A little pasta, a couple vegetables, stock, milk, and bacon–dinner is served.

Scallions, stock, garlic, and bacon form the foundation for this easy dish.

It’s 7:30 on Friday evening, a time that means waking hours are slipping away for this Bacon Maven, an early riser. I’m two Scotches in, contemplating a final small draught, when hunger pangs strike. I swish the last of my second cocktail, mostly just melted ice, and my stomach growls. I know that if I don’t nosh something, I’ll have a restless, sleepless night and a grumpy morning. My usual, bachelorette fix for this kind of craving is a grilled cheese sandwich or some eggs over refried beans and rice, a little hot sauce and pico de gallo thrown into make the huevos less breakfasty. But I’m out of sandwich bread and I’m not in the mood for premature cluck. I paw through the refrigerator, looking for a quick fix.

I uncover a recently bought container of three-cheese tortellini, spy a plastic box of cherry tomatoes, a couple zucchini, a carton of chicken stock and my glass jar of whole milk. Out they come, and I set a pot of water to boil for the pasta. Normally I’d have pulled a package of some sort of sausage out of the freezer, given it a quick defrost, and put that in, but I just didn’t want to deal with the microwave defrost where the middle is always frozen and the ends are half cooked, and I wasn’t up to a grease-spattered stovetop. I was thinking I was going to be “good” and go all veggie (note I did not say “vegetarian”—blech! patootey! pfft! and perish the thought). Then, just as I’m looking for my preferred knife for slicing the zucchini, I spy the plate of leftover bacon.

The Bacon Maven has leftover bacon? WTH? Read more →