There are no fewer than four traditional Jewish appetizing stores in close proximity to my apartment — hand-sliced nova, shiny gold smoked whitefish, fluffy mounds of fresh cream cheese. And these places all close before I get home. Seriously, if I leave work at a perfectly reasonable 6:30, I get to the fish store and it's deserted; they're sweeping up. What about smoked fish makes it unsellable after 7? The last time I got boxed out like this (because clearly folks need to get home and watch CSI) I decided to retaliate by subbing smoked traif for smoked salmon.
I toasted a bagel, fried up some bacon because I literally wrote the guide on it, and layered strips on top of the cream cheese. I realize the implications of even thinking this is every bit as good as a bagel with cream cheese and lox, a hallowed, sacred, my goodness I'm tearing up. It's the Jewish New Year and I'm proselytizing about replacing lox with bacon. But only because the fish places close. They CLOSE! Early!
Fun thing: we needed a new food processor for the last test kitchen so I picked out a sparkly red one and oh hey now it lives in my kitchen at home and is named Blenda The Good Witch. I've been blending a lot of stuff lately as a result — compound butter, lots of alternative pestos and the like. Making flavored cream cheese is the easiest thing in the world. You should try it with broccoli. Giving finely chopped bacon a whirl with some cream cheese results in bacon cream cheese. What should you put bacon cream cheese on? Does a bear shit in the woods? (The answer to both questions being, of course, "yes.")
More bacon for lunch on Food Republic:
