Black Pepper Beef Jerky!

Mike and Jamie gave me a dehydrator for my birthday back in September, but all I've made since then was some dried apples, which were good, but not earth shattering. I resolved to take my dehydrator training wheels off and engage the dehydrator in a more substantial and ambitious endeavor: beef jerky. After reading/drooling over an article in Food & Wine about homemade artisan beef jerky, I went with a black pepper beef jerky, which uses beef top round, sliced thinly and marinated in soy sauce, Worchestershire, lager and copious amounts of crushed black peppercorns. The recipe is super simple and the dehydrator made quick work of it (4 hours), despite the warnings that beef jerky could take between 4 and 12 hours to dry. The results were delicious, although probably not the most photogenic of all the things I have cooked. Chewy, spicy, meaty...

Cheddar and Black Pepper Biscuits

Just about everything Joy the Baker makes causes me to drool... but this cheddar/black pepper biscuit recipe particularly caught my eye because she used the biscuits as the basis of an egg sandwich. I love egg sandwiches. I think my dying meal would be a bacon, egg and cheddar sandwich on a biscuit.

Anywho: biscuits.

I used to be intimidated by biscuits, but turns out they're really easy to make. I had great luck with Smitten Kitchen's cheddar and jalapeno scones, which were very biscuit-like (what is the difference between scones and biscuits?). These were equally awesome... peppery and cheesy with a ton of flaky layers. Yum.