I think you all know of my never-ending love of bacon and cheese, but just in case: I love bacon and cheese, forever and ever, Amen.

Potato salad around here usually means cold potato chunks, mayo, boiled eggs, and some pickle relish. It’s delicious like that, it really is. I would never, ever turn down a big ol’ bowl full of my grandma’s potato salad. Sometimes you have to experiment though. Sometimes you have to try new things. Sometimes, just every now and then, you have to add bacon to your potato salad.

I saw this recipe at One Ordinary Day last week and I knew immediately that I was making it for Sunday dinner at my parent’s house. It didn’t matter that hashbrown casserole was already on the menu. If some potatoes are good, more potatoes are better. That’s the truth.

The only thing I changed from  recipe was to use big baking potatoes and actually bake them instead of boiling them. It is, after all, baked potato salad.

Baked Potato Salad
slightly adapted from One Ordinary Day

• 1 1/2 pounds baking potatoes
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip!)
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup chopped chives
• 1 pound bacon, cooked and crumbled
• salt and pepper, to taste

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Bake potatoes for 1 hour, or until done. When cool enough to handle, chop potatoes (skin and all) into bite sized chunks. Place in refrigerator until chilled through.

In a large bowl, combine the remaining ingredients and mix well. Stir in the potatoes, coating each piece with the mayo mixture. Garnish with a sprinkling of chives. Serve cold.

I can pretty much guarantee that now that I have discovered the beauty of scones that you will all get sick of them and wish that I would stop posting scone recipes. Please, just indulge me for a bit longer okay? I need to thoroughly explore the world of the scone and I promise to only share the very, very best scones that I make. These fit in that very, very best category.

Bacon. Cheddar cheese. Green onions. Those are a few of my favorite ingredients and each one of them is hidden away inside these delightful little scones. Well, okay, so these weren’t “little” scones. They were big. Big and hearty and filling. They’re perfect for breakfast, but I think they’d go just wonderfully with a bowl of soup for lunch.

These were a bit fussier than my last recipe for Chocolate Chip Scones, but they were so worth the extra effort. We’ve been grabbing scones for breakfast every morning this week! They are quick to reheat in the microwave, but they are even tastier heated up in the oven for a bit.

Just look at these! They’re like a clean, compact little breakfast sandwich! In fact, I think I might go eat one now. For dessert. Don’t even try to stop me.

Bacon and Cheddar Scones
Recipe from The Pastry Queen

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup chilled butter, cut into small cubes
• 1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese
• 4 green onions, thinly sliced
• 10 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 3/4 to 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 2 tbsp water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Fit your mixer with the paddle attachment and add flour, baking powder, salt, and black pepper to the bowl. Mix on the low speed. Slowly add cubes of butter to the flour mixture and keep mixing until it is crumbly and your butter is in small pea sized pieces. Add the grated cheese and mix until blended in.

(If you don’t have a mixer just stir dry ingredients together and cut butter in with a pastry cutter or two knives and then stir in the cheese.)

Add the green onions, bacon, and 3/4 cup of buttermilk to the flour and cheese mixture. Mix by hand until all the ingredients are incorporated. Do not overwork the dough! If the dough is still to dry to hold together, add in more buttermilk 1 tablespoon at a time, until you can form the dough into a ball.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and form it into a ball. Using a well floured rolling pin, flatten the dough into a circle about 8 inches wide (mine was closer to 10 inches) and 1/2 inch thick. Cut the dough into 8 to 10 equal wedges depending on the size of scone you want.

Whisk egg and water together and brush the tops of the scone with the egg wash. I sprinkled a bit of kosher salt on the tops because I’m wild and crazy, but the original recipe didn’t call for this.

Place scones on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 18-20 minutes or until they are golden brown and no longer sticky in the centers. Serve warm!

I’ve had appetizers on the brain lately. These little BLT Stuffed Tomatoes aren’t helping much either. In fact, looking at these pictures makes me sad. I don’t have any left and now I want more!

These are the perfect little finger food, full of creamy sour cream, salty bacon, and a bit of parmesan cheese, all stuffed in a little cherry tomato and sprinkled with green onions. Could there be a tastier combination?

The next time you have a get together I beg you, I implore you, I command you to make these little guys. You won’t believe how quickly they fly off the plate.

These don’t take all that long to prepare and can be made a few hours in advance. You just slice a cherry tomato in half and then scoop out the insides. I use a paring knife and just cut all around the edges of the tomato and flip the insides out, but you can also use a small spoon to scrape the guts out. If you do use a paring knife, be careful! It’s easy to slip through the thin tomato skin and slice off a finger.

