My new friend Tony and I have christened 2013 "The Year of DIY."

I'm going to go to Goodwill and have dresses altered and paint things and glue things on things.

With that in mind, I've decided to try my hand at some "How To" posts this year.

Because I am an expert at a large number of very random things.

Let's begin with a Burger Party.

Burger bowls are pretty much my favorite dinner because it's quick and easy and Paleo and absolutely delicious! It's all about the toppings--mushrooms, sauteed onions and spinach, banana peppers, pickled jalapenos, tomato, avocado, lettuce, bacon, perhaps a fried egg! You can add whatever you want to it. Whatever you want!

Maybe I'm a freak, but most of the toppings I already have in my fridge on any given day. So the morning before I had friends over for what quickly became known as The Burger Party Extravaganza, my mom and I cooked the spinach, mushrooms, bacon, and onions so they'd be ready. 

Everything else just needed to be chopped. Then we put them in cute little bowls and covered them with plastic wrap, stuck them in the fridge, drank some coffee, woke up the boys, and went to see Les Miserables! When we got home from the movies, my brother put the burgers together and into the fridge they went, as well. 

(A word about burgers: you could obviously make whatever kind of burger you'd like. Turkey burgers would be good, maybe a crab cake if you don't do meat, and a veggie burger would do just fine, too. Ours are beef and come from my high school cross-country coach's farm just about twenty minutes away.) 

When you're having people over and feeding them, doing as much as possible ahead of time is huge. When my friends arrived that evening, I had a margarita pitcher ready and all that needed to be done was grill burgers!

Once everyone has a drink and is ready for dinner, take everything out of the fridge, grill the burgers, heat up the stuff that needs to be hot (onions, mushrooms, spinach), set it out on a counter! I got buns and cheese for my non-Paleo friends, so I set out both plates and bowls and let everyone DIY!

If I were trendier, I'd have little flags labeling each bowl with washi tape or whatever that stuff is called.

If you end up polishing off two margarita pitchers and end the night with a dance party, you've probably done it right.

Does anyone have a request for a future How To post?

I'm not going to say anything to you about this recipe except for you're welcome, because it is beautiful and it came to me in a vision the way I picture saints appearing to people in burlap cassocks, standing on old rocky hills somewhere in Italy. 

There's a restaurant in the DC area that I love that has a whipped feta dip with hunks of jalapeno in it, and it is so good but it's a bit too much dairy for me. They also serve it with pita bread, and I had to have cucumbers which is fine, I guess, but I thought I'd make my own version that wouldn't make me feel sick or deprived in any way.

I made my dish more Paleo by using goat cheese instead of feta and then adding bacon, obviously.

Ingredients:

For the sweet potato wedges:

Two sweet potatoes 

(Make more if you want, but you'll run out of dip.)

A liberal drizzle of olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

For the goat cheese bacon dip:

A four-ounce package of plain goat cheese.

Two green onions

Two teaspoons of coconut milk

(More coconut milk if you want your dip to be thinner.)

Four strips of crunchy bacon.

1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Two or three shakes of crushed red pepper flakes

Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Take the goat cheese out of the fridge, out of the wrapper, and into a bowl to get to room temperature.

2. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

3. Wash your sweet potatoes really well. Leave the skins on if you want (I think you should) and scrub them!

4. Cut each sweet potato into eight wedges, lay on a baking sheet, and drizzle olive oil over them. 

5. Spread the oil around with your hands and get each wedge really covered. Add salt and pepper.

6. Pop 'em in the oven for about 25 minutes, turning them every ten minutes or so.

7. With a hand mixer, whip the goat cheese up until it's a little fluffy, and add the coconut milk. Whip some more.

8. Add salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, and garlic powder. Whip it!

9. Add crumbled bacon and sliced green onion. Whip it good!

10. Put the dip in a bowl and serve with sweet potato wedges. 

Now dip the sweet potato in or smear some of it over the wedge with a knife.

You could also totally use this as a topping on a baked sweet potato.

But I wanted fries.

Seriously, bring this to a holiday party.

This recipe was inspired by several things. First of all, fall is the perfect time for apples, isn't it? But more than apples, I have been eating a lot of dark chocolate recently. Like, really dark. I eat it at night, with a glass of red wine, while I read or listen to music. It's really nice, and it makes me feel fancy. And finally, I don't think I need to remind you how much I love bacon.

I sent my mom a text message before I left work last night that said, "Do we have apples, bacon, and chocolate?" and believe it or not, she didn't say, "Get a grip, Megan!" She actually said "Let me check," and then "Yes," so I rushed home with excitement.

This is what we're going to do--we're going to dip some apples in dark chocolate and then we're going to cover them with homemade bacon bits--because, why not? Ready? Let's do it.

 

Ingredients:

One Honeycrisp apple

A bar of dark chocolate (I kept it Paleo with this one)

Several strips of bacon

1. Cook the bacon until it is really, really crunchy. You're going to turn these into little bacon bits.

2. Once it's cooked, chop it up. I used a chopper to get it as fine as possible. 

We're talking almost bacon dust, people.

3. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.

4. Slice up your apple and set up an assembly line with apple slices first, then chocolate, then bacon.

5. Dip a slice in the chocolate, let it drip a little, and then sprinkle the bacon bits on the chocolate.

6. Plate them, show your friends, and feel like a culinary genius for a few minutes.