Saddlebags and Bacon

My son and I have fallen into watching a couple of different food related shows. Two of our favorites being, Man vs. Food and Bizarre Foods. You see, my son loves food as much as I do. He’s always been an eater, he’s Mikey! And I work with that to develop his palate early, and show him that there is more to the world than hamburgers and hot dogs (as delicious as they both may be). One day, while watching Bizarre Foods, we saw an episode on a restaurant in Boulder, CO called The Buff. At the Buff, they made Saddlebags….pancakes with bacon and/or sausage cooked right into them, topped with two braised eggs, and smothered in maple syrup (of course). Isaiah looked at me and I looked back at him, our faces totally identical, in awe, eyes wide, a bit of drool hanging from the sides of our lips. He says to me “Mom, I think I want that.” I say to him, “Saih, we are totally making that ASAP!!” Family Night rolled around, two days later, and with it, we were in the kitchen, whipping up some Saddlebags!! Now I have to say, as delicious of a love affair I have with bacon, this dish would have tasted even better with sausage (and perhaps a side of bacon…and angina, lol). HOWEVER, the bacon was absolutely divine!!! We cooked the bacon in the oven, something I had never done before, and DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN what have I been missing????? I thought I was obsessed with bacon before, I thought I was, I really really thought I was. But now, my love of bacon has taken on a whole new world of obsession. I want to take packs of bacon and put them in the oven and lay in bed with them and whisper sweet nothings to them as they make their ways into my mouth….but I digress. We put the bacon on the oven (mmm bacon) and added them to the griddling pancakes while we began our eggs. Now, I have never braised and egg before. I have never had a braised egg. I have no idea how to braise an egg. They were described as being similar to a poached egg…but I have never poached an egg before either, lol, so that really didn’t help. In a brave attempt at getting close to the recipe, I instead fried the eggs soft, without breaking the yolks in the pan. This way the eggs could sit on the pancake and when cut into, would still run like the braised eggs did. WE LOVED IT!!! I wasn’t sure how my son would react to the runny eggs, but he was really excited about trying them! I let his cook a little longer, so they didn’t really run, just in case he wasn’t crazy about them. He devoured it all. It was so good, in fact, that he forgot about the syrup right next to him and ate half the plate dry!! How many 8 year olds do you know who would do that?? We added a couple of strips of bacon to the sides of our plates just for the heck of it and sat together in absolute heaven for about 15 minutes. I tried my best, but I couldn’t finish my plate. Stuffed, I sat back and watched my kid inhale his last piece of pancake before laying back in his chair, hands on his belly, smile on his face. We declared this Family Night to be Different Foods night. A night where we would try something a little different as seen on our new favorite shows. This would be the start of something beautiful! Eating like this, we are DEFINITELY going to have to work out more. Healthy balances and all. But we’re ok with that. As long as there’s bacon when we get home. :-D #dontjudgeme #justagirl