pear and blnewue cheese mmmmmm

Ingredients

• 4 slices of bacon, drippings reserved
• 10 oz. shell baby spinach or baby spinach-spring mix
• 2 ripe pears, cored and sliced
• 2 oz. crumbled blue cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp spicy brown or Dijon mustard
• 3 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• Pinch of salt and pepper

• Cook the bacon in a skillet, or in the oven. Reserve 3 Tbsp of the rendered fat. Let bacon cool slightly before crumbling.
• In a large mixing or serving bowl, toss together the spinach mix, pear slices, crumbled blue cheese, chopped walnuts and add the crumbled bacon to the salad once cooled slightly.
• Prepare the homemade bacon vinaigrette. In a small skillet or saucepan, add the bacon drippings and whisk in the sugar, spicy brown mustard and vinegar. Add a pinch of both salt and pepper. Once dressing has been well whisked, pour warm over the salad.
• Serve Pear & Blue Cheese Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette.

everything's better with bacon......

MMMMMM good!
one of my favorite candy bars of ALL times.....which happens to cost two arms and one leg, is a dark chocolate bacon with sea salt. so when i heard from a friend a recipe for a bacon chocolate bark, i jumped at the chance to try it!!!

i took her recipe and tweaked it to fit me :)

NEED:
2 bags ghiradeli milk choc chips
2 bars ghiradeli dark choc bars
1 package cooked bacon (cut into small bits with scissors before cooking)--drained and cooled
1 bag kraft caramels (unwrapped) and missing a few that your spouse ate
splash of half and half
coarse sea salt
parchment paper


DO:
over a double boiler (fancy way of saying a pot of water with a metal bowl on top) melt the two chocolates together--stirring OFTEN!

pour onto parchment paper lined baking sheet. smooth out. sprinkle with bacon. place in freezer.

melt caramels with the splash of the half and half--in the microwave--stirring every 30 seconds until melted

take the bark out of the freezer. drizzle with caramel. sprinkle with sea salt and then place back in the freezer.

break up it into chunks when nice and hard! ENJOY!