Three Beautiful Things 06/20/20: Gibbs, Cornbread Pie, Herman Munster BONUS A Limerick by Stu

1. I'm happy to report that Gibbs, our new Malshi puppy, by all appearances, is content to be a member of our family. Today he spent a lot of time with Debbie on the couch, pressing himself close to her and sleeping. When he was awake, he played with toys, hopped around, followed us when we walked to other rooms, and enjoyed his meals. He loves the back yard and, so far, he's done all of his business out there, thanks to Debbie's vigilance and sense of timing. I posted a picture of Gibbs that Debbie took on Friday on Facebook. If you'd like to see it, just scroll down past Stu's limerick to the bottom of this post.

2. Friday morning, I wanted to get preparations underway to make some kind of a pinto bean dinner for Saturday. So, not knowing what I might cook up, I used the slow method and soaked a mess of dry beans for about eight hours and cooked them for a couple of hours before going to bed on Friday night.

Today, I pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks (thank you, Adrienne), Bean by Bean. I had decided by this time that I wanted to cook up some kind of pinto bean/cornbread dish. Fortune was smiling on me. In the cookbook, I found a recipe called, "Cornbread Pie a la Hippie". Never having been much of a hippie, the title didn't make much sense to me, but it didn't need to (!); it was just the sort of recipe I was hoping to find.

For starters, the recipe calls for a juicy bean-vegetable mixture and leaves it up to the cook to figure out what beans, vegetables, and liquid to use. There are no directions. Ah! Perfect! I poured myself a Jameson and ginger and got down to business. I crushed and chopped about four cloves of garlic and tossed them into hot oil in the Dutch oven. Less than a minute passed and I added a chopped onion and some chopped celery and let them cook up until nearly tender. I added two small yams, chopped, some chopped crimini mushrooms, a chopped sweet red pepper, and the remains of an already open bag of frozen corn. I added salt, chili powder, cumin, oregano, and cayenne pepper to this mix and stirred it up. While it slow cooked, I made two cups of hot beef broth using some Better than Bouillon paste and poured it, along with the pinto beans I cooked Friday night, into the pot, brought it to a gentle boil, turned the heat way down, and let it cook slowly for about 30 minutes, unattended.

I slipped away to join Debbie and Christy out back.

When I returned to the kitchen, I combined cornmeal, buttermilk, melted butter, baking powder, baking soda, and a little salt in a bowl and made cornbread batter. I used vegetable oil to grease a baking dish, poured the juicy vegetable-bean mixture into the pan and topped it with the cornbread batter. I popped in the oven, preheated at 400 degrees, for 25 minutes and the dish was ready.

I let it cool for about fifteen minutes, declared it ready, and Debbie and dug in. We loved it. The combination of the textures of the slightly crunchy cornbread and the soft beans and mushrooms combined with the sweet flavors provided by the corn, cornbread, and yams and complemented by the moderate heat of the pepper and the savory flavors of the chili powder, cumin, and oregano all worked together to create a very tasty dinner -- and we have plenty of leftovers.

3. I turned on the Vizio, messed around on YouTube, and accidentally found a documentary about the life and and career of Fred Gwynne entitled, Fred Gwynne: More than a Munster. We watched it. Not once in my entire life had I thought about, let alone looked into, the life and times of Fred Gwynne. I'm really glad I did. He lived a very interesting life, heartbreaking at times, full of a range of artistic endeavors. The documentary was aptly titled -- he was, indeed, much more than Herman Munster!



Here's Stu's limerick for Father's Day:

He left all our lives much too soon.
Looking back on each Father’s Day in June.
All the memories of Dad,
Among the best I have had.
I miss him from here to the moon.



Here's Gibbs: