Friday, April 17, 2020
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Black Bean Chipotle Slow Cooked Soup
Now that the CrockPot is in a place of honor on an appliance table and not buried in storage, I've been using it more and more.
Yesterday I made up Mary McDougall's Black Bean-Chipotle Slow-Cooker Soup from The Starch Solution book. I figured with Dr. McDougall about to release the Starch Solution certification program into the wild for free and Gustavo Tolosa is going to do an 8-week webinar covering a chapter a week, I may as well focus a little bit more on that book.
This recipe is also known as Slow Chipotle Black Bean Soup on the McDougall website.
Here's a photo of it after just 4 hours on high in my Crockpot. The water level dropped over an inch already.
Notice how most of the water is already mostly boiled out. I left it on high for another 2 hours and at the 6 hour mark turned it down to low. More water had evaporated by then so I added a bit of boiling water and stirred. At 7 hours I turned it down to keep warm and tasted it - a bit flavorless to me, but I chose not to add anything at this point.
Dinner time and I served it over Mary's Corn Bread. I've been making this for so long I don't even look at the recipe any more and sometimes forget to add the cup of frozen corn. It's just as good without it.
I chopped up a little cilantro to add to the Crockpot.
Uh, oh. I think I ruined it by doing that.
I'm one of those "cilantro is soap" people and used maybe a tablespoon of cilantro leaves, cut up real fine. The smell alone turned me off. I tried remove them as soon as I put them in the pot, but many had already sunk into what little liquid there was left. I served our bowls then spent 15 minutes pushing beans around and removing every trace of green I could find in my bowl. It still tasted like soap. My husband just shook his head, told me he'll take the leaves I took out of mine and pop them in his bowl, and then merrily munched away, helping himself to another piece of cornbread and bowl of this beany stuff.
I can't call it a soup - it was way too thick and lacking in liquid for that. He said he'll call it "Soapy Chili" in the future. I growled at him and told him cilantro will never pass through my doorway ever again. He reminded me I said that multiple times in the past. I guess I never learn.
Without cilantro, this would be a great use for some of those black beans I loaded up on at the beginning of the covid panic, when stores like Amazon still had food in them. Now, just about any bean I click on says it's currently unavailable, whether from Amazon, Vitacost, or Rancho Gordo. I do plan on making this again, but maybe with spinach instead of cilantro next time.
Yesterday I made up Mary McDougall's Black Bean-Chipotle Slow-Cooker Soup from The Starch Solution book. I figured with Dr. McDougall about to release the Starch Solution certification program into the wild for free and Gustavo Tolosa is going to do an 8-week webinar covering a chapter a week, I may as well focus a little bit more on that book.
Black Bean-Chipotle Slow-Cooked Soup
prep: 10 minutes
cooking time: 8 hours
serves: 8 to 10
2 cups dried black beans
2, 16-ounce cans fire-roasted chopped tomatoes
4 ounce can chopped green chilies
2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/8 teaspoon chipotle powder
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Put the beans, tomatoes, chilies, chili powder, cumin, red pepper, and chipotle powder in a slow cooker. Stir in 6 cups of water.
Cover and cook on High for 8 hours.
Serve the soup hot, stirring in the cilantro as you serve it.
Mary McDougall
The Starch Solution
This recipe is also known as Slow Chipotle Black Bean Soup on the McDougall website.
Here's a photo of it after just 4 hours on high in my Crockpot. The water level dropped over an inch already.
Notice how most of the water is already mostly boiled out. I left it on high for another 2 hours and at the 6 hour mark turned it down to low. More water had evaporated by then so I added a bit of boiling water and stirred. At 7 hours I turned it down to keep warm and tasted it - a bit flavorless to me, but I chose not to add anything at this point.
Dinner time and I served it over Mary's Corn Bread. I've been making this for so long I don't even look at the recipe any more and sometimes forget to add the cup of frozen corn. It's just as good without it.
I chopped up a little cilantro to add to the Crockpot.
Uh, oh. I think I ruined it by doing that.
I'm one of those "cilantro is soap" people and used maybe a tablespoon of cilantro leaves, cut up real fine. The smell alone turned me off. I tried remove them as soon as I put them in the pot, but many had already sunk into what little liquid there was left. I served our bowls then spent 15 minutes pushing beans around and removing every trace of green I could find in my bowl. It still tasted like soap. My husband just shook his head, told me he'll take the leaves I took out of mine and pop them in his bowl, and then merrily munched away, helping himself to another piece of cornbread and bowl of this beany stuff.
I can't call it a soup - it was way too thick and lacking in liquid for that. He said he'll call it "Soapy Chili" in the future. I growled at him and told him cilantro will never pass through my doorway ever again. He reminded me I said that multiple times in the past. I guess I never learn.
Without cilantro, this would be a great use for some of those black beans I loaded up on at the beginning of the covid panic, when stores like Amazon still had food in them. Now, just about any bean I click on says it's currently unavailable, whether from Amazon, Vitacost, or Rancho Gordo. I do plan on making this again, but maybe with spinach instead of cilantro next time.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Cause of Death Graph
I strongly suspect that those heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, etc. deaths are still heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, etc. - it's just that they're now being counted as Covid-19 deaths as primary cause. It's not like their other diseases went away when they caught the virus. This is like my dad's death from various cancers (7 different ones over the 17 years from first diagnosis to death) being attributed to heart failure because, well, his heart DID stop on that day.
(It's a gif file, so give it a few seconds to load and start moving)
(It's a gif file, so give it a few seconds to load and start moving)
Monday, April 13, 2020
Mad World
With the chain supermarkets still jammed and mostly empty (There's no social distancing when you're elbow to elbow fighting over that last box of pasta or 6 pack of soda!), and lines waiting for hours to get inside to the few chains (like Target and Costco) that are stocked and restricting, we've (Well, my son and husband - I haven't been out since my last doctor's appointment) been doing all our grocery shopping at a little grocery store (belonging to a chain of 5 stores in the NYC area) within walking distance. They have some fresh produce, but not much - nothing green and leafy in veggies, nothing juicy in fruit; usually stocked with their usual supply of what few frozen veggies they did carry - if you want peas & carrots, peas or carrots, they got you covered; but like all other stores around here, nothing in the line of paper products, sanitizer/wipes, or even soap.
Now they don't even have frozen veggies. They carried 3 brands - Krasdale, Bird's Eye, and Goya - but just a handful of each. Each time my guys shop they buy out half their stock. The other day when my son and husband went, they had none, not one bag of frozen anything vegetable. I assume they sold out of it all for people needing to put something on the table for Easter dinner and their distributor didn't send them any new stock last week.
Thank goodness for all the dehydrated stuff I have from Harmony House. I check what they have in stock every day (FRUIT! They have fruit ready for delivery!!) and have been getting deliveries at least weekly since all this began. Those sliced potatoes arrived over the weekend, after taking almost 2 weeks to get here thanks to post office delays, and they should have my blueberries in the mail any day now.
In other news, thanks to all those beans I purchased, we've been having beans made this way frequently, either over rice, cornbread, and even over (GASP!) potatoes (Yep, hubby managed to nab 4 last week). That's my new favorite way to eat beans.
And my sewing adventures - very frustrating. My reliable old Kenmore machine is dead, probably from neglect all these years. I tried taking it apart, cleaning and oiling, but the mechanicals are still partially frozen. With no sewing machine sales or repair place within 50 miles, even if they were open, it's as good as gone to me. My mini machine, the one I taught my son to sew on when he was 6 years old 30 years ago, needed a bit of TLC to get it going again, and it's so weak it can't sew through more than a few layers of thin cotton fabric, but if I use the right mask pattern it can muddle its way through, especially if I use my serger for the bulk of the sewing. I now have 3 masks made. Hopefully this week I can get through a few more, now that masks are mandatory just about everywhere outside our apartment. My son will need one a day to get to then work through his shifts, even though they moved him and his team to the night shift and there will be less than 20 people in the entire Target store, nobody within 20 feet or more of each other. With his asthma, he finds breathing through a mask to be very hard and makes is job that much harder. I'm afraid he's going to start running into more trouble breathing with a mask than he'll ever encounter without one if he got sick. In just the few seconds I wear one to make sure the ties are the right length and it covers everything it's supposed to cover, I'm panting. And that's without the added filter layer! My masks have pockets for them and I have a few different things that can be used as filter material. I can't imagine going 1o hours in one of them, at least 8 doing heavy labor and a half hour or more walking to and from the train stations, even without the filter.
Mad world!
