What If You Ain't Got No Dates?

Figs

+

Almonds

+

Bacon

=

Deliciousness!!!!

Be honest, did you think this was going to be a post about my dating life or the lack of it? :)
No, this is a food blog of course!

Here's the story: a few months ago Stacey hosted a party for her children and made an awesome appetizer of dates stuffed with either smoked almonds or Parmesan cheese and then wrapped in bacon. They were divine!

When it came to coming up with an appetizer to bring over to Jenn's New Year's get together, I knew I wanted to make stuffed dates. Alas, my store did not have any dates. I was disappointed, but did not give up. Why not use figs, I thought? And that's exactly what I did.

Ingredients
figs
almonds
bacon, cut into thirds
toothpicks

Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 400.
2) Make a slit in a fig and stuff it with an almond.
3) Wrap a third of a bacon slice around each fig, secure with a toothpick and bake on a cookie sheet for about 20 minutes, turning the wrapped figs halfway through the baking process.

This was quite a success. Anna suggested sprinkling the final product with salt to offset the sweetness of the figs: she was absolutely right!

I also made bacon wrapped water chestnuts (something I learned from Cindy). When I was buying the water chestnuts at the store, I made sure to buy a can of whole chestnuts. Hilariously enough, when I opened that can at home, there were sliced chestnuts there!!! Oh well, I simply stacked two slices together and wrapped them in bacon. The water chestnuts took about 15 minutes longer to bake...perhaps because of a high water content in them.

If you haven't tried this before, and as long as you are not keeping Kosher, go for it!