1. For about four hours or so today, while Gibbs was being groomed, Copper and Luna got to be out in the living room and enjoy some of their favorite spots to lounge, sleep, and relax. I don't know how a cat's mind works, but their occasional squawks and occasional scratching on the inside of the closed Vizio room or bedroom door signals to me that they enjoy getting an occasional break from being closed off from the rest of the house and would like to come out more!
2. My assignment for family dinner tonight was to make a batch of slow cooker baked beans I've brought to dinners before. When I've made this recipe before, I've followed the recipe and soaked dry beans overnight and then put the chopped onion, beans, water, molasses, brown sugar, and bacon in the slow cooker for about eight to nine hours.
But, alas, for this batch, I forgot to go buy a package of dry beans, so I used canned beans instead -- black beans and white kidney beans. I was slow getting going this morning as I recovered from the party at Renae and Dick's Sunday night, and it was past 1:00 or 1:30 before I got the ingredients gathered and combined in the slow cooker. I thought things would be all right because the beans didn't have to cook. Only the onion and bacon did.
I was wrong.
I realized late in the afternoon that the onions were still crunchy, the bacon wasn't quite cooked, and the whole dish was way too liquid-y.
I tried to rescue my family dinner offering.
I transferred the beans out of the slow cooker into a Dutch oven.
I turned up the heat, brought it to a boil, and then let the beans simmer, hoping that the liquid would evaporate and the onions and bacon would cook up.
Dinner tonight was at 6:00.
Around 5:45, I determined that the bacon and onion had cooked up pretty well, but that I needed to get rid of liquid.
So I got out our handy strainer, an oblong shaped basket at the end of a long handle and scooped the beans, onion, and bacon out of the Dutch oven and put them in the slow cooker. Once I was done scooping, I added some Dijon mustard to the beans, stirred them up, and transferred them to a serving bowl.
My rescue effort worked.
What did I learn today?
Give this dish plenty of time in the slow cooker, even if the beans come out of a can.
Use much less water when combining ingredients if the beans come out of a can.
Start preparing this dish earlier in the day.
I should be more responsible about over serving myself gin on the eve of fixing this dish.
3. So, relieved, with the serving dish full of delicious beans in hand, I arrived at family dinner at Christy's.
Tonight was a special dinner. We gathered one day shy of Christy and Everett's 25th wedding anniversary. So, in honor of the occasion, we raised a toast to Everett (RIP) and Christy, sad that they didn't get to celebrate this milestone together, but happy that Everett and Christy shared so many years and so much happiness together.
Our dinner was terrific. We led off with a lemon vodka cocktail accompanied by an oven-baked bacon and cracker appetizer. For the main meal, Christy fixed tasty barbecued chicken legs, I brought the beans, and Carol made a very tasty and unique ramen salad. For dessert, Molly brought Heath Klondike ice cream bars.
We talked about a wide variety of topics tonight ranging from a local house fire to some thoughts about Christianity to gardening and solar lights to when Debbie worked at Mrs. Greenthumb's at the Spokane Sheraton (nearly 50 years ago) to The Godfather and Paramount+'s series, The Offer.
We had a comfortable night on Christy's deck and we gave ourselves a lot to think about as we talked about all these different topics.
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