Three Beautiful Things 11/23/11: Chickpeas, Beef, Stout

1.  I was really happy that one of my students chose Rumi's "Chickpea to Cook" as a poem to study together in class today.  Those of us in the class who love this poem had a particularly good time with these lines:   

Eventually the chickpea

will say to the cook,

"Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can't do this by myself.

 2.  I figured out what I want to cook for my Thanksgiving dinner, went to the store to buy a small beef roast, potatoes, Brussel sprouts, onions, and mushrooms.  I began to imagine this cut of beef being roasted in a pool of Guiness stout, so I'll need to do a little research to figure out how to make this happen.

3.  Well, imagining a roast beef in a puddle of Guiness stout made me think that they sure have some nice stouts and porters on tap at 16 Tons so I dropped in and enjoyed a half pint of Upright Barrel Aged Stout of Monte Fisto, a half pint of Bison Baltic Porter, and finished my evening with two half pints of The Abyss.  My 16 Tons evening was enhanced by sitting with Beverly and Wayne, whom I hadn't seen for a couple of years.  Wayne lived in the Silver Valley and worked at the Bunker back in the mid-sixties and we have a particularly good time talking about the good old days in Kellogg.  We did some of that and the three of us talked about a variety of other things, too.  Good times.