Well, I think I can finally just use beans to cook, rather than focusing on them as the most difficult part of the meal. My latest attempt used red beans, and the beans themselves turned out just right–neither too mushy nor too dry. The whole meal was not quite as rewarding.

As usual, I chose the quick-soak method, even though I had been putting this meal off for three days and could have easily done the overnight method. I’m just not sure I can think that far in advance! So, around 11 in the morning I rinsed and sorted my beans and then put them on for a quick boil. I then let them sit for over an hour, because I desperately wanted III to be sleeping while I worked. After much screaming, he did pass out for a little nap. So I ventured into my melee of recipes, all begging to be chosen, but as I did not have all the ingredients for any single recipe, I sort of took parts from all of them (perhaps this is why my food never turns out right). By the way, I was trying to make red beans and rice—Cajun style.

Well, I had the beans, some Italian sausage, and some brown rice, so I knew we wouldn’t starve. All the recipes called for long cooking times, so I was prepared to start early (I’m not much for slow cookers; I know many laud the simplicity of dumping something in in the morning, and having dinner be ready that night, but I really prefer making a big mess right before I eat). So I pulled out my little crock pot. And I do mean little. It really should be considered a fondue pot, I think. I poured 8 cups of water in, which was 2 cups less than what was called for, and then started adding the beans.

And then, as the water started to overflow out of little crock pot, I scooped some beans and water back out. I was left with about half of my pound of beans and maybe 6 to 7 cups of water. I moved on to the sausage. As I knew space was limited, I only used 3 of the 5 links, figuring I could make another batch with the rest. After cooking those up, and slicing them, I added them to the bean water and proceeded to cut up an onion and garlic. Here’s where I learned something new! Now, this is slightly embarrassing, but I figure you’d like to know: a head of garlic is the whole big bunch with all the flaky skin hiding all the little bits, which are the cloves. So when a recipe calls for 4 cloves of garlic, it just means the little pieces, not the whole stinkin’ thing.

Fortunately, I only had one head of garlic, so I didn’t put 4 whole heads in, but I did go through and cut up every single clove. I think there were at least 10. And while the rest of the recipe was halved by force, I didn’t even think about that as I was chopping my onion and garlic, or I might have halved those, too! (On the other hand, I pretty much had no other spices that any of the recipes called for—no Cajun seasoning, no cayenne pepper, not even a green pepper.) I added a little dried red pepper, some dried bay leaves, a little sage, and regular old black pepper.

I put the pot on high and left it alone (this was around 2 p.m.). It smelled awfully garlic-y to me in the house. As Emma had slept less than 8 hours the night before, this was when I planned to give her a nap and take one myself, but instead, Crabby Pants woke up and Emma started melting down, and I lost my will to fight, so I fed him, and let her play computer games. Can’t really remember what happened after that.

We went somewhere (this was only 2 days ago, and I really can’t recall where; I just remember walking back in the house), and when we got back the whole house smelled like cooked garlic and onion, which really wasn’t a bad smell—even Emma said it smelled good! But, true-to-form, the beans didn’t seem quite done, and I needed to cook the rice.  We were supposed to go to our friends’ house to watch House after eating, but instead we decided to just take it with us and let it cook a little more. I was afraid little crock pot would spill, so I clumsily poured it all into a bigger pot (nearly dropped it all too!), and we were on our way. (I mostly cooked the rice, and added it to the pot as well.)

Lloyd put the pot on the stove for me, but had put the burner on high, and when I asked him to turn it down, he instead turned a different burner on, so a few minutes into House, we smelled smoke…

At this point I decided we just better eat it. As I said at the beginning, the beans were fine, but the whole thing—not exactly a masterpiece. Not even really Cajun. And the sausage seemed to have no flavor at all. Not even meaty. Lloyd added about a pound of salt to his bowl and said it awesome after that. And I’m still tasting garlic, two days later.

Ha! Just remembered—we went out for a playdate for Emma. Here’s what we were doing.

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This post comes as an addition to The Unsuccessful Bean. It has moved beyond mediocrity and into my wanderlust for beans. Now, before I begin explaining the highly captivating process of cooking beans, I would like to take a little detour in the naming of beans.

When Emma and I went shopping for beans, we bought the following: black beans, red beans, pinto beans, and navy beans. The black beans were black, the red beans were red, the pinto beans were pinto, but the navy beans were white. What’s up with that? Of course, around here they are referred to as “white beans” because, well, they’re white. Not navy. So, in case you care, I decided to do a little digging (it took very little digging, in fact), and discovered that navy beans are so called because they became a staple food for the U.S. Navy in the early 20th century. Guess that makes sense, but why not just call them white beans?

Well, anyway, this second attempt at cooking beans turned out much better. I did the same thing with washing and sorting them, and once again did the quick-soak method with boiling and letting them sit. Then, instead of putting them on low heat to simmer, I put them back on high to bring them to a quick boil before bringing it down to a simmer.

Of course, I forgot about them. I eventually remembered (the bean smell helped), and put them on low. It definitely did the trick, because they were ready to eat after almost two hours, which was two hours before I planned on having dinner. This time it wasn’t a big deal, as I had decided to put them in stew, but I didn’t really think through that either.

I added a bunch of leftover chicken that we had roasted the night before, a bunch of chicken broth (I say a bunch because I’m terrible at measuring. It was about half of one of those big containers–at least 2 cups?), a bag of frozen stew vegetables (which were enormous chunks! There were maybe 5 carrots pieces, 4 potatoes and 6 pearl onions; I was hoping for smaller chopped pieces. Guess that’s what I get for not just chopping up fresh stuff myself.), and more water, until it looked like stew. By 4:30 it looked and smelled perfect!

By 5:30 it looked a little less like stew, and a little more like paste. Bean paste with chunks of chicken and vegetables. You see, beans continually soak up liquid, and those beans did what they were supposed to. By the time we ate, it was difficult to see any individual beans, and it certainly wasn’t soupy. Fortunately, they weren’t burned, so I thought it still tasted fine. Lloyd added enough salt and pepper to make it edible for him, and Emma went on a food strike for the next 2 days.

Third time’s a charm, right? Stay tuned for more beans…

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