Daily Favorites: Bacon-Wrapped Dates with Goat Cheese

This is one of my favorite foods in the world but I'd never made it before. I'd always order it at a restaurant, particularly Linger in Denver where they call it Devils on Horseback. It's been on my list to make for roughly 8 years or so. All I needed was to start my own cooking series. 

The 4oz container of whole fresh medjool dates contained 7 dates for a total of 350 calories. I used Hormel Black Label center cut bacon, half a slice on each date. This is shorter bacon to begin with so 2 slices is only 70, which seems crazy low. So I'll estimate 140 for the bacon. The dates are so small that they didn't hold that much herbed goat cheese, so only 60 calories from that. 

So 550 calories for 7 dates stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped with bacon. Still, not exactly a filling lunch...so I'm having as my first meal of the day on Saturday, as sort of a brunch item, instead of my 250 cal breakfast. Since my breakfast + lunch is usually 1000 or less, I'll still have 450 for a lunch item, and I've got something in mind...

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Remove the pits, wrap in bacon for slight overlap, toothpicks, 400 F until the bacon gets crispy. It took over 20 minutes for mine. I put it on a light maple syrup glaze once they were almost done, and then put them back in for 2 minutes. (I had a hard time getting them crispy and with the color I wanted, so I just kept rotating and tried to be patient.)

Eventually I was rewarded with chewy, crispy, meaty, sweet, savory bundles of joy. The herbed goat cheese really adds a lot and I wish I had put more in and not worry about them closing up perfectly. 

Still this felt like a special occasion meal. With the maple syrup and bacon it worked well as brunch. Obviously not going to be having this every week, but nice to have in the arsenal. This is the kind of thing I could pull out during the week of Christmas where it feels like indulgent celebrating, but I'm not actually eating 3000 cals. (Also, I was worried that 7 wouldn't feel like a meal, but they're big and chewy, so the portion size felt satisfying.)