Beans
Beans At Midnight
Beans, Beans, and More Beans
The Beans of Destiny
Deadhead Beans
Beany Bean Beans

I had a fun weekend, which was pretty good, because I needed one. See, I had to face the whole Jury Duty Pool (everybody into the jury pool!) today, drive to A'don, a two-hour trip, I'll be traveling to B'burg on Wednesday, and back there for the weekend. I didn't want to do any traveling this weekend past.

And so I invited Mr M down for a night of dinner, clarinets, and movies, and I had a little surprise I decided to spring on him at the end of the evening. See, earlier in the week I received my latest ebay purchase. It was a book, a cookbook to be precise, compiled for a charity. (Which sucks, I know, because being sold on ebay, the charity got none of the money. I should send them a few bucks, and just may do that.) Anyway, the selling point of this cookbook is that all the recipes were submitted by celebrities, one of them being no less a person himself than Academy Award-winning actor Alan F Arkin. For some reason, I just became consumed with giggles thinking that I'd plan a dinner for Mr M, make the Arkin recipes, and after they were eaten, I'd tell him where I got the dishes. Not the dishes we were eating off of, the dishes we'd just consumed.

OK, so in retrospect it's not the laff-riot I was thinking of, but at the time it seemed pretty damn funny.

I had a little sleep Saturday morning, got up lateish, and prepared to go to the grocery. And that's where the first problem of the day hit me square in the face. As I was in the bedroom putting in my contact lenses, nude (now there's a picture for you to lose sleep over), hair dripping, I kept hearing a sizzling sound. I thought, "Oh, shit, I've left the coffee pot on and the coffee bits are dripping onto the hot plate," and so I got up to turn it off. I saw that the coffee pot was off, and so I went exploring. And found that the sizzling sound was coming from behind the door where my water heater was.

Now, I'd never heard this sound before, and it worried me, so I dislodged the door (it's not the kind you open, it's the kind you, well, dislodge), and had a look. The heater was indeed making a definite sizzling sound, and the pilot light was really big. I mean, really, really big. Flames were licking the bottom of my water heater. It was quite disconcerting, and I decided that I was going to blow to smithereens right there in the Poderosa, naked, and with a dirty house, not that that mattered because it would soon become a pile of rubble. I called my sister's house on the off-chance they might be home. They were, and I asked her to dispatch her husband forthwith to look at my water heater. And I put on some clothes, because even blown to