Tammy's lunch: Warmed Stuffed Dates

The salad for Tammy's lunch was simple: spring mix my mother-in-law brought with the Very Veggie Dole prepackaged salad, added some cucumber from the store, a diced green pepper from my garden, and lots of raisins and sunflower seeds.

Dessert was fresh pineapple and strawberries.

The entree was leftover sicilian.

The beverage was the house specialty of green tea and rose tea.

But the warm appetizer stole the attention.
I modified my stuffed date recipe.

I sliced the dates in half and coated my skillet with walnut oil. I warmed the skillet on low, added a dash of cinnamon across the bottom of the pan, and added the dates. I increased heat to almost medium and let the dates cook for about four minutes. Then I flipped them. Waited four minutes or so and removed them from the skillet.

I turned the heat off from under the skillet, added a slice of morningstar vegetarian bacon for each whole date, waited a minute, and flipped the bacon. Since the heat was off and the skillet was slowly cooling, I left the bacon in there and swiped some cream cheese into each of my date halves. Then I closed the dates and returned them to their original shape.

Once all the dates were stuffed, I wrapped each date in fake bacon and returned them to the skillet where I baked them in a preheated oven (400 degrees) for about ten minutes.