Now they don't even have frozen veggies. They carried 3 brands - Krasdale, Bird's Eye, and Goya - but just a handful of each. Each time my guys shop they buy out half their stock. The other day when my son and husband went, they had none, not one bag of frozen anything vegetable. I assume they sold out of it all for people needing to put something on the table for Easter dinner and their distributor didn't send them any new stock last week.
Thank goodness for all the dehydrated stuff I have from Harmony House. I check what they have in stock every day (FRUIT! They have fruit ready for delivery!!) and have been getting deliveries at least weekly since all this began. Those sliced potatoes arrived over the weekend, after taking almost 2 weeks to get here thanks to post office delays, and they should have my blueberries in the mail any day now.
In other news, thanks to all those beans I purchased, we've been having beans made this way frequently, either over rice, cornbread, and even over (GASP!) potatoes (Yep, hubby managed to nab 4 last week). That's my new favorite way to eat beans.
And my sewing adventures - very frustrating. My reliable old Kenmore machine is dead, probably from neglect all these years. I tried taking it apart, cleaning and oiling, but the mechanicals are still partially frozen. With no sewing machine sales or repair place within 50 miles, even if they were open, it's as good as gone to me. My mini machine, the one I taught my son to sew on when he was 6 years old 30 years ago, needed a bit of TLC to get it going again, and it's so weak it can't sew through more than a few layers of thin cotton fabric, but if I use the right mask pattern it can muddle its way through, especially if I use my serger for the bulk of the sewing. I now have 3 masks made. Hopefully this week I can get through a few more, now that masks are mandatory just about everywhere outside our apartment. My son will need one a day to get to then work through his shifts, even though they moved him and his team to the night shift and there will be less than 20 people in the entire Target store, nobody within 20 feet or more of each other. With his asthma, he finds breathing through a mask to be very hard and makes is job that much harder. I'm afraid he's going to start running into more trouble breathing with a mask than he'll ever encounter without one if he got sick. In just the few seconds I wear one to make sure the ties are the right length and it covers everything it's supposed to cover, I'm panting. And that's without the added filter layer! My masks have pockets for them and I have a few different things that can be used as filter material. I can't imagine going 1o hours in one of them, at least 8 doing heavy labor and a half hour or more walking to and from the train stations, even without the filter.
Mad world!
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Hope My Hands Hold Out
A few years ago I had to stop making stuff using my sewing machines because hunching over hurt my already arthritic neck. The few things I had to sew I tried make do with a needle and thread and did it by hand. Then I got those stiff, slightly deformed and swollen fingers from rheumatoid arthritis and barely did any sewing at all. Fabric glue and double sided tape became my friends for mending jobs.
But now, I feel a real need to get sewing again. The first things I'm going to make are a few masks using this video for inspiration:
I've seen dozens of mask-making videos the past few days but this one is not only the easiest one but safest because of that pocket for inserting a filter. As many have suggested in the replies, I'll be sewing in a strip of wire at the top before folding up and sewing the pockets so the mask can be shaped to block out more air. I know I have various wires in this house - my son's an engineer and used a lot of it during some of his college courses, especially while getting his MS in electrical engineering. Some also suggested using those twist ties from bread or produce bags but I think they would be a bit too flimsy and break easily, especially if these masks get washed as often as they should be.
But first, I have to find my machines.
Oh, geographically, I know exactly where they are in the living room. But you know how people joke around about their treadmills are used more as clothing racks than for exercise? Well, my sewing machine table has been the dropping point for "stuff" ever since I covered up the machines a few years ago to keep them (Yes, more than one) dust-free. Computer components, extra keyboards, magazines waiting to be gone through and recycled, and I may have even seen a bag or 2 of beans on it, for some reason. Underneath the table it's even worse, with Nintendo Wii boxes, unused fans awaiting warm weather again, is that a grocery bag filled with my son's pasta sauce I see? I know he grabbed a few extra jars when we first started stocking up and I told him to find a place to store them out of the way, but why under my sewing table?? The chair I used to use has been shoved into a corner and is now holding boxes of books, a bag full of cables, wires, and extension cords.
So it'll take me a few days to clear that corner of the living room out and find homes for all the stuff on and under it. Where will I put it all? I have no idea - that's why it all ended up there in the first place. If I chip away at it a few minutes here, a few minutes there, in the times my husband is taking a break from his work on his computer on the other side of the room, I might be able to get to see the machines by the end of next week. Over the weekend I'll have my guys help find homes for all the crap under the table. The chair may be a lost cause (Every horizontal surface in this apartment that doesn't move has a pile of books on it) so I can just wheel in my computer chair when I'm ready to sew.
