Heretical Chips...

The Kettle chip company has made a grave error, they keep titling their super crispy crunchy salt and black pepper kettle chips wrong, they're NOT salt and fresh ground pepper they're "Alan's chips", "His Chips" or if he's the one talking about them "My chips"
I don't know if they fully realize that we must be at least 30% of their sales. The least they can do is properly name them.
We popped over to Henry's earlier this evening to get some nutritional (raw milk) and Alan's chips. As we wandered down the chip aisle Alan was overjoyed to discover they were on sale. Score!
Grabbing a bag to put in our basket he paused half way, a small line of concentration appeared between his eyes, "I noticed you haven't been eating my chips as much as me."
"Oh well they're a little hard and crunchy. They're good though." I explain.
"O.k.," he continued putting the bag in the basket, relieved I wasn't secretly hating his chips and sweetly offered, "you should get some other chips. Something you want."
I scanned the options, I'm not as big a potato chip fan as Alan but one of the bags by the Boulder brand caught my eye. I laughed and grabbed one off the shelf.
"Artichoke and spinach? That's so strange. Ok I gotta try these." I start to put them in the basket, pause and look down at the bag.
The small line of concentration has leapt straight off of Alan's forehead to my own, digging in between my eyes as I re-examine the chip bag.
"Wait. Do these go against what we believe in?" I peruse the list of ingredients making sure there's no weird dyes to turn them green or strange ingredients like cat tongue from the planet zenon's 4th quadrant.
Alan understands what I'm asking and we both examine the bag another moment.
"They look ok." He pronounces and I happily stuff my bag of chips in to the basket, decision made.
Turning to go I finally notice the woman on the same aisle. As we walk by she bobbles her basket and presses up a little harder than I think is necessary against the corn chips.
Out on the main aisle a slow dawning of realization sweeps over me...my feet slow....my brain clicks in to what just happened...
"Was she on the aisle the whole time?" I ask Alan.
He's grinning and starts to laugh, a laugh that just like the line between our eyes is quite contagious and fully infects me before I can finish my whole thought. We sputter and snicker our way past the tomatoes to the milk aisle.
"So, so...." I try to catch my breath. "So she was there and all she heard me say was 'do these chips go against what we believe in?'...ohmygawwwwwwd."
The cold floor of the super market and the piercing stares of strangers, not to mention my husband's arm is the only thing that kept me upright and from completely falling down in a puddle of guffaws and potato chips.
Our funny bone was thoroughly tickled.
By the by, the chips were tasty, in case you were curious. With strong garlic and Parmesan flavours and not only that they haven't mounted any snack-food rebellions against my beliefs even once since we've had them home.

Crafting is Harrrrrrrrrd: Supplies Are Everywhere.

(tattoos are a good way to alert people to your craftiness....)

Crafting is harrrrrrrrrrrrd, on the crafter yes, but most especially on the non-crafty people around them. See examples below:

"Oh a rock, a smooooth rock! A smooooth rock with a faint sparkle in it?! I could paint a bee on it!"
"Uh huh, yes dear. Neat idea."
"Ohhhhhhhh a branch! Do you know they CHARGE for branches some places?"
"Really?"
"Oh my gawwwd yes, and here's a perfectly nice branch just laying there on the ground."
"Disney Land's ground...."
"It's still ground. Oh the things I could do with a branch like that."
"What? What can you do with a branch like that?"
"Look, I hear your skepticism but it would look lovely in a jar. A very rustic arrangement, tres chic you know. Well rustic chic, don't ya think?"
"Would this be the same jar you asked for from our hostess at the meal we were invited to, once as I recall, it was only once they invited us wasn't it?"
"Ummm, yes I believe you're right. Hmmm, that is a nice jar."
"Yes, so you said. Something about the shape, and how she didn't need to wash the dip out of the jar, that you could do it at home." Sighs... " They were nice people."
"Hmmm? What? Hmm yes I suppose but you know...... I really don't think that's the jar for this branch. Too short, the jar I mean. Perhaps I could create a natural sort of collage on the side table, I could put the rock beside it."
"There's already a pile of rocks on the side table."
"Oh shoot you're right. LOOK! Holy fricking heck, look at that!!!!!"
"What? What's wrong?"
"Some one just threw that bouquet of flowers in the trash!"
"Yeah. They're all wilted see."
"Well duh, I have eyes. Perfectly fine wilted flowers. I could do a lot with wilted flowers."
"You're not God dear. Those things quit taking water a lonnng time ago."
"EXACTLY!"
"What? Exactly what? Do I keep holding this stick, and rock?"
"Oh yes, I'll put them in the trunk."
"There's a big metal lamp in there we took from the neighbor's garbage. Remember? I don't think the stick will fit."
"Branch dear, it's a branch. I'll put it in the back seat, but the flowers.... More water isn't what they need, it's LESS. I'll press them. I'll put them between the pages of all those phone books I've been saving. You know those phone books I've been collecting since 2002? Well they'll be just the thing for pressing and drying flowers."
"So, the flowers come home too?"
"Yes, lay them on the flyers. Gennnnnttttlly, I don't want all the petals to fall off....though......"
Heavier sigh..."Though what? More potpourri?"
"Well you can never have enough, you know they actually-
"Charge for potpourri at the stores. I remember. It was my orange you took and sliced up before I finished eating it. Remember? You dried that too."
"Looks gorgeous too doesn't it? All that rustic gorgeousness."
"I was eating that orange..."
"Just put them on the flyers."
"Remind me to throw those in the recycling bin when we get home. There's gotta be a law against that much paper in the back seat of a car in California, in the summer time anyways. Fire hazard if you ask me."
"You can't throw those out!!!"
"I'll recycle."
"No, I mean I'm saving those! Savvvvvvvving them."
"For what?????? Honey those sales ended 5 months ago. Hell I think this one is for a store that's been closed down for at least 3 weeks."
"I don't care about that, it's for a craft project. Paper Mache."
"I worry when you say things like that...."
"Like what dear? How do I say.....papier mache.....?"
"Your voice gets all breathy and your eyes glaze over, and you start talking with a french accent. It's unnerving."
"Hmm? Sweetie paper mache isn't unnerving, it's ART! The ultimate art. Making something from nothing, less THAN nothing, from trash it's...........it's...mmmmmm. It's verrrrrrry satisfying."
"Ummm....people are staring. Lets just load the car and go home. I'll drive, can I have the keys please?"
"Lets see, they're in my pocket, no...wait, haha would you look at that?"
"That's a bottle cap, not the car keys."
"I knoooow what it IS, it's a FLAT bottle cap. I might make a necklace, something...now where are those keys? Here's a rubber band I found on the floor."
"The grocery store floor wasn't it? I wish you wouldn't do that. It seems too much like...well...stealing. If you take something out of a store and didn't pay for it......."
"Relax, it's a rubber band, it's not like I ripped open a package and helped myself. Besides it was ON the floor."
Sigggggggggghs...."Yes, the floor, a lot like the ground, anything on there is free by your standards....what's this? This isn't the car keys."
"It's a shiny candy wrapper. Do you know that's been through the wash 7 times at least. I'm going to make a flower out of it, or a christmas ornament. I havn't decided yet. Water doesn't seem to have hurted it any though, looks shinier if you ask me!"
"I'm not. Keys?"
"Here, they're here. I didn't lose them. They got tangled up with this bracelet. The clasp is broken and one of the links, see? It caught on the key ring."
"Where'd you get that?"
"I found it when we were at the hardware store."
Siggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhs. "Some one might be looking for it."
"Well it's broken! I'm sure no one's looking for it, and look it's mashed a bit from tires and plus I found it. It was-
"On the ground?"
"YES! Exactly. I'm going to use it on that sculpture I'm making."
"Oh. Well ok. The one made with all the sour cream containers?"
"Noooo, God it wouldn't go with that at all. No I mean the other one, the one made with last years wrapping paper from Christmas. Here's the keys. We should get home. I've got a lot of crafting to do."

(This is an exaggeration. Not the craft supplies part, Lord no...that's all true, I have a house full of rocks, a cupboard full of sourcream containers and several dozen liberated tree branches to prove it. No the exaggerated part is the male, mine isn't like that at all. My male is right there with me cramming things in the trunk of our sweet little Civic to take home and craft with. Mine figured out he can drive the car home from a video shoot with one arm out the window to hold the palm branch that was too long to stuff inside the car.... he understood you see...you don't BREAK a branch like that. No siree, a long palm branch is as good as gold to a crafter.)

The evolution of me n' beans.

Beans and me go waaaaay back.
Back to childhood when my nose turned up at the idea of any vegetable that wasn't a potato or corn on the cob. What a sophisticated palette I had. Only verrrrrry occasionally stepping boldly beyond my gastronomical comfort zone by eating an iceberg lettuce leaf with bottled, creamy cucumber dressing. This was as gourmet as I got.
I've mentioned being a picky eater before but unless you had witnessed the full scale archeological type dig I could do to a plate of food, mining for hidden vegetables and other nasty bits adults were always gunking up good grub with, you can't fully understand how far I've come.
My first recollection of beans was at my Grandma Prest's house. I'm not sure how she managed to do it, but she could get me to eat food, that if any other parental type unit had stuck it before me I'd have thrown a fit.
Maybe she never tried to MAKE me eat beans, and hence my curiosity. Parents, you're good people. God knows I couldn't handle the job you all take upon yourselves but here's a new flash from a former kid...MAKING some one eat their peas causes a years long rift between said kid and peas.....I'm just sayin'.....Kids are are not just young people, they're mini adults. I remember being told I HAD to eat my peas when I was 7 or 8, I'm 30 years old and it still pisses me off. I understand the logic behind it, health, nutrition, wasting food...blah blah blah....but me and peas had us a real long acrimonious relationship for a damn long time because of that.
Here's where I balance my Karma and say thanks to the universe for parents who provided me with food when lots of kids had none...they could have given my peas to those kids though...I wouldn't have minded.
So a visit with Grandma, meal time rolls around and out of a can comes this brown sludge that was not only beans BUT sweet.....how odd. Baked beans.....beans are a vegetable and I had a war on vegetables, but they had brown sugar or molasses in them lending not only a lovely shade of brown but a definite sweetness that was whole heartily approved by my childish taste buds. It was like some adult some where had screwed up and made a meal that was more like dessert. It was perfect!
I became a fan of baked beans.
Then the universe laughed in my face and caused me great pain one day after I'd become a fan of baked beans. It was when asked, by some distant relative whose house I was having lunch at "What do you want to eat?"
Ahh....the glory of a question like that, no slapping some food down on the table and saying "eat it" I was being given a CHOICE. THE POWER...SUCH DELICIOUS POWER.
"I'll have beans." I say.
*sigh* You can probably guess where this train wreck of a childhood moment is going......I didn't realize I'd have to specify what sort of beans. I didn't realize the bean manufacturer type peoples would waste their time canning anything OTHER than sweet delicious baked beans.
A few moments later a bowl of something horrible, a wet pile of nasty red giant THINGS that were most definitely not flavored with brown sugar, was placed before me.
"What is this?" I asked, hardly daring to breathe, hardly daring to believe that I was expected to EAT this stuff, hardly daring to believe any one would even BUY cans of disgusting red lumps.
"Kidney beans." I was told.
Well hell.
I didn't say that then, I probably didn't even think it, as I was too busy trying not to bawl, such was my disappointment. I could be a brat at times when I was a kid, I can admit it, but I didn't throw a fit THIS time, realizing this was IT, this was lunch. I was stuck. I pushed them around my bowl, as miserable as a kid can be, before heading back to school. Too depressed to be hungry. I can still remember the disappointment, the horror.....I think those kidney beans scarred me for life.
Fast forward a few years. I've learned a valuable lesson, always specify what sort of beans you want, lest some crazy adult thinks a 7 year old kid would enjoy a bowl of kidney beans for lunch. I learned something else.
My mother can MAKE baked beans, the RIGHT kind. The sweet, delicious, smokey from a bit of bacon, and dark from molasses kind. She just whips up a batch one day as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Didn't I stand there and watch in awe and amazement as she made them? Didn't I taste them myself and realize that HOMEMADE baked beans kicked canned baked bean's tin can ass?
How gourmet I felt. Helping dump the brown sugar in with the beans after they soaked all night. MAKING baked beans. Making them...imagine that.
I always made mine a little MORE gourmet by dumping extra brown sugar on my bowl of beans after they dished up. Hmmmmm......just had an epiphany.....a bittersweet one...childhood sweet tooth equals adult root canals, methinks.
Me and baked beans enjoyed a companionable relationship for many years. They accompanied me through adolescence into adult-hood until I'm all grown up, I meet the love of my life online.
I move to California, and he proudly takes me out for his favorite meal. Something completely foreign to my Maritime taste-buds. The enchilada combo plate from an Alberto's drive through.
I can still remember when I opened my Styrofoam container and beheld the strange mass of brown and bright red that my husband was salivating over.
Refried beans, enchiladas and rice.
I hadn't a clue what an enchilada was, why any one would eat rice without soy sauce and why beans would be RE-fried???? What sort of world had I tumbled in to. And get this...these beans were NOT sweet!
I ate most of the enchilada, discovered the rice wasn't too bad but steered clear of the beans....for a while. Something happened though.
Pop, pop, pop went my taste buds. I think it was new ones growing. They can grow anything down here, it's all the sun.
Pop, pop, pop.
And anyone who has had a take-out combination plate knows there's no force on earth that can keep the refried beans from getting friendly with the enchilada. They softly cuddle up with the red sauce, they ooze under the tortilla, they embrace the cheese and find mysterious refried bean ways of getting on your fork when you only meant to get rice.
My taste buds grew, new refried bean taste buds that were inhabiting my tongue for the sole purpose of tasting salty, creamy, delicious refried beans.
I thought I was pretty hot stuff.
Willingly sucking down tons of refried beans from combo plates from every Mexican food place with in our neighborhood. I was on a stomach and brain awakening journey. The little kid who cowered from peas and onions was willingly buying them to cook up veggie delights of all sorts, most of it inspired by Mexican food.
Mexican food was like nothing I'd had back home in rural Nova Scotia. I bragged about the refried beans to the folks back there. I took pictures and sent them off, pointing out to my Mom how mature I'd become, eating non-sweet beans, willingly, loving every creamy bite.
I found out the stores around here carried cans of these marvelous beans, you could walk right in and have yourself a can of refried beans for a buck.
I cast less and less a wary eye at new foods my husband introduced me to. My palette expanded even more, my world was flavored with cilantro, chipotle and sour cream.
I made my own enchiladas, something that seemed so exotic and foreign 7 years ago became an easy meal to make in a hurry. Burritos a cinch, I started making my own tortillas and chili gravy was it's crown. It seems like the speeding train of expanding taste buds whizzes by faster every day. New food discoveries enlighten my tongue.
AND the bean evolution continues!!!
I went from refried beans to cans of whole beans, that I could flavour and mash myself. My husband's eyes rolled in ecstasy the first time I threw handfuls of spices in with a can of pinto beans and mashed it up. Beans are now a staple of our diet. Where once I raised an eyebrow over a bowl of beans for a meal I now willingly and greedily accept beans for my breakfast, my lunch and my supper. Not a drop of sugar in sight. No desert-like mash masquerading as beans for me...well.....not often anyways....maybe occasionally I doctor up a pot of pinto beans with brown sugar and onion for a little childhood reminiscence.
Then, just when I thought I'd reached the height of bean brilliance, I went higher.
Dried beans, that I slow cooked all day with spices, turned out to be the most brilliant, mouth watering beans you could ever imagine. I'm not just honking my own horn here. (honk honk honk honk honk honk!) In fact maybe you already know this and are scoffing at my innocence, but let me tell you the veil has been lifted.
Beans I cooked myself kick the ass of canned beans. There's a lot of ass-kicking in my kitchen. Including my own because why didn't I have this realization sooner?
All I can do is live in the now, and raise a spoon to the kid I used to be. The one who only ate potatoes and corn on the cob. Wouldn't I freak if I could see me now from the eyes of the me I was then? How far me and my beans have come.

I have been playing with more beans than just pinto, most recently black beans.
My favorite usage of dried beans is as follows:

This is a method not a recipe per se.

POT-O-BEANS

• Rinse a big bunch of beans in water and then put them in a big old pot. Your biggest one so that you can make a vat of beans and eat beans for a week. They get better every day.

• Cover with lots of water, and put on the stove. I start mine on high and then turn it down to simmer once they get boiling.

• I throw in a few tablespoons each of cumin, Mexican oregano and chili powder. Do not be stingy with the chili powder. Lately I've been toasting dried chilies in the oven for a few minutes and grinding them up in the blender to make my own chili powder. I use a lot of spices. I don't actually measure but it's a lot. I also will add about 3 dried peppers in there as well, ones that haven't been toasted. They'll get soft and disintegrate and you can pick the skins out later. Or leave them floating in there and call it a garnish. Don't think I haven't noticed that's how fancy pants cooks operate, anything inedible is labeled a "garnish".....sometimes I garnish my plates with my one and only barbie doll.
  
• She adds a lot of class to a bowl of beans...o.k., I kid. She's not classy at all.

• I let the pot of dried beans, spices and water boil and bubble all day until the beans are soft and tender, adding more water to it when ever it gets low. I like them soupy the first day, it's almost like a bean soup. (As they cool, and days go by they will thicken up, the beans, as well as me, absorbing more of the liquid.)

• When they are cooked enough I put a big dollop of oil in my cast iron frying pan. Maybe as much as half a cup. I chop up half an onion (give or take), two pasilla peppers and about 6 or 8 cloves of garlic and frizzle it all up in the oil with some salt. Softening the peppers and onion, infusing the oil with garlic, yummmmers. This part smells soooooooo good.

• Once the pepper mix has been cooked I dump all of it in to my pot of beans, and hopefully I've left enough room for the oil and peppers. ( Sometimes, an emergency "come help me find a place to put some beans" call is hollared to my husband as I realize physics is causing my addition of peppers/oil/garlic/onions to the beans is making the beans overflow in a very unpleasent, stove messing way. Wouldn't be the first time physics pissed me off.) I stir it all up, add more salt to the whole mix and then...step back.

• They're done. All they need now are a spoon and an appetite. (Though they're mind blowingly good with cheese, sour cream, cilantro, corn chips etc.)

Let There Be Light...

Recipe for a refuse lamp:

• Get you a lamp. Preferably one found sitting in the communal trash area of an apartment complex you lived at 4 years ago and you've been using as a plain jane boring lamp since then. (We lived at the apartment complex, not in the communal trash area, though from the amount of furniture discarded there every week you could make yourself right comfortable amongst the trash bins if need be. I swear that trash area had nicer furniture than most people's houses I've been in)
• Gather your guilt and accumulated pile of stuff you can't bare to throw in the trash and decide if you're gonna have it take up space in your house it might as well be as something useful. Things like aluminum coffee pots that got funky inside and are no longer being used since you've upgraded to the stainless steel model of them, a broken coffee cup, a sweet looking steel cut oats can and some corks are all good.
• Ask your Mother-in-law to keep her eyes peeled for a colander for a lamp shade for your kitchen-esque themed refuse lamp creation and then have her actually go one better and score a .25 cent fryer basket from a yard sale and be kind enough to give it to you.
• Don some swank looking safety goggles and then drill holes in everything so the rod of the lamp can fit through and stack it all up on the lamp rod as you see fit. Please note you can do a nice messy job of cracking out the bottom of the coffee mug because a neat and tidy hole won't make any difference, since it's pressed down against oats can lid. Holding your breath while slamming a screw driver down through the bottom of the coffee cup may or may not have been what kept the entire thing from shattering...but don't rule it out. Never rule out the power of holding your breath.
• Bat your eyelashes at your blue eyed husband and call upon his expert handy man skills and assistance in wiring the lamp back together, bending bits of metal and also encouraging you not to run around like a mad woman drilling holes in everything until you're sure they'll all fit on the lamp rod. Thanks to him I don't have half a dozen items with holes in them that don't need em.......
• Get a cute little fluorescent bulb and screw in to your wicked awesome refuse lamp and turn it on with a few soft spoken words and whispered bits of flattery...or you can just hit the switch.
• Bask in the soft light of your creation that cost...well what ever the price of the bulb and two bits of wire cost.

(Place of honor on top of the fridge for my kitchen-esque themed lamp!)

(The cat was exhausted and couldn't stay awake any longer waiting for us to finish our lamping. Either that or she was bored senseless.)