Easy Bacon Bits

I love real bacon bits in salads or scrambled eggs but making them is a chore - all that frying and cleaning up the overspray for a few strips of bacon. Recently, however, I discovered an easy, abundant source of bacon bits for those of you who live in the Bay area.

Here's what you do. Drive to your nearest Barney's gourmet hamburger palace, sit down, and order their B.L.T. sandwich and a mocha milk shake. Don't forget the mocha shake - it's crucial to the plan.

While awaiting your sandwich, make goo-goo eyes at your Beloved across the table while you sip your mocha shake, which will have arrived well before your sandwich. Barney's mocha shakes are killer, made with real ice cream, real chocolate sauce and real coffee, served in a very tall glass with a wide-bore straw (that's still not wide enough to allow you to suck up such a thick shake) and alongside the other half of your shake in the metal blender container with a long spoon (very helpful!).

If you have followed directions carefully, by the time your sandwich arrives you will be too full of the mocha shake to eat another bite of anything. Now, ask for a box in which to transport your sandwich (which, parenthetically, is 'way too thick to bite, anyway, and too awkward to eat with a knife and fork) home. Once you get home, take apart the sandwich and pick out all the bacon, putting it into a separate baggie that you will keep in the fridge. On my sandwich, there was fully 3/4 of cup of bacon and perhaps a tad more.

Voila! a boatload of bacon to be chopped in a trice for your next omelet or salad! Nothing could be easier! And you got an unbelievably good mocha shake in the process, a bonus.

Mmmmmmocha!

If you are a frequent Zoomie Station reader, you know that I'd probably eat rocks if they were mocha-flavored. Luckily, My Beloved went shopping and he came home with brownies rather than rocks.

Brownie Bites from Just Desserts, halved and filled with coffee ice cream from Haagen-Dasz. It might have been better had I baked my own brownies, but for a quick and easy dessert, this can hardly be topped.

Except, perhaps, with a little whipped cream. Dang, why didn't I think of that? Oh, well...

Mmmmmmocha!

Mocha Shake

On a recent Sunday brunch outing with our pal Sari, we drove to Point Reyes Station, a fun and funky little town in west Marin, to enjoy the Station House Cafe's version. The day was brightly sunny, the drive out is lovely and the food was tasty, especially this mocha milk shake.

Frequent Zoomie Station readers will know that I adore mocha and am usually on the lookout for mocha anything. I hit the jackpot on this occasion - a friendly and funny waitress who brought an espresso shake drizzled down the inside of the glass with chocolate syrup.

You can sell my clothes, I died and went to heaven.

Experimental Dessert

So, what do you do with leftover, stale lady fingers (that got shoved to the back of the counter and just showed up again this morning) plus half a carton of whipping cream that has been lurking in the back of the fridge?

You can tell I don't like to waste food, not even several-day-old lady fingers.

I love mocha anything - I'd eat rocks if they tasted of mocha - so my idea was to concoct a dessert that incorporated coffee, chocolate, whipped cream and lady fingers.

I brewed some very strong coffee, dipped the lady fingers in it, spread them with whipped cream, topped them with another lady finger and another layer of cream, then drizzled them with chocolate sauce (good old Hershey's) and stuck them in the fridge to chill.

The verdict? Well, meh.

The lady fingers turned instantly soggy in the coffee. The whipped cream needed a little something - maybe espresso powder or vanilla sugar or...?

Next time, I think I'd try painting the lady fingers with Kahlua and flavoring the whipped cream. I'd keep the chocolate - it was the best part.

Back to the drawing boards!

Any suggestions?