Help! What do I do with all these beans?

Oh dear, I'm feeling a little like Ann-Margret in the surreal champagne-and-baked-beans scene from the movie Tommy (particularly around the 4:05 minute mark):

Well, now.  That clip either amused and intrigued you. . .or left you needing a course of therapy.   I, on the other hand, after my latest baked-bean-without champagne scene, am left needing a little guidance — and so I am reaching out to my readers today.

Please give me your suggestions for creative ways to re-use the remaining 47 gallons of my pinto beans with ham hock.

Pinto Beans in the Slow Cooker

Whew!

Because of 3 consecutive days of professional commitments this weekend, I didn't have any time to cook.  I barely had time to eat, grabbing half a bagel with whitefish salad here, a package of "Sweetheart Sushi" shared with my sweetheart there, as time permitted.

The sushi came from Whole Foods, and was a cute little package with 2 of each tiny, fishy morsel, including 2 tuna/salmon roll pieces molded into a heart shape in the middle.  WF gets a little cloying at holiday times, but I have to admit it was tasty.  Heart-shaped chocolates make some sort of romantic sense, I suppose, and I have a soft spot for Santa-shaped sugar cookies, but when we start forming raw fish into festive shapes, perhaps we have gone too far.

The weekend's activities culminated in a master class in singing I gave on Sunday morning, for which I wore the muslin Peter created for his current men's shirt sew-along.  Imagine how amazing the shirt is going to turn out when the muslin looks this good:

No, my face isn't dirty — that's my beard.  I'll try to chart its (slow) growth with pictures on this blog.

The audience was very attentive during my class.  Now I'm wondering if it was my presentation mesmerizing them, or this adorable shirt, with its kicky semaphore-flag-ish pattern.  (The shirt actually had pockets too by the time of the class.  This photo was taken a day or two earlier.)  If you're nice to me, sometime I'll show you the contrasting red/white check gingham on some of the inner surfaces — these fun details set this shirt far apart from a ready-to-wear garment.  (Thanks, Sweetheart!  I mold my fish into amorous shapes for you!)

Oh, yes.  This is a cooking blog.  It's just that there was more happening on the sewing front than the cooking front this weekend.  But I did squeeze in one kitchen project on Sunday evening, to reward myself for all the preparation I'd done for the master class.

My afternoon conquest over fresh horseradish

I'll admit, my strength is not in keeping things simple.  I set out on Wednesday to see if I could come up with a supper for after my last student of the day that would take 15 minutes of prep time, tops.  I knew I had some quick-cooking kale in the fridge.  But on the way to the kale, I got distracted by a horseradish root....

Note the glove, recommended on every horseradish website I encountered.  Too bad they don't make latex gloves for noses.  Do NOT stick your face in the blender to smell your results, btw.

Because I'm now completely infatuated with the idea of incorporating horseradish into my dinner plans, the 15-minute challenge was out the window.  After reading preparation instructions on a half-dozen websites, I felt as though I could just go to my kitchen and wing it, so I did.  Here's the story of how I made prepared horseradish and built a not-so-quick-and-easy meal around it.  (Actually, if I'd already prepared the horseradish beforehand, or just bought a jar of horseradish like a normal person, the rest of the procedure would've gone quite fast.  But then what would I have blogged about?)

By the way, you should very definitely heed the warnings on the websites — this stuff is POTENT.  I wore the recommended gloves when handling my root — oh, grow up already — but the fumes nearly did me in.  As I rushed to open the kitchen window as wide as it would go, I wished for the gas mask I'd been issued on my first day of active duty in the Army, which I fortunately never needed in a life-threatening chemical warfare attack, but which did make peeling onions a lot more pleasant.  (Your tax dollars at work.)

Weekend Project — Pot Roast with Veggies in the Slow Cooker

The enticing aromas emanating from my slow cooker as I type these words are the result of a whole weekend of cooking.  That may sound a little daunting, but none of the steps was difficult or overly time-consuming (other than unattended cooking times), so I hope you will not be frightened away by the thought of dedicating a whole weekend to one dish.  It was the kind of cooking project I find totally satisfying — involving recipes within recipes, just like in the Joy of Cooking!

I'll never forget the time I challenged myself to make a Beef Wellington from this cooking bible, and was confronted with a recipe calling for many ingredients that cross-referenced to their own recipes which called for further preparations. . . .  These were exotic-sounding things I'd never made or in some cases, even heard of before, like roux, puff pastry, Duxelles, liver paté, beef stock reduction.  I dedicated a whole week to the Wellington project, and most of the steps were labor-intensive, requiring my full concentration.  Which was challenging back then, since in those days I polished off whole bottles of wine while cooking.  (They went into me, not only into my sauces.)  I have a vague recollection of being gently slapped back into consciousness by my then-boyfriend when it was time to incorporate yet another layer of butter into the puff paste.

But the project I'm describing here was a piece of cake in comparison to that marathon, which I'm not likely to repeat any time soon.  (Intrepid readers can refer to JofC, page 455, if they wish to try their own hands at Beef Wellington.  Good luck, and be sure to send me a report of your experience.  And a list of the wines you consumed during the preparation.)

The Joy of Coleslaw

Don't underrate coleslaw.  This unassuming side-dish, despite its mundane reputation, has a lot going for it:  

• Ease and speed of preparation
• Infinite variability
• Satisfying crunchiness
• Healthy benefits

I started making coleslaw about a year ago, when I needed a salad — something green and fresh! — to go with a meal that was a little heavy on the starch/protein components.  But I was out of lettuce.  And cucumber.  And tomatoes.  But I did find hidden in the veggie drawer of my fridge part of a head of cabbage leftover from who knows what.  So I sliced it into fine shreds, added some oil, some vinegar, and some seasonings, and, voilà!  My first homemade coleslaw.

Friday Night Quickie

Sorry to disappoint you readers expecting a more lurid topic, but "Friday Night Quickie" refers to the dish of eggplant with gnocchi that I whipped up last week between work and running off to the Met to see the world's sexiest baritone — I'm excluding myself out of modesty — in Simon Boccanegra.

The swoon-worthy Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Sadly, Mr. Hvorostovsky's voice was not in the best shape — it sounded a bit thinner than I've heard it in the past, and I think he is pushing a bit these days — but his pecs featured gloriously in the production, particularly in the scenes in which he was attired in a sort of 14th-century dressing gown open down to the bottom of his sternum, so my opera glasses got quite a workout and I left the theater fully satisfied.  Oh, and — sorry I got a bit distracted by my Siberian eye-and-ear candy — the eggplant dish was delicious and easy.  Like Dmitri's high notes when I heard them last season in Trovatore.

Alert: Mustard Oil may be Harmful to Humans. . .and Snails!

First off, a warning, courtesy of my reader birdmommy, who informed me that in her area, mustard oil had been recalled from stores because of adulteration with highly toxic argemone oil.  This new knowledge has led me to take more seriously the injunctions on bottled mustard oil, which state that the oil is not to be used for consumption.

Argemone Mexicana — how could something so pretty be deadly?

As I am very fond of the pungent flavor of mustard oil — mustard has really become an indispensable color on my culinary palette — I have begun an online search for a safe source for it.  So far, I have contacted a little family-run operation in Australia who market organic mustard oil without additives or adulterants.  If I find out that they ship to North America (and at a reasonable price), I will pass along more information for you.