You then whip up your filling and either pipe it into the tomatoes or just use a small spoon and scoop it into the empty tomatoes. I prefer to use a spoon myself, but do what works best for you.

These aren’t all that bad for you either if you use light sour cream and turkey bacon. I’ve never used turkey bacon myself, but that doesn’t mean you can’t!

You can count on each person eating at least 3 or 4 of these little guys, so make plenty!

BLT Stuffed Tomatoes

• 8 ounces sour cream (light works great!)
• 4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 1 tbsp parmesan cheese (the powdery kind is fine)
• 2 tsp fresh parsley, chopped (you can substitute dried parsley)
• green onions, for garnish
• salt and pepper, to taste
• about 20 cherry tomatoes

Wash cherry tomatoes and slice them in half. Use a paring knife or spoon to scrape out the insides. Dab the inside of each tomato with a paper towel to dry it and then sprinkle with salt. Mix together the sour cream, bacon pieces, parmesan, parsley, and salt and pepper. Spoon or pipe the filling into each tomato and sprinkle the tops with chopped green onions (or more parsley, if you’re an onion hater).

There are things in this world that most everyone loves and Deviled Eggs and French’s mustard are two of those things.

If you’d like to view my recipe for deviled egg dip and enter a giveaway from French’s, please click HERE.

The other day I was playing around on my iPhone when I came across an app for allrecipe.com’s Dinner Spinner. It is the neatest little app and I am officially in love. I am in the process of reserving a flight for me and the dinner spinner. We are running off together and never coming back. Goodbye forever.

Before I go, I thought I would share a recipe that I discovered while sitting in the car at the grocery store parking lot wondering what the heck I was going to make for dinner that night. Dinner Spinner totally saved the day.

Country Pasta with Mozzarella is a delicious little recipe that I need to go make again, right this minute, because my husband ate it all before I could stop him. Doesn’t he know that the pasta is mine and he was supposed to eat all the grilled meat and leave me the girl food? It must be the bacon in this pasta that made him forget the rules.

This recipe is simple and quick. I made it as a side dish with grilled chicken, but it’d be a perfect lunch on it’s own.

First things first, let’s boil up about 8 ounces of pasta. I used farfalle. I love the shape. The original recipe called for rigatoni, but, let’s be honest here, rigatoni is boring.

While the pasta is boiling, chop up two cups of fresh broccoli, eight slices of bacon, and a couple cloves of garlic.

Dump the bacon in a large frying pan and cook until it is almost crispy. Dump in the garlic and broccoli and cook them in the bacon grease for 4 to 5 minutes, until the broccoli loses a bit of the raw crunch. Don’t freak out about the bacon grease either. This is Buns In My Oven, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t love bacon grease.

Dump your al dente pasta right in the pan with the bacon and broccoli (and bacon grease, I SAID don’t freak out!) and top it with 2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese, 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese (I used the powdered stuff, it was delicious), 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and 1/4 cup of fresh chopped parsley.

Stir it all up over very low heat and don’t panic. It will be a big gloppy mess. The mozzarella gets all stringy and melty and it isn’t pretty. Pasta doesn’t have to be pretty though, just close your eyes and take a bite. You won’t regret it.

Real quick, let me tell you about all the different ways you could make this dish your own. You could make this a main dish by adding cooked, chopped chicken. You could replace the bacon with the chicken (you’d need to add a tablespoon or two of olive oil to cook the broccoli in) or you could just use the chicken in addition to the bacon. You could substitute asparagus for the broccoli. You could chop up a bell pepper and cook it in with the broccoli. You could chop up a sweet yellow onion and add it while the bacon was cooking, but only do this if you aren’t married to my husband, because he would probably throw a fit about the addition of onion. You could play with the cheeses, adding different varieties or swapping the mozzarella for something else entirely. I’m thinking cream cheese would be beautiful in this dish.

Country Pasta with Mozzarella
Recipe from allrecipes.com

• 8 ounces farfalle pasta
• 8 slices bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 2 cups broccoli florets
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1. Cook pasta according to package directions and drain.

2. In large skillet, cook the bacon until almost crisp. To the pan, add broccoli and garlic. Cook until the broccoli is slightly tender, stirring often, about 4 to 5 minutes.

3. Pour in the cooked pasta, mozzarella, parmesan, cayenne and parsley. Stir together over very low heat until the cheese is melted.