Three Beautiful Things 11/14/17: Organizing, Afternoon Dinner, Sweet Heat Snack

1. I've kept all the documents related to Mom's estate in a plastic basket of Mom's. I spent a couple of hours organizing that basket today. Instead of loose papers piled in the basket, now almost everything is filed in a folder. I will return to the basket on Wednesday and dig down under the file folders to retrieve a few more loose papers and file those.

2. Early this afternoon, the Deke and I decided to have dinner early in the afternoon. The Deke requested black beans and rice. I dug a familiar recipe from Pinterest and got out our Dutch oven and cooked up the beans. I used a little too much vinegar -- I had to sub apple cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar for the red wine vinegar and red wine the recipe called for -- but I liked the stronger vinegar taste and I always like the way the acid in this dish is balanced by the brown sugar and it's all made especially delicious by my generous splashes of Frank's Original Red Hot Sauce.

Eating this meal transported me back to evenings in our apartment home in Greenbelt. This dish really smells good and one of the nice things about living in a small house, much like when we lived in a small apartment, is the way the onions, garlic, cumin, oregano, brown sugar, vinegar, and pepper sauce blanket us with aromatic pleasures.

3.  I watched a few episodes of Chopped: After Hours this evening and suddenly wondered if I might combine sweet with heat and make the Deke and me a tasty snack. So, I got out a bunch of sesame rice crackers, put some cream cheese on each one, then topped each cracker with Mom's rhubarb strawberry jam from 2014 and a touch of Sambal Oelek ground fresh chili paste. The chefs on Chopped are always working to combine contrasting sensations and textures. I thought the crunchy cracker contrasted nicely with the cream cheese and that the jam and the chili paste also contrasted nicely with each other.  It worked. Each bite was crisp, creamy, sweet, and hot, giving the Deke and me pleasure and a bit of a surprise. The hotness of the chili paste snuck up on us so that what seemed like a sweet treat finished with some heat.