Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Beans are not fruit. But they are magical

I can be obsessive about food. Sometimes mildly, sometimes to excess. Although the boy sure enjoyed months of cinnamon buns during the bun quest (a term, by the way that you shouldn't Google).

One of the things that for whatever reason humours people who know about it is that over the course of about three years I worked on a baked bean recipe, striving to make them be as close as they could be to....canned beans. Why? Because I LIKE canned beans. But can't eat them. Even when they don't have added pork, they do have bacon in the cooking part (as I discovered after a rush trip to the hospital. So just because the ingredients list doesn't say bacon doesn't mean bacon wasn't involved in the making thereof), and as a consequence I can't eat them. But I want them.

So I make the recipe that was three years in the making. The problem - and here is where I step onto the crazy ship lollypop as far as my co-workers are concerned - is that I had already started the long and tedious task when I realized that a) I had no sweet onion. In fact, no onion at all and b) I was working lunch on the desk and wouldn't be able to zip home. So I did what any right thinking person would do:

I brought it to work, and at morning coffee break ran next door and bought a big sweet onion. Which I took upstairs to the coffee room and chopped and tossed into the beans already in the slow cooker. There is still salt pork, but I had it made for me without the nitrite. This is the first time I've used a slow cooker and not the ancestral bean pot so they may not be perfection. But I must have a pretty good reputation, at least with those who have eaten them before: the boy is going to his dad's after school prior to going to night class and this morning he asked me to stop by on my way home and give him some beans. Sweet Saskatchewan Lobster I love that boy.

1 comment:

Bronwyn said...

Dad makes a killer pork and beans in the slow cooker. I imagine with the non-nitrate pork stuff, you would love it.