Tag Archives: other

Beans tonight

Well. I seem to have let the blog go for awhile. My apologies. To be perfectly honest, life has gotten very much in the way, and I dropped the ball.

Which is part of why the plan for tonight is beans. Specifically “this bean recipe”:http://www.ranchogordo.com/html/rg_cook_beans_primer.htm with cannellini beans (from Rancho Gordo). The beans were a gift from a woman I met at Edible Institute, “Jill Richardson”:http://www.lavidalocavore.org/ who raved about them. I’m excited to be trying them, I have to admit. The founder of Rancho Gordo, Steve Samdo, made me more interested in beans than anyone else ever has, back when he spoke at Edible Institute.

What does this have to do with life getting in the way, and my dropping the ball? Mostly that it’s a really simple thing to make, and it doesn’t take a lot of ingredients.… Continue reading →

How not to use a combination slow cooker & pressure cooker

Do you have “one of these?”:http://www.amazon.com/Fagor-670040230-Stainless-Steel-6-Quart-Multi-Cooker/dp/B001A62O1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300807848&sr=8-1 It’s a combination slow cooker and pressure cooker. And technically rice cooker, but that seems to be part of the pressure cooker part of this.

We have one. We’ve had it for a bit longer than we’ve had MetaCookbook; maybe a year and three months. It was a Christmas gift from Bill’s father. We love it, and we use it often. Mostly to make overnight oatmeal.

Overnight oatmeal is the best. You grab a cup of steel cut oats, a cup of milk, three cups of water and dump them in your slow cooker. Set it on low for about 8 hours, and wake up to a delicious pile of oatmeal. Seven hours or nine, it all works. You can even use all water, but we like the milk.… Continue reading →

My words sure do taste good!

It was “just two days ago when I said I wasn’t going to cook out of Bittman or Pioneer Woman cookbooks this week”:http://metacookbook.com/archives/224-Probably-no-recipe-this-weekend.html. Now I’m having to change my tune. Or eat my words. Whichever you prefer, really.

Here’s the deal. I promised our friend Rob I’d cook up some meals for him to toss in his freezer and eat once he got home from having his ankle replaced. He was, in theory, going to have this happen last week or so. It didn’t. We’re still not sure when it will happen. However, I’ve made some lasagne and I’ve given him some of the frozen leftovers from “Blue Ribbon Chili”:http://www.metacookbook.com/archives/196-99-Blue-Ribbon-Chili.html. However, I told him to make requests, and he did. One of his requests was black bean soup.… Continue reading →

Probably no recipe this weekend

I am not a morning person. It’s kind of a struggle for me to be awake at 6:45 am, especially on a Saturday. Yet, here I am, awake and posting a quick entry to say three things.

First, I probably won’t manage a recipe entry this weekend. Bill and I have many errands to run, so we’ll probably focus on getting those errands done and some repairs around the house. Hooray for the weekends!

Second, I’m making a commitment to not use How to Cook Everything, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and Pioneer Woman Cooks this upcoming week. I love those books, but I feel like I’ve gotten into yet another rut, and am now just cooking from them. Which is really conducive to my “using all my cookbooks” plan.… Continue reading →

Confession:

Bill tells me regularly that he thinks I’m turning into a better cook by the day, and he’s always grateful for whatever I cook.

However, I’m still pretty poor at figuring out how to throw food together and have a meal result.

In fact, my confession is that I’m not only “poor” at it, I basically have no functional ability to look at my stash of food and make a delicious meal come out of it. And it’s not as if my stash is small. I have a decent sized set of shelves that I call my pantry (it’s ugly, but it works) that’s stuffed to the gills with food & ingredients, I have a fridge which is usually between “somewhat full” and “burstingly full”, I have the freezer that lives on top of the fridge and is always full, AND I have an apartment-sized stand-alone freezer.… Continue reading →