Last Thanksgiving Morgan was introduced to my aunt’s "sticky rice" and it was love at first bite! Since then we’ve been pestering her for the recipe but to no avail. So instead of waiting for Thanksgiving to roll around this year we decided to do a little online research and replicate the dish the best we could. After several tries this is how we’ve faired.

This week I had a hankering for polenta, so I added it to our menu (yeah, I typically write out a weekly menu for us, I’m a bit of a nerd).

Rather than just plain ol’ polenta (which is tasty, don’t get me wrong), I wanted to add something with a little sauce on it, which immediately made me think of a ragout.

Knowing that Alice is a big mushroom fan, I decided to go with a mushroom ragout and viola, our Wednesday night dinner: polenta with sausage and mushroom ragout.

Sadly, I used some wine in making the ragout, but it wasn’t the whole bottle. That meant Alice and I had to drink the rest of it.

Real shame that.

A while back, Alice and I had some leftover rice, so we decided to make fried rice (with the possible exception of rice pudding, there are few better uses for leftover rice). Typically, we use ham or some other pork product as the protein; but this fateful day, we didn’t have any and were too — let’s say unmotivated — to go to the store.

However, we did have bacon. Hello inspiration.

Adding the bacon added a nice smoky note to the fried rice and kept us happy with its porky goodness. Seriously, is there anything that bacon can’t do?

Unlock the keys to discovery for Bacon Fried Rice!