Wednesday night I put my beans on to soak!
A soaker of beans I am.
Yup they soaked and soaked and soaked.
Little white navy beans soaking in my blue glass bowl.
I decided that I would put them on to cook when I got home from errand running around noon on Thursday.
Because of the busy state of my life right now, I choose to cook my beans in the crockpot so that I don't have to think about them.
The result is often slightly overcooked beans, but I prefer that just fine compared to the alternative.
Of course I know that I need at least a good 4 hours to get those beans done on the highest setting.
Well...
... I didn't get home at noon yesterday.
I didn't get home at one.
Not even 1:30!
I got home around 1:45.
That is pushing it so close to 2 which is the absolute cut off for bean cooking to be ready for that nights supper.
I had this though.
I felt confident that I could get them in, dust my hands off and call it good.
It was not to be though!
A blinking red message light attracted my attention, so I went there first upon my arrival at home.
It was the message I had been waiting for since April. Some paperwork was finally, yes finally complete and my presence was requested for pick up of said papers.
But...I had to be there by 2:30, and it is a 30 minute drive to get there.
So I left the little white beans soaking in the blue bowl and rushed out to get to my paperwork meeting.
I knew in my heart, at that moment, that the beans would suffer.
What could I do?
I was bound by the circumstances of the day.
Paperwork waits for no bean!!
I arrived back home just in time to meet the school bus which drops off my two youngest children, and their slave labor amounts of homework, which includes but is not limited to math checking, book reading, spelling studying, chart making and of course all the conversation about the day thrown in along with that.
A woman can be mightily distracted in the hours just before dinner while attending to three children and their days worth of living.
I did focus long enough to take the soaking beans from the blue bowl, transferring them to my large soup pot, probably right around 4pm.
How in the world those beans were supposed to be ready for our 6pm supper, I do not know. But I was determined to make it happen.
I turned up the heat nice and high and went about my business.
Sometimes my brain seizes up and I forget obvious things.
All sense of cooking know how, exits the building like a man leaving work on Friday.
See here is the deal. I have been cooking on an electric stove for 14 years now. This house however contains a gas stove which I am simply not accustomed to.
Gas cooks different from electric. Very different!
I put those beans on to cook and left them boiling away determined that they would be ready for supper. I stirred whenever I walked past, urging them with kind words to go ahead and finish up so I could feed my family.
Then I made a fatal mistake. I walked upstairs and began to search the internet for a new cookie recipe.
I do remember at 5:09 pm hollering down to my oldest son to "please stir the beans", which he did. Of course that child doesn't yet know that if you stir the beans and there are only beans there and no apparent water that the temperature should be turned down and water should be added. (He knows now!!)
Around 5:20 I found that I was reading brownie recipes. I mean, I have three awesome cookie recipes and maybe we need a little change of pace around here...I like the pace of brownies.
Suddenly, I smelled a smell.
A burning smell.
A oh man I got so excited about brownies and forgot about the cooking beans smell.
A wow, I didn't know burnt beans smelled so bad smell.
An oh no, now what are we gonna have for supper smell.
Gas cooks so much hotter and faster than electric and my mind is not there yet to keep specific track of the cooking process.
I am never cooking beans on the stove again!!!
I am gonna cook 'em in the crockpot til the day I die!!!
I decided that the mexican food place down the road needed me and my family to eat there last night.
And, I didn't make brownies!
I just couldn't do it.
I didn't trust myself not to mess it up.
My confidence was distressed by burned beans.
So I made my chocolate chip cookies instead...and am a better person for it.
By the way....I really rushed through this post to get it up before heading out the door this morning and hope that despite that you feel to a small degree the urgency and desperation of the bean burning Thursday.
Happy Friday all!!!!
