Jalapeno Thingies

This recipe is borrowed from The Pioneer Woman, whose recipes and photos I adore and admire. That woman can cook! I first made it for my birthday celebration this year in March, then decided to make them for dinner on Monday night. They're not really "dinner" material and are definitely more hors d'oeuvre-ish, but hey, I'm an adult and can make whatever I want for dinner. That's part of the fun! Plus, we wanted to give them a whirl with our part-of-the-pig-we-bought-from-Buppy's-coworker bacon, which is quite salty and very, very smokey. Good in things, like chopped up in eggs or in a BLT sandwich, but a little too flavorful to eat by itself as a side for breakfast.

The recipe is pretty easy; you need bacon, cream cheese and jalapenos. I used 10 jalapenos, not quite a full block [8 oz.] of cream cheese and about 1/2 lb. of our bacon. This seems to be half the original recipe, but 10 halves for Buppy and I each was just the right amount.

Buppy seeded the jalapenos this time around, whereas on my birthday that was part of my job. I think I was a little more diligent than he was; my first 2 halves this time around were hot. Make-my-eyes-water hot. Makes-you-wanna-give-up-and-stop-eating hot. I persevered though, and after taking a short break to let my mouth cool off, I continued on with the rest of my halves. I'm glad I did as those first 2 seemed to be the only super hot ones in the batch. All I can say is make sure you clean out the seeds and the membranes to lessen the heat as much as possible. Obviously if you like things hotter, keep those suckers in there! Buppy didn't realize that the membranes add to the heat too, not just the seeds, which is why I think we hit some hot spots.

All in all, it was a nice meal to end our Monday. I want to try these with turkey bacon to see how they are, especially because then they wouldn't really be bad for a person at all since I already use 1/3-less-fat cream cheese [sorry folks, I just can't do fat-free, but by all means use that if you can stomach it!] Wait, I'm not sure how fat-free melts, so use at your own risk. Stop by The Pioneer Woman [link takes you directly to this recipe] and check our her fabulous photos and the original recipes I worked from. These things are just as awesome as she claims they are, I promise! Enjoy!