Category Archives: Food

BEANS! (or pulses)

I love beans whoo hoo hoo

I love beans how ‘bout you?

High in fiber low in fat-

Hey I bet you didn’t know that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZWQMvHNOnI

And Brax sums up how I feel about beans. Well, pulses, actually, pulses being the dried forms of peas, beans, lentils and chick peas (the fresh versions being slightly different).

And I am not the only one who loves pulses. The World Health Organization and the governments of both Canada and the USA want people to eat more beans, every week. There is currently an active challenge to add pulses to your diet — three ½ cup servings a week.

Three servings a week.

That is a pretty reasonable goal. My family would have to drop our beans every week to reach it, but if you want to add more pulses to your diet, I will be happy to share with you my love of pulses.

 

Candy Beans

Candy Beans are very possibly the least healthy way to eat beans ever, and a favorite way to eat them in our house. Our son has a little dance he does when he finds out they are for supper, and if I ask what bean dish anyone wants, this tops the bill.

What follows is how I make them in my Instant Pot

, which I purchased many many years ago because it was advertised on the back of a bag of beans. It makes making beans faster and easier. These beans can be cooked on the range, in the oven, or in a slow cooker as well. They can even be cooked next to a campfire.

Ingredients:

1 pound of white beans of your choice. Navy, Pinto, Lima— I have tried them all. The Instant Pot is supposed to allow you to skip soaking, but that’s up to you. They don’t come out right for me without soaking, unless I add a lot of time to them. I would soak with any other type of cooking. The photos show unsoaked beans.

That’s homemade sour cream on the right and brown sugar in the middle. The Teriyaki container to the left of the sugar is molasses. The other day our son opened a container and was shocked to find what was in it was what it was labelled.

1 stick (1/2 cup) melted butter. Oh, it gets worse. You want it melted so it mixes in well with the beans. If you are doing this in the oven, you can just stir it in. In the Instant Pot, I merely set it to sauté as I’m prepping everything else.

1 Tablespoon powdered dry mustard

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

¼ teaspoon salt (I did use salted butter as well)

1 chopped onion (something healthy!)

1/4 pound chopped bacon Honestly, I have completely forgotten to put the bacon in occasionally, and have heard no complaints.

Now for the much less healthy stuff. Yes, worse than the above.

¼ cup molasses

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup sour cream I have on occasion replaced this with yogurt to make this marginally healthier. It came out fine.

Mix these in. Now, you need to add water, but you don’t want the result too soupy. If you have presoaked beans, barely to cover in the Instant Pot ought to be enough. In the oven, crock or range, just keep adding water until the beans are ready.

I set the beans to the ‘bean’ button (or crock on low, or in a 325 oven) for 40 minutes, (or crock for 10 hours, oven for 6 hours) and let it naturally release pressure. You want the beans to mush with the back of a spoon.

 

That’s it. Serve with steamed or pressure cooked brown bread and you have a good, tasty, filling meal. That’s not a bit healthy. But still full of fiber!

cooking new things.

I have discovered, in cleaning up my to do lists, that I have enough recipes clipped that is I make a brand new trial recipe a day, I will probably die before I finish trying them all.

 

Obviously, not all of them will be worth trying— I have been clipping recipes to try since I was about 7 years old (I was that weird kid who bought the cookbook at the souvenir stand when everyone else was buying the squirting cameras and the space ice cream), but I am going to make an attempt because I love cooking, it *normally* calms me down, and I currently have a 13 year old son who is never NEVER not hungry. Yay for me!

 

So I packed up a box of loose clippings and I have a 2 foot pile of books with recipes flagged (the whole book is not one I want to keep) and I am going to put forth as much an effort as I can to see what I can make.

 

Today I am making a meringue-y frosting, because we have 10 egg whites in the fridge, 2 from I don’t know what, 6 from an attempt to make Almanzo Wilder’s ice cream (3 were a mistake and 3 were from the SUCCESS— it’s so good!) and 3 were from a cooked Amish dressing from a souvenir cookbook from 30 years ago. Yes, I know that’s 11 egg whites. The recipe calls for 10 and I play loose and fast that way.

 

I am also attempting to make a ‘carmeled sugar’ a friend sent with a ‘hey, this looks interesting.’

 

So, wish me luck.

 

I am also trying to clean my studio, because it has become a mess, I have my exam for Surface Embroidery looming (hence the studio) and bills and taxes and a messy desk and my parents’ estate stuff to clear up. Yes, I am bonkers. But as I said above, cooking makes me happy and I deserve to be happy.

 

So… here I go.