Rae: June Read

Your June assignment is fiction. Read any young adult or juvenile book of your choice...something you could read aloud to kidlets. Report back. We will be in Japan until the first week of July. I will post your next assignment at that time.

Happy reading!

Lulu: Beans, magical indeed

I made a really easy dinner tonight using beans, and I did them in the crock-pot. It wasn't fancy at all, but definitely hearty, yummy, and easy. (Usually my three prerequisites.) I put pinto beans in the crock-pot, not pre-soaked or anything--just out of the bag--in the crock-pot with some beef broth that had whole stewed tomatoes and Mexican spices in it (the broth was pre-frozen, courtesy of Phill's mom--all I had to do was thaw it in hot water). I turned the crock-pot to High and let it cook for 5 or 6 hours, and they were perfect! I made some boil-in-a-bag rice (this stuff is so good to me and takes 10 minutes to cook, costs $1.12 a box with four bags in each box), put the beans over the rice and then piled cheese on top. It was really delicious and easy! Oh, and so CHEAP! I guess cheese isn't that cheap, but beans sure are, and rice is. And broth is easy to make.

Anyway, that's all. Just a really easy, yummy dinner using beans.

Lulu: Food and Einstein

Crock-pot Rigatoni

Makes 10 servings

28-oz. jar spaghetti sauce

12-oz. rigatoni, cooked

1-1 ½ lbs. ground beef, browned

3 C shredded mozzarella cheese

½ lb. pepperoni slices

sliced mushrooms, optional

sliced onions, optional

1. In 4-quart slow cooker, layer half of each ingredient in order listed. Repeat.
2. Cover. Cook on Low 4 to 5 hours.

Variation: Use 1-lb. ground beef and 1-lb. sausage.

Beans & Rice

Makes 8-10 servings

1-lb. pkg. dried red beans

water

salt pork, ham hocks, or sausage, cut into small chunks

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

3-4 C water

6-oz. can tomato paste

8-oz. can tomato sauce

4 garlic cloves, minced

1. Soak beans for 8 hours. Drain. Discard soaking water.
2. Mix together all ingredients in slow cooker.
3. Cover. Cook on Low 10-12 hours, or until beans are soft. Serve over rice.

Variation: Use canned red kidney beans. Cook 1 hour on High, then 3 hours on Low.

Note: These beans freeze well.

Dorothea’s Slow-Cooker Chili

Serves 6-8

1-lb. ground beef

1-lb. bulk pork sausage

1 large onion, chopped

1 large green pepper, chopped

2-3 ribs celery, chopped

2 15 ½-oz. cans kidney beans

29-oz. can tomato puree

6-oz. can tomato paste

2 Tbsp. chili powder

2 tsp. salt

1. Brown ground beef and sausage in skillet. Drain.
2. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker.
3. Cover. Cook on Low 8-10 hours.

Variations: For extra flavor, add 1 tsp. cayenne pepper.

For more zest, use mild or hot Italian sausage instead of regular pork sausage. Top individual servings with shredded sharp cheddar cheese.

These are the recipes I was going to try from the crock-pot cookbook. I think the Dorothea one is hilariously named. I only wanted to try it because of the name and its few ingredients. I only tried the Rigatoni (which was REALLY good!!) , because Phill's mom came to visit (from England, no less) and made meals every day! In fact, we had so much left over each time that we were able to freeze NINE meals for this week. Absolutely perfect for our moving week.

On another non-food-related (however, book-related) note, I'm reading a book I picked up in the book section at Wal-Mart. I just thought it looked really big and great, but I read the first few sentences and then decided I definitely wanted to read it. It's called Einstein: His Life and Universe (by Walter Isaacson). Hasn't someone mentioned this author? Or this book, even? Anyway, I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading it kind of slowly, but the writing is beautiful and I'm pretty intrigued by Einstein. There are a few things from it that I had to share, because they were just so beautifully worded, not to mention that the ideas expressed are beautiful, too.

"His success came from questioning conventional wisdom, challenging authority, and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. Tyranny repulsed him, and he saw tolerance not simply as a sweet virtue but as a necessary condition for a creative society. 'It is important to foster individuality,' he said, 'for only the individual can produce the new ideas.' This outlook made Einstein a rebel with a reverence for the harmony of nature, one who had just the right blend of imagination and wisdom to transform our understanding of the universe. These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the twentieth century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age."

And I found this particularly adorable and interesting. He had a hard time with early language development, and the author says "Whenever had had something to say, he would try it out on himself, whispering it softly until it sounded good enough to pronounce aloud." I find that so interesting because it kind of is a pre-cursor to how he later came up with his theories. He used "thought experiments", which essentially means he thought things out, as opposed to real experiments. But he learned through this method. He learned using his imagination. He thought things out until they were right in his head, and then he verbalized. In the beginning, different characters are described, different characters in his life, and it becomes evident that many of these colleagues could have also come up with the theory of relativity that was so defining to Einstein's life. But the more I read about what kind of person he was, the more I'm convinced that he was meant to be the one who brought about that theory (and other earth-shaking ones). In fact, this sums it up really well:

" 'When I ask myself how it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstances,' Einstein once explained. 'The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time. These are things he has thought of as a child. But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up. Consequently, I probed more deeply into the problem than an ordinary child would have.' " I just don't think that was happenstance, coincidence, luck...it's very much on purpose, this life, these people who shape our history and cause us to think in ways we aren't accustomed to.

Lynness: Song of the South

We were talking at the dinner table and somehow we got on the subject of
"Brer Rabbit and de Tar Baby" and I told Isaiah the story (with voices
as per my Disney record and storybook collection, which Isaiah now has-
and listens to on the same old Fisher Price record player I used, but I
digress...). Nathan mentioned that there were more stories about Brer
Rabbit in a book at Grandma and Grandpa's house (Jon and Janis') and I
remembered someone on this blog wanting to know where it went- I think
it's in Lakewood!

Beccy: New Stephanie Meyer Book FYI

For those of you who are Twilight Fans (Abby!) I am attaching the link for this Daily Herald article from this morning's paper.
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/265974/136/

Lynness Re: Beans, Beans the magical fruit

I, too, have been working on integrating beans into our diet, and have
enjoyed some success. The biggest problem I have encountered is the
TIME factor needed for dried beans- you usually can't wait until 5pm to
decide what's for dinner at 6 (like I do) unless they're canned beans.
So, after suggestions from my ward food storage gurus, I decided to
precook and freeze portions of beans. This sounded like a great idea to
me, but I just hadn't gotten around to it. I decided to go for it after
reading Rae's post and opened a mylar pouch of black beans from my food
storage. And then I put the WHOLE thing in to soak. This morning I
realized just how many beans I had to cook. I had 5 POTS worth- 2 of
them being large, oblong crock-pot types!!!! I am putting them in
quart-sized freezer bags to be thawed when needed. I think it will
really work well- though next time I probably won't do 5+ pounds for
dried beans at a time!!

I've never really been too fond of the idea of spending a whole day
making meals to freeze and take out- I don't want to take a whole day to
cook, and I don't care for many of the meals that freeze well. BUT
(since I'm a 30 minute or less dinner prep kind of person who make
scratch meals almost every day) I do buy bulk ground beef and cook it up
and freeze it in 1lb portions. If we want super nachos, or chili, or
tacos all I have to do is pull out a pack of ground beef and warm it up
while I chop produce or open cans and dinner is ready in about 5 minutes!

Rae: Beans, Beans the magical fruit

I have made it a personal goal to learn how to cook with dry beans, lentils, and peas. I purchased two really cheap extension cookbooks online that are very basic. And I have two wonderful new cookbooks to explore:

The New Book of Middle Eastern Food

Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World

Like Beccy, we are trying to make better eating choices at our house. Since our move to Payson, Ivan has not been working full-time and so he hasn't been eating out for lunch or drinking sodas. He doesn't miss it at all. I have been at home and have been able to enjoy grocery shopping and cooking more. And I DO enjoy both. We have both lost weight and we feel so much more healthy. And Bill hasn't complained. Yet.

I recently went to the Drypac cannery in Spanish Fork and purchased a lot of #10 cans of food. We gave the bulk of our really old food storage to the single woman who purchased our home in Lancaster. She had nothing in the way of storage and we didn't really have room to bring it all with us. So, in many ways, we are starting over. It's interesting to live in an LDS community and see the panic that many members exhibit because they have not been following the counsel of the prophets. As your auntie and sister and friend, I can bear witness that we are SO blessed (spiritually and physically and materially) when we try our best to follow those leaders. Consistently, with small (or even tiny) but solid steps. Not in panic mode trying to take imprudent giant steps.

Back to the beans. I failed my first attempt at cooking with beans. It's kind of tricky to figure out exactly how much soaking and cooking they need. And DON'T use a slow cooker. It's just not the best method. At least for dry beans. Ivan asked me if I felt bad about the beans I had wasted. I said that if I had felt that bad, he would have known because I would have been in tears! As it was, I just got more information and tried again. I successfully made a delicious batch of Boston baked beans! I am soaking black beans this morning for an end of the week batch of Cuban beans. So good!

I am reminded of a time when Gma spent the entire day trying to make homemade tomato soup. And I do mean the whole day. It didn't smell very good to Beccy and I and we kept making snide comments about having to eat it. At least I did. We were not little children but Gma MADE us sit down at the table and we were supposed to eat her creation. Darned if I was going to! It made her really mad until she herself sat down to eat...took a couple of spoonfuls and realized how nasty the soup was. Then she cried a bit and then laughed a lot and the soup went down the disposal...or something like that. The moral of that story for me as a mother is that I never forced the kids to eat anything BUT they had to at least try it first. Many times they have tried new foods only to discover that they like the end product!

Enjoy your cooking, eating, and reading!