Some of my readers and I are cooking our way through the book, The Pioneer Woman Cooks.  Feel free to join in, what I’m calling, The Pioneer/Pirate Project any time!  The more the merrier!

So, how did it go my fellow pirate chefs?  Did you make ‘em?

I put all of them together on Saturday evening.  I read in the book that you can prepare them up to 24  hours in advance and keep them in the fridge until you want to bake them, and this seemed to work just fine.

Overall, the prep was fairly simple, albeit a little time consuming.  I did decide to wear gloves for slicing the jalapenos, and I scraped out all to most of the seeds, since I was going for a as mild a version as possible in hopes that the kids would be brave and try them.  I had no problems with the bacon wrapping process, although I did opt to place the toothpicks in before brushing with the BBQ sauce, rather than after like the directions said.  I did this because I thought it would be less messy, and because I’m a rebel at heart. 

I put a pineapple tidbit in half of my poppers’ filling, and to be honest, I didn’t find the addition all that noticeable.  Maybe it was because I was using canned instead of fresh.  Maybe it was because the tidbit size was too small.  I don’t know, but next time I probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of that step….not that it was all that much trouble really.

(Please ignore the oven that needs to be cleaned and focus on the poppers.  Thank you.)

I’d say that these were a hit at my house.  Big D, Indiana Mimi and I all really liked them.  Dirty Harry thought they were okay, and Bonny Annie, who hates all things spicy, ate one without much comment.  Cap’n Jack Henry, who is perfectly willing to put anything at all in his mouth, was not afforded the opportunity.  I really didn’t think they were spicy at all, which was interesting to me since it was a fresh jalapeno pepper we were dealing with.  The removal of the seeds must be really significant.

The one improvement would be to figure out how to get the bacon crispier.  I think next time I might try baking at a higher heat for less time, and see what that might do.  Any other thoughts on that?

Also, next time, I will do a better job of picking out similiar sized peppers.  I bought mine on Saturday afternoon at Publix, and I think about 75% of my town was in the store at the same time, so I was rushed and agitated when I was choosing and just started flinging the peppers in my cart with wild abandon.  When I got home I realized I had a mixed bag of sizes, ranging from tiny to huge.  I think uniform sizing would be more ideal.

I only received pictures this time from my sister, Debbie.  Here are some shots of her adventure…

Thanks, Deb for sharing!  Love that you are wearing your Bears sweatshirt, even though they didn’t even make the play-offs!  Please, please, please share your story about your pre-heating/Tupperware debacle in the comments.  I almost shared it for you, but thought you could probably share it with more gusto…since it was your husband and your Tupperware.

It’s not too late to send pictures if you forgot.  I can still add them at any time.  kellie@thepiratemom.com

Okay, so let’s discuss these babies.  Here are some questions to consider…

• Did you try any deviations from the original recipe?
• What were the general reactions of your “tasters”?
• Would you make this recipe again?
• Did you have any mishaps?
• What did you like/not like about the process and/or the recipe in general?

We’re going a total different direction for our next assignment.  It is in the Sweets section of the book:  Red Velvet Cake!  I thought this would be good for a Valentine’s treat for your family, friends or significant other.  The recipe is found on pps. 233-235 of the book (almost the very end!)  I couldn’t find this recipe on her site, so I think you’ll need the book for this one.  However, if you don’t have it yet, feel free to use another red velvet recipe (from scratch!) and chime in anyway.  It might be fun to do a comparison.  I will post about this recipe late next week…probably Thursday or Friday, so it will give you plenty of time to pull it off.  Happy baking!