Red Beans and Rice

I'll be the first to admit it, I have a love/hate relationship with cooking.

Most days I don't want to be bothered with it and I scavenge for the easiest meal I can muster up in my fridge. I am the guiltiest of guilty when it comes to "single person food behavior." Unfamiliar with this behavior? You must eat with other people... I can make a bowl of oatmeal and call it dinner; eat dried ramen as a snack because I've run out of everything else and don't want to go to the store; and I've even sunk low enough to take out a head of lettuce, an unsliced cucumber and put salad dressing in a bowl and created a "salad" by taking a bite of lettuce, dunking the cucumber in the dressing and then taking a bite.... voila! Salad!

Not buying this whole single person methodology of nourishment? It's pretty sad some days but when I don't want to cook I REALLY don't want to cook. Other days, however, I return to the realm of normal eating habits and actually cook things.  Today my stomach was fortunate as I decided to get really fancy and make some good old red beans and rice. This particular recipe is the best one I've found yet and you really have to try it!

For this recipe you’ll need one lb. dry red kidney beans, 6 cups of water, 1/4 lb chopped smoked sausage (I use turkey sausage), 5 bouillon cubes, a chopped onion, 5 minced cloves of garlic, 1 tsp. Creole seasoning, 3/4 tsp. of: cumin, coriander and oregano, 1/4 tsp. of cinnamon and 1/2 tsp of paprika.

Ready for this? I get really fancy and technical when I cook:

This step comes later but I thought I needed a picture here to add suspense...

Combine all ingredients in a crock pot and let cook on high for 5 hours or let simmer all day on low. Yup, I'm a wiz in the kitchen...

When the beans are tender, mash a good majority of them against the side of the crock pot and then season to taste with salt, pepper, or more Creole seasoning. Once the beans are mashed let them simmer on low while you prepare the rice. Bring 4 cups of water to a boil and toss in 1 tbsp. of white vinegar and 2 cups of white rice. Cover your pan and let the rice steam for about 20 min.

At this time, please do the I'm-so-hungry-I-could-eat-my-left-sock dance around the kitchen and try not to think about just eating the red beans sans rice. To distract yourself, chop some green onions for the next step (or cut them up with kitchen sheers like I do).

When you have patiently waited for about 20 minutes, test your rice to make sure it's nice and moist and kind of fluffy. Once mission fluffy rice is accomplished, grab a bowl and dish in about a cup of beans and half a cup of rice. Throw some green onions on top for the "ooh, that's pretty" effect and there you have it- a meal!
 

Cloudy Days and Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie

The past few days in Denver have been uncharacteristically un-Coloradoan... it has been rainy, cold and overcast. Absolutely unacceptable in the land of perpetual sunshine (not even kidding, more blue sky days than Hawaii here)!

 

After afternoon Mass and a few errands I had some time to kill before I headed out to meet up with my brother and his girlfriend, so I decided that this was the perfect kind of day to bake something. I asked Sadie, my trusty side-kick dog, what we should bake and she replied by licking her chops- which is code for Apple Pie because she gets to eat some apple slivers while I prep. 

I vetoed that and opted for one of my favorite dessert recipes: Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie. The recipe is super simple, it takes maybe 15 minutes to throw together and about an hour to bake. 

Now, before we start I should warn all of you wonderful readers that baking is not really my thing. I'm much more of a buy-it-in-a-box-and-add-an-egg kind of girl which explains why I went all out and purchased my pie crust =) 

This recipe is about 10 times easier than making chocolate chip cookies, unless you subscribe to the break and bake mentality that I do. Preheat your oven to 325 and start by beating a couple of eggs until they are nice and foamy.  

Add in some sugar and a little flour... brown and white sugar, the more sugar the better if you ask me. Note: if you want baking to feel like a workout, refuse to buy a new set of beaters after the ones you inherited from your Grandma Rachel stop working because after more than 30 years of heavy use and then two years of very light use they decide that enough is enough.

When everything is all nice and smooth, mix in some butter. Use REAL butter, not margarine since margarine will make your pie very runny. It’s important that your butter is soft.  Not melted, but not soft-ish. Sort of you-can-stir-it-in-with-a-spoon soft. Once everything's smooth add in chocolate chips and some nuts. If you are not nuts about nuts (or you have a kiddo with a nut allergy) just go ahead and skip them. I use chopped pecans because they are AWESOME but toasted almond slivers are also pretty delish.

By now, your pie filling should have the consistency of kind of runny cookie dough. Go ahead and spoon the dough into your crust. When your oven is done preheating, toss your pie in for about 55 minutes. You'll know when it's done when you can stab it with a fork about half way between the edge and the middle and still pull out a clean fork.  Note to all of you high altitude bakers out there: it will most likely take your pie about 65 minutes to bake. 

Take this moment to do a small victory dance around your kitchen and then set about cleaning up the few dishes that this recipe dirties up. When your timer/ fork test duo tell you that the pie is ready for consumption, set it out to cool and go to your freezer for the secret last ingredient: vanilla ice cream. One scoop on top of each slice will truly make everyone you give this to think they've died and gone to cookie pie heaven. 

Serve to all of your friends and become the most popular baker in town, and don't tell them it's a generic Nestle recipe =)

Ingredients:

1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust

2 large eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup real butter, softened (1 1/2 sticks)
1 cup Semi-sweet chocolate chips 

1 cup Nuts

Please forgive the poor photo quality in this post. Although Sadie is an awesome side-kick dog she lacks opposable thumbs, so the chef had to take all of her own pictures while trying not to let her buttery, sugary fingers contaminate the camera.  Edit: Thanks to the Mormon Kitchen Moms at Our Best Bites for letting me substitute my sub-par photos with their awesome ones.