Luckily, I have a lot of usable fabric from my quilt making days within reach and not all of it stuffed into storage. It'll be easy to find a few novelty prints in a woven cotton calico to make these masks. I have a whole plastic shoebox filled with various elastics, including elastic cording, so that's covered. I have to find where I put my sewing machine thread stash. I didn't see it in the space I used to keep it so it must have gotten moved, but where??
And after all of that is done, keep your collective fingers crossed that I can actually do it - the cutting out and the sewing of these masks. My fingers hurt just using scissors to open bags of frozen veggies, and on a bad pain day, especially when my knuckles are swollen, I can't even do that. My fabric scissors - expensive when I bought them over 30 years ago - are really heavy. That makes it easier to cut through tough fabrics like jeans-weight denim and such, but using them is tiring and usually painful, even before my RA diagnosis. Decades ago I bought a pair of electric scissors but they couldn't really cut all that well, and holding down the button while cutting was more tiring and painful than just using regular cutting shears, so I got rid of them, donating them to a senior center.
Oh, gosh, I'm rambling again. And now my hands hurt from typing so much.
Stay safe, everyone.
But now, I feel a real need to get sewing again. The first things I'm going to make are a few masks using this video for inspiration:
I've seen dozens of mask-making videos the past few days but this one is not only the easiest one but safest because of that pocket for inserting a filter. As many have suggested in the replies, I'll be sewing in a strip of wire at the top before folding up and sewing the pockets so the mask can be shaped to block out more air. I know I have various wires in this house - my son's an engineer and used a lot of it during some of his college courses, especially while getting his MS in electrical engineering. Some also suggested using those twist ties from bread or produce bags but I think they would be a bit too flimsy and break easily, especially if these masks get washed as often as they should be.
But first, I have to find my machines.
Oh, geographically, I know exactly where they are in the living room. But you know how people joke around about their treadmills are used more as clothing racks than for exercise? Well, my sewing machine table has been the dropping point for "stuff" ever since I covered up the machines a few years ago to keep them (Yes, more than one) dust-free. Computer components, extra keyboards, magazines waiting to be gone through and recycled, and I may have even seen a bag or 2 of beans on it, for some reason. Underneath the table it's even worse, with Nintendo Wii boxes, unused fans awaiting warm weather again, is that a grocery bag filled with my son's pasta sauce I see? I know he grabbed a few extra jars when we first started stocking up and I told him to find a place to store them out of the way, but why under my sewing table?? The chair I used to use has been shoved into a corner and is now holding boxes of books, a bag full of cables, wires, and extension cords.
So it'll take me a few days to clear that corner of the living room out and find homes for all the stuff on and under it. Where will I put it all? I have no idea - that's why it all ended up there in the first place. If I chip away at it a few minutes here, a few minutes there, in the times my husband is taking a break from his work on his computer on the other side of the room, I might be able to get to see the machines by the end of next week. Over the weekend I'll have my guys help find homes for all the crap under the table. The chair may be a lost cause (Every horizontal surface in this apartment that doesn't move has a pile of books on it) so I can just wheel in my computer chair when I'm ready to sew.
Luckily, I have a lot of usable fabric from my quilt making days within reach and not all of it stuffed into storage. It'll be easy to find a few novelty prints in a woven cotton calico to make these masks. I have a whole plastic shoebox filled with various elastics, including elastic cording, so that's covered. I have to find where I put my sewing machine thread stash. I didn't see it in the space I used to keep it so it must have gotten moved, but where??
And after all of that is done, keep your collective fingers crossed that I can actually do it - the cutting out and the sewing of these masks. My fingers hurt just using scissors to open bags of frozen veggies, and on a bad pain day, especially when my knuckles are swollen, I can't even do that. My fabric scissors - expensive when I bought them over 30 years ago - are really heavy. That makes it easier to cut through tough fabrics like jeans-weight denim and such, but using them is tiring and usually painful, even before my RA diagnosis. Decades ago I bought a pair of electric scissors but they couldn't really cut all that well, and holding down the button while cutting was more tiring and painful than just using regular cutting shears, so I got rid of them, donating them to a senior center.
Oh, gosh, I'm rambling again. And now my hands hurt from typing so much.
Stay safe, everyone.
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