1. Early this afternoon I cracked open mid-19th century novel, The Woman in White by British writer Wilkie Collins. Uh oh. I can say goodbye for several days now to many other activities I might do because after about thirty pages, I'm seriously hooked. I'm going to have to be stern with myself to break away from reading this story and get out for fresh air and get a few things done around the house.
2. I tore myself away from Wilkie Collins late this afternoon and volunteered to cook dinner.
For a few minutes I was stuck. I wrinkled my brow for a few minutes, freeing my mind to go back to the mid-1980s when I was a grad student living alone in a basement apartment at 361 W. Broadway in Eugene. Back then, my monthly income was meager and I took it upon myself to save money by cooking meatless meals at home and enjoyed trying out different ideas.
Back then, I frequently cooked refried beans, but, for some reason, over the last twenty-five to thirty years, I stopped.
Well.
We have a nice stock of canned beans. We have a lot of flour tortillas. We have cheese, leftover rice, and a jar of Diane Trecker's awesome salsa.
I chopped up an onion with four cloves of garlic and got them cooking in butter. Meanwhile, I opened two cans of kidney beans, drained them, poured the beans in a bowl, and mashed them. I drained the beans again and mashed some more and melted a hunk of butter. I poured the melted butter into the mashed beans, added salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, red pepper flakes, and chili powder, and mixed it all up.
I poured the mashed, seasoned, and buttery beans into the cast iron pan with the tender onions and garlic and when the beans' liquid started to bubble, I turned down the heat and let them cook down for a while on a low heat.
Before long, PRESTO!, we had a pan of refried beans and Debbie and I fixed ourselves dinner by putting different combinations of beans and other food items on a warmed up tortilla and wrapping it all up.
Debbie and I agreed: we have a new staple in our kitchen. I let my mind wander back to when I used to soak and cook up big batches of beans in my basement apartment and started many days off by putting a layer of refried beans and cheese on a tortilla and topped the beans and cheese with a fried egg -- a quick, tasty, filling, and protein packed breakfast.
I'll be making more and more refried beans and keep them on hand. It's fun to have them back in my life again.
3. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Christy invited Debbie and me to join her and Everett and Carol and Paul in her back yard for a happy couple of hours around 7:30 this evening. We talked about a lot of things. At one point, Debbie disappeared and returned with her guitar. She sang her moving song, "Other Side of Town" for us. It had been many years since I'd heard her sing it. I always loved and admired this song and tonight it sounded better than ever.
Stu wrote this limerick to commemorate Jim Nabors' birthday. He was born on June 12, 1930.
There are people who sure make you smile.
Whose antics you just reconcile.
Like this Filling Station worker,
Sargent Carter thought shirker.
But is best known to be Gomer Pyle.
No comments:
Post a Comment