When we moved last year, I found this little seed-starter set that I'd picked up somewhere along the line and lost in the depths of the basement. So this year, being much more settled in every which way than this time last year, I kept track of where it was, and this morning I hauled it upstairs and started a lettuce garden. 12 of Romaine, 12 of Prizehead, and in a couple weeks I'll seed again. I'm looking forward to the leaves of my labour. The lettuce in the shops is yuck, and expensive.
Chive and Patch went hunting for containers in the auction mart, and came back with some suitable for re-starting chive-clumps in the house. Somehow there's a lot of dirt between the back door and the south-facing bedrooms in the basement. I'm not asking, just listening for the sound of the vaccuum.
Today was supposed to be Meatless Monday, and so far it has been, but it won't keep on that way. Because I had the beans already soaked and ready to go yesterday, we had Meatless Sunday instead. The main Dish O' The Day was a sort of brown-rice-and-navy-beans casserole, with bits of apple, pecans, butter, poultry seasoning. Chive loved it. I... ate it. It was okay. I'm not used to the texture of the beans, and to me they're just mush. They don't taste bad, they just feel like paste, and it's not my favourite food-feeling, to say the least. I think I would have preferred it without them, but the point is to eat rice and beans for the complete protein. I'll keep trying, and eventually I imagine I'll accustom myself to it.
I was thinking about their mushiness, and how I could incorporate that into things that are supposed to be mushy/creamy. Things like a cream soup, say Zumma Borscht, Mennonite potato soup. Or like the cream-cheese-salmon dip I make to serve with rice crackers. I'll bet some pureed navy beans would practically disappear in something like that.
But for now? For now I need to crack the books. My next school weekend is breathing down my neck, and it's still 2 weeks away!
2 comments:
Hmm, pasty beans doesn't sound very appealing. We hardly ever use white beans (navy, great northern, etc.), so maybe it's the bean type or maybe there's an adjustment you can make to the cooking process. We canned some navy beans once, but they were very mushy. We ended up pureeing them into soups and stews and stuff, so you hardly knew they were there.
I tend to strongly favor black beans myself - or red/stripey ones in a pinch.
You're giving me hope! Maybe it's just the type of bean. Next time I'm going to try the black beans I got - I think they're "turtle beans"? And what's more, they'll look a lot more appealing mixed in with the rice, too. All that beige didn't exactly make my mouth water.
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