix them in a mixing bowl with a hand mixture on high for about 2 minutes.  I had the girls count it out for me to work on reinforcing time skills.  Plus I let them yell it, which apparently is always entertaining to do when you are 7 and 9 years old.  Maybe I used the wrong lotion for the petroleum jelly (because they were out so I just used a coco butter lotion) but it did not “whip up” like I thought it would…BUT the final product was lighter feeling and didn’t look like a big blob in the bowl.  And I’ll admit it…the lotion works really well for me and it made a ton if you make all of the lotion you bought.  WHOOT!

Final Product Minus One of Each (we made 3 sets)

 

Once you have everything made, you can put them in the jars of your choice and decorate it with a label and any other fanciness you would like.  I didn’t have much time to get creative with labels, so I just went simple. 

 

So there it is ladies and gentlemen!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day and shout out to all of the pet Momma’s out there.  I’m a dog mom too!  Here is an ending picture of my baby Lilly being exhausted on Mother’s day.  It is hard work running up and down the stairs in the new house we are currently remodeling.  Till next time!