Bacon Cinnamon Buns

Just the name of this recipe was enough to evoke images of thick chunks of bacon and little globs of glaze flowing through my arteries, clogging up bodily operations like a stuck transfer truck clogging up the middle of a college campus. Don't get me wrong though, I was pumped. What could be better than taking two already incredible breakfast entrees, bacon and cinnamon buns, and combining them. It was kind of like the power rangers taking already great dinozords and combining them to make the far superior megazord.

So in setting out to create this breakfast megazord I grabbed two simple and obvious ingredients. A pound of bacon and a can of cinnamon rolls. The technique that I found most effective was to start on the outside of the bun, and cut in a concentric fashion until the knife had reached the center of said bun. This allowed me to unroll each cinnamon bun into a long strip that was conveniently the length of a strip of bacon. Once the bacon and the dough were lined up tip to tip, I deftly rolled the dough back up into its original "bun-like" form, except with the addition of a vein of bacon coursing through each breakfast pastry. 13 minutes in a 375 degree oven, and it was love at first sight. They were beautiful. Quickly though, I remembered that their beauty was not yet complete, and that a coating of frosting was needed to finish them off. Once clothed in their garments of glaze, their full beauty, and taste, were ready to be appreciated.

The first bite was like two different taste buds finally meeting, after being separated from each other for the first 22 years of my life, yet destined on this day to become immortal mates. The warmth and sweetness from the cinnamon bun colliding with the fatty,salty bacon was amazing.
"Oh hello there salty bacon taste buds, I don't believe we've ever met, I'm sweet cinnamon bun taste bud" (That's a rough paraphrase of what I heard happening in my mouth)
This combination of intense sweet and salty had the potential to be overwhelming, but there was a comforting familiarity in the bacon that played as the master of ceremonies in bringing everything together in a festive and joyous dish, the Bacon Cinnamon Bun.

What I have yet to mention, is the ridiculous long run that these buns had the privilege to refuel. The morning before these tasty treats, Kyle and I had been on a 3 hour, 16 mile run in snow and ice that was coming down at a rate of at least an inch an hour. Not to mention the 10 inches of snow already on the ground and the bitter cold that was swirling just outside the door. No worries though, the most important run of each week of marathon training is the long run, and we needed to fit it in before the rest of the blizzard made its way to the Charlottesville ground. The cliff notes of this run: 3 hours of pushing through snow, sliding on ice, and getting freezing slush splashed on us by every passing car. Was it worth it, absolutely!...sort of. While everything about that run was miserable, except for, obviously, my company, it was also epic, and I'll do many a crazy thing to get an epic story out of it. The run was unfortunately epic enough, though, to ruin one of the tendons around my knee. So while so far, my weight has been a steady 153, I imagine that with the next few recipes a steady thickening will ensue, as I have yet to go on a run since that friday morning of last week. This tendon injury, though hurting with every step I take and keeping me off the running roads, will not keep me out of the kitchen. Be on the lookout for the next few installments, a trio of battered (coated in batter, not beaten or pummeled) treats to christen the deep fryer. Deep Fried Grilled Cheese, Deep Fried Guacamole Bites, and festive Deep Fried Cadbury Eggs.

On your mark...get set....

In the next 4 months I'm going to cross 2 finish lines that are of importance to me, and ultimately to you through reading this blog. The first comes on March 21 when I cross the finish line of the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach, VA. The second comes on May 23, the day that I will have "cooked" through the entire book entitled "This Is Why You're Fat". If you have never encountered the blog thisiswhyyourefat.com, I highly recommend that be the first thing you do before reading further. This Is Why You're Fat started as a blog displaying pictures of various foods that we as humans consume and upon eating them will certainly get very fat (hence the name), and has now been published in book form. For some reason, my brain has been wired to really love this kind of thing. Unhealthy portions of unhealthy food, cooked in some imaginative way...well it just doesn't get much better than that. My plan is to cook all the way through this ridiculously caloric cookbook and regale you, the reader, with the gory, fatty details of what it takes to deep fry, bacon wrap, and pork overload these culinary concoctions, eat them, and then use them as the fuel to train for my marathon. This is where it should get interesting. Much hoopla is made about proper dieting while training for marathons, and I intend to really get down to the bottom of how much it really matters. Have I mentioned yet how crazy I am about large portions of food that most normal people would find revolting?? It really gets me going to know that in the next 4 months I get to deep fry whole pizzas, dip and cover bacon in chocolate, and build a sandwich that contains just under 30,000 calories!!! The plan is to post weight, blood pressure, miles to run that day, and some beautiful(ly fatty) pictures of that day's creation with each post. This should be a journey that uncovers the strength and depth of the human body, from the belly down to the two legs we run on. I can only hope that you will get as much enjoyment from following me on this journey as I will from taking it.