We now return you to our bacony scheduled programming

So I was a bit worried about whether I'd have anything to write about this week, what with Top Chef: Masters taking a week off for the July Fourth holiday or something.

I mean, I can't always count on a run in with the Insult Guy (though I did see him talking to the po-po on Wednesday night, and now suspect he might be a narc) . And while I can pretty much always count on seeing poorly dressed people on the Metro, I didn't know if I could count on them being poorly dressed in an amusing enough way to merit an entire post--with or without sneaky phone photographs--about them.

And short of having some sort of one woman tribute party, where I feathered my hair and chanted "Hiiiiii-yoooooooo" while dancing about to Michael Jackson songs and doing multiple loads of laundry with Oxy-Clean, I didn't think I could generate enough current events related excitement on my own to merit comment.

Also, it's tacky to make fun of the recently deceased.

It got to the point where I contemplated doing a post about my biannual trip to the CoinStar to turn 6 months worth of Coins into cash* which would have been amusing only because it would've included this picture of me getting said coins out of my Buddha bank:

which is probably offensive to some religions (though, really, I wouldn't freak out if you posted a picture of yourself fingerbanging a Virgin Mary shaped bank, so. . .I don't know. Grow a sense of humor or something. I had to get the coins out!).

Anyway, then I remembered that I was going to be having some dental work done this afternoon**, and that I should probably have some soft foods on hand for the next couple of days. And so I decided to make some ice cream, and settled on the Chocolate-Peanut Butter recipe from The Perfect Scoop.

And then I thought, "y'know, if I'm going to just be eating ice cream for the next few, perhaps I'd better sneak some protein into it." And so I decided to make. . .

. . . Chocolate. . .

. . . Peanut Butter. . .

. . . and Bacon Ice Cream.

Mise en Place, yo:

As you can see, you'll need bacon, half-and-half, salt, sugar, peanut butter, and cocoa. Tres simple. One of my favorite things about The Perfect Scoop is that the recipes run the gamut from "you'll need six specialty ingredients and 7000 egg yolks" to "meh, just get some half-and-half."

So to start, you're going to whisk the half-and-half, cocoa, sugar, and salt in a saucepan. And you're going to heat it and whisk it until it boils and gets delightfully foamy like so:

Mmmmm. . . foam-licious.

And then you're going to remove the mixture from the heat and plop in a half cup (or so) of peanut butter.

The peanut butter is at the bottom of the frame.

So you whisk that shit together until it's smooth and thoroughly blended. And then you're going to chill it until it's cold throughout, which--in my experience--takes an hour or thereabouts.

(also, if you're in Harris Teeter territory--Simply Lemonade and Simply Limeade are on sale for $1.97 each with your V.I.C. card. I'm pretty much living on Arnold Palmers at the moment).

So the cooling process may have resulted in some separation. If so, you're going to want to whisk the ingredients back together until they're a smooth, chocolatey, peanut buttery, cohesive unite. And then you can pour them into your ice cream maker and let them go for about the first 15 minutes or so of the freezing process.

While the ice cream is freezing, you'll want to prepare some bacon--like 4-5 strips. Get it cooked, and then chop it up finely comme ca:

And after the first 15 minutes of freezing are over, you can slide those right into the ice cream mixture. Let it continue to mix for about ten minutes more (this will vary depending on your ice cream maker), and you get this:

A beautiful chocolatey, peanutbuttery mix, studded throughout with delicious little salty bits of bacon.

This is beautiful and delicious in and of itself, but you want to complete the ice cream making process by transferring it to an air tight container (or two) and freezing it for 4-5 hours, or overnight.

What you'll get then is perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world

Following the idea that the garnish should tell you something about the flavors of the dish, I have garnished the ice cream with bacon, and drizzled a little chocolate sauce on top.

But you really don't need to bother with any of that fancy crap. Because at the end of the day, regardless of plating, what you've got is this delicious peanut butter/chocolate flavor, periodically interrupted by this little savory pop of bacon.

The accoutrements, as they say, are just icing on the cake.

Or, perhaps more aptly, just bacon on the sundae.

* If you're at all interested in how that story ends, I made $66.33.

** My first crown. R.I.P., top rear tooth on the left hand side.