Remember last year around Thanksgiving when I cooked three awesome dishes and told you I'd post the recipes? Yeah, me too. Sorry about that.  So, slightly in advance for this Thanksgiving, I'll finally be posting them - starting, naturally, with the appetizer.  I usually just do dessert or an appetizer for family dinner hosted at Ma and Pa FvF's house, but by Thanksgiving of last year, my swollen, pregnant ass was on partial bed rest and bored out of my mind. So, I insisted on making both.

1 pkg refrigerated breadstick dough
10 sliced precooked bacon*
1/4 C shredded parmesan cheese
1 tbsp herb of your choice (I used fresh rosemary)
1 egg, beaten + a table spoon or two of cold water

*Yes, the Oscar Meyer stuff that is shelf stable.  Trust me, this is one of the only things it's good for.  Real bacon just isn't pliable enough.  


Unroll the dough and separate it into sticks.  Coil the bacon and breadsticks together, pinching the breadsticks ends together as you go, to make one big, slightly loose spiral.  It's best to start on a cookie sheet or pizza stone, because this is impossible to move once you start.  Brush with the egg wash, then sprinkle your herbs and cheese over the top and bake about 25 minutes at 350.  After you've let it cool for 10-15 minutes, cut it pizza-style into thin, triangular slices.  This comes out a bit smaller than you'd expect, so I'd make two if you're serving more than 5-6 people.  Or any combination of one very pregnant woman and one or more people.

I know I still haven't finished my reviews from our Nashville trip in April, but I'm pretty damn tired of writing restaurant reviews right now.  Please click here for further explanation of my feelings on this matter.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about some delicious appetizers that I made for Mr. FvF's birthday dinner.  Appetizers are one of my favorite categories of foods to eat, but one of my least favorite to make.  Basically the concept is taking something that's great in its regular-sized form, then making 100 tiny ones. Pain in the ass, cue sad trombone.  You almost have it made, however, when you can basically still make a giant version and just cut it up into smaller pieces.

Enter crescent dough!  I always use the Pillsbury Recipe Creations dough, specifically to avoid pressing out all of those funky perforations.  This is one of the easiest, quickest, cheapest apps I've ever made, and it could be tarted up in any manner of different ways.  Here's what you'll need (makes about 24 pieces):

1 can crescent dough
1/4 C+ basil pesto
4 slices of prosciutto, chopped into bits (salami or very thin ham will do, too)
1/4 C hard Italian cheese, shredded (I used Romano)

Cut the dough into four rectangles, spread each with about a tablespoon of pesto, then sprinkle evenly with prosciutto and cheese.  Roll each dough sheet up lengthwise, so that you could cut 6 small slices out of each.  But wait, hoss - don't cut yet!  All the oily pesto + the butter in the dough + the heat of your fat little paws makes it impossible to slice.  Keep the rolls on a cutting board and toss them in the freezer for a few minutes, then get them back out and slice into 6 pieces per roll.

Bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 350 for about 15 minutes.

I love my friends SO much that I'll let them make me go to the same shitty place more than once. I like to think that placed in a similar situation, they would do the same for me. I've never decided to go to The Greene, Dayton's fancy outdoor walk-around mall, on my own. Aside from trekking out there to meet one of my favorite authors, my visits have always been at at least somewhat at another person's request or invite.

You see, the first time I went to the Greene, something weird, embarrassing, and life-alteringly shitty happened there. I'm not going to go into detail, but let's just say I think of it as my personal Vietnam. So naturally, I don't like the place too much. Besides, although I love commerce, places like this exemplify my hate part of our love/hate relationship. The food options are really not much more impressive than your regular indoor mall eating options, they're just far more overpriced. They all have $10+ appetizers and outdoor patios and verandas, and if you're a smoker, everyone looks at you like you're eating a live baby. It's all your standard fare of Brios and P.F. Chang's, occasionally a chain restaurant masquerading as an independent, but their decor and prices aren't fooling anyone. Then of course, there are your Fleming's and McCormick and Schmick's, where you don't even know if you're ordering up, because there aren't always prices on the menu. Oh, then there's this nest of turds called The Pub. Not to be confused with Dayton's original and independent Dublin Pub, which happens to have delicious food, stellar service and a staff who know a it's a dick move to review an Irish pub based on ordering the fucking filet. They have steak on the menu at Denny's, too - but that doesn't mean you should order it and base your opinion of their food as a whole on an item that's clearly not within their realm of expertise - but, I digress.

Back to my original point that one of my best gals craves the curry fries at The Pub. I'd never had them, or even seen them - but I assumed they must be worth the trip. This day was all about her, and I made sure to eat a decent lunch so that I wouldn't order much there. I ordered the Cheese Bollocks, large balls of mozzarella, beer battered and deep fried.

Of course I want to say they were terrible, but they really weren't. The batter was on the bland side, but it's still beer batter, filled with melty cheese. Gin got the fries and their soup of the day, corn chowder, which she just said "tasted weird."