Twisted Pinto Beans and Cornbread

I made the best bean soup and cornbread EVER, through what I call "accidental cooking adventures." I happened to see a recipe for U.S. Senate Bean Soup (view original recipe here), and I was eager to try out a recipe that was over 100 years old. A quick check of the kitchen cabinets revealed I had no Navy beans on hand. Well, I'm not one to let a little thing like not having the main ingredient stop me from pressing on, so I substituted pinto beans, which I like better anyway. (Note: I find the pintos agree with my tummy better if soaked overnight in water before cooking. I drained and changed the water a couple of times, too. This produces a much less gassy result, in my experience.) I made a couple of other substitutions, simply because they're what I had on hand: (1) dried parsley instead of fresh, and (2) diced deli ham added near the end of the cooking cycle instead of starting with an actual ham hock. So ... I ended up with something quite unlike the original recipe - which I still want to make - but my result was splendid all the same. The hub, who is not normally a big fan of pinto beans, declared it delicious and ate it two days in a row. See photo below:

My variation of U.S. Senate Bean Soup

Now, here in the Southeast U.S., we like cornbread with our pinto beans. I started with two boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix. I added eggs and milk as directed on the package. This would have been good as is, but I was in a creative mood. I cut about four stalks of celery into apx. 1/4-inch pieces, and the hub finely diced a small-to-medium sized onion. I also had about a half cup of shredded cheddar left over in the fridge, so I tossed that in also and rounded it out with about a teaspoon of minced garlic and about a half cup of mayonnaise. (Sorry, I didn't measure anything. This is accidental cooking, after all.) Voila, done with the mixing part. It looked great. About this time, I remembered I was out of cooking spray and had not yet mixed up the homemade cooking spray as was my good intention. Bah. I put about 2 tablespoons of real butter in an 8-inch baking dish and heated it in a 400 degree oven until melted. Then I tilted the baking dish until all the sides were coated with buttery goodness and poured in the batter. To top it off, I sprinkled a moderate dusting of black pepper and baked until it was done in the center. I started out at 400 degrees but became concerned that it would burn around the edges, so after about 10 minutes I turned the heat down to 350. The Jiffy package directions said to use an 8-inch baking dish for one package, but I used the 8-inch baker for both packages, so I had to bake it longer than package directions. Oooo, the butter gave the cornbread such lovely and crispy edges! This was delicious, one of the best things I've made through accidental cooking adventures! Crunchiness on the outside, moist and tender on the inside.

Flaky and tender goodness all at once. This smelled heavenly in the oven.

The black pepper dusting on top was a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself.

If you try either of these recipes, with or without modification, let me know how it works out for you!

Yours in accidental cooking,
Kathy
 

At the end of my rope, er ... I mean cable...

Today I was looking everywhere for the adapter to plug my blood pressure monitor into the wall outlet. I was concerned its battery life was affecting my readings, and I knew there was an adapter around here somewhere. It wasn't where I thought it was, but then I remembered this plastic box we have that contains phone chargers, ear buds, all kinds of snaky cords and cables. I found the box, tore into it, and came up with a mess that looked like this:

I'm normally a patient, kind of serene person, but this kind of stuff gets on my last nerve. I had to go through it all to find the one item I wanted. I'm not even sure we still need all this stuff or still have any devices that use some of it. Bear in mind, I'd gone through it previously and taken out all the phone chargers that I thought someone else might use and gave them away. I needed a solution. Bear in mind, I'm not the original thinker who came up with the following idea, but I remembered my husband saw something online awhile back that inspired him to organize his desk drawer that was full of assorted cables and such that were similarly impossible to sort through when you wanted to find a USB cable or the charger for the Garmin.

Here's what you do:

Collect a bunch of these:

Everyone uses toilet paper, and there are actually some good uses for the empty tubes. This is one of them. You'll also need a Sharpie, ink pen, or some other writing instrument. I suppose if you wanted to get particularly fancy, you could make labels on the computer and thus include more descriptive text than I did.

Sort your cables, cords, and chargers into groups of like items. For the larger items, use one tube per item. For the smaller items that do the same job, you can put two or three in one tube. Mark the tubes in whatever manner helps you identify the contents. I recommend wrapping the cords and cables loosely so as not to damage the itty bitty copper wires or phoenix feathers or whatever other magic may be contained inside them. (If you're concerned about damage, then don't do this. I am not responsible for any problems you may have with anything. Fold or wrap your cords and cables at your own risk.)

The end result is shown below. I still may never use some of this stuff but at least I'll be able to find it if I do.