I previously mentioned a recipe I found on the Pillsbury website for bacon cheeseburger calzones, and how I wanted to try it again when I had all of the ingredients.

Well, I did it.

Now, please do not follow this post as if it were a recipe. I’m a terrible cook. Follow the recipe online, if you want to try it, and maybe just take some of my comments into consideration. I do not want to be responsible for a crescent roll fatality.

So, back to business…got my recipe, and got my ingredients.

BTW, my clock is wrong. I was not starting dinner at 7:30PM.

Again, I went with the ceasar dressing, since I didn’t have ranch, and since it tasted pretty good with the ceasar the last time I tried it.

Now, here’s the thing…I doubled the recipe, because Kyla said he was hungry and, even though the recipe called for a half pound of ground beef, he wanted a full pound. I realized later that you really do not have to double everything if you want to make twice as much. I’ll get to that in a minute, though.

So, got my ingredients, and got everything measured. I used ol’ Kyla’s fancy ingredient cups, even though I think they’re silly, because if they’re going to take up room in my cabinets, they better get used every now and then.

Then cooked my bacon, all the while fighting to keep my little darling away from the stove and her beloved pork. This child has a serious passion for bacon that you cannot imagine unless you’ve seen its majesty firsthand.

I put the ground beef and onions in with the bacon and cooked that. Then added the dressing. I should have added some salt and pepper at this point, but I didn’t think about it. It really needs salt, though, so do that.

Here’s the fun part. I had taken the crescent rolls out of the fridge and had them sitting on the counter so I could avoid making a ton of trips to the fridge. Now, I’ve made pigs-in-a-blanket enough to know that this is a bad idea because it makes the dough all mushy and melty, but I’m an idiot and forgot.

So, I start trying to lay these babies out and they’re all sticking together and ripping and just making an altogether terrible mess. So I had this genius idea to fold them in half and then stretch them out again, thinking it would make them stronger. It totally didn’t work, but I didn’t know that yet.

I managed to get them to make some sense, and I start loading them up with the meat/bacon/onion/dressing/salt-less mixture. Then I added some shredded cheddar cheese, which is the only cheese we had. The last time I tried these, I thought I got them too full, because they fell apart, so I put less in there this time. Another mistake that I would discover later.

I start folding them over, and the double thickness melty crescent rolls just start ripping apart every time I look at them. By this point, I realize this ain’t working, and I just put them in the fridge, to try to get them cold again and make them a bit easier to work with.

That worked a little, because when I took them out, they didn’t rip quite so easily. Really, though, they should be used as soon as you remove them from the fridge, to avoid complications.

But then they were still all ripped up, even though they were now a little colder. So, I performed some crescent roll surgery. Ta-da!

You could call them crescent roll skin grafts, maybe. Surprisingly, this ended up not being a completely horrible idea.

Then it came time to brush the egg onto the folded up sandwiches…and I realized I had way too much egg. I noted that only one egg is really needed unless you’re making, say, four or more servings.

And on the brushing, my kitchen snob of a husband has something that is apparently just for brushing egg onto things. That is this brush’s sole purpose…to brush egg onto stuff.

I guess I can’t ridicule him about having it too much, since I just used it.

Anyway, got that egg on and got them kind of together and put them in the oven. Waited for a bit, and BING. Done.

They were pretty good, but here are a few things that I learned during my two attempts at making the bacon cheeseburger calzones:

* If you don’t have tomato and pickle, no biggie. I don’t eat those on cheeseburgers anyway, so it’s no skin off my back.

* You don’t have to have ranch dressing…ceasar works well, as I’m sure other dressings would.

* If you are doubling the recipe, you don’t need two eggs. Even thought you don’t really need the egg anyway, it does make it so much flakier and crispier when you use it, so I recommend it.

* Shredded cheese works alright, but slices really hold up better in the oven, so they’re more cheesy when they’re done.

* Add salt and pepper to the meat when you’re cooking it, and maybe some garlic or garlic powder. Yeah, I’m sure this is a given to people who can cook, but mind you that have trouble with cheese toast.

* When you’re filling them, if you get them too full, they’ll fall apart, and if you don’t get enough in there, they’ll be mostly bread and not as good (these are, respectively, what happened to mine). So, put a little meat mixture in, fold it up, add a little more and repeat until it looks like it is busting at the seams, but still holding.

* If you screw up the dough, just take some from the corners of other pieces and slap it on there…it will all cook together and help seal it up, though it might not look quite as pretty.

* And most importantly, (I forget who imparted this wisdom onto me, but I promise this came from someone much older and wiser and talented in the kitchen) write notes on your recipes, either on the pages or on a note card paper-clipped to it. It’s great to have that kind of information down the next time you make, and it will help you improve every time.

Anyone else tried this recipe? Any thoughts? Ingredient substitutions? Y’all know I’m all about finding ways to not follow the recipe.