Okay, so I’m still writing about food. Not sure how long I will keep this up, but I’m still learning how to cook while paying careful attention to ingredients and my health, so I guess I’ll just keep processing this information by writing it down here.
Cooking this week, trying to be sure to include some dairy, is pretty fun, actually. It’s not super simple because every recipe I thought of – also had some kind of grain or legume or something. So, I landed on one of my very favorite appetizers that I love so much I even totally make them when people are not coming over…and when people are coming over. Goat (or feta or bleu) Cheese Stuffed, Bacon Wrapped Dates! If you can read the name of this tasty treat, you have also read the ingredient list: goat cheese, bacon, dates.
Count out as many dates as appetizers you want. I chose 24.
Slice each (pitted – who would ever buy them with pits in them?!) date lengt
hwise, and pry it open just enough that you can fill it with goat cheese. When you press it closed, the cheese will just kind of act like glue to keep it in shape. Wrap that baby in a 3″ strip of bacon (with no sugar added) and cook for about 20 minutes at 400 – but watch them near the end. I burnt a batch of these once, and while the smell stayed in the house a few days, the very saddest part was certainly that after having put them together, none of them got to go in my mouth.
I covered them and put them in the frig, so I can cook them tomorrow. Can. Not. Wait.
I also had some backfin crab to use up, so I decided to make crab cakes…but without flour or bread crumbs or crushed chex for the gluten free recipes, it was kind of hard. So, I used tapioca flour to bread one of them. It’s the one in the pan that looks like a crab cake, not a crab pile. But, tapioca flour feels exactly like corn starch, so it just felt weird to dip this ball in tapioca flour, then egg, then more tapioca flour. So, I made one like that – and I tried to make crab cakes 
with just the crab mixture kinds of mashed into a patty with no breading on it. Exactly none of those stayed together at all. So, what I got on my dinner plate was one cute little, slightly browned, and perfectly fine crab cake…and a pile of decadent crab mixture kind of fried in butter FOR THE WIN!!! It was so delicious. I have no idea how one might serve it to guests, but I have to figure it out because it was outrageous! (Maybe like fish taco night?!)
Anyway, the dairy in this excellent dinner was the melted butter in the pan – and in the little bowl on my plate!
In these little moments, I guess I’m pretty grateful that dairy doesn’t seem to be a health thief – at least not yet.
Be Gentle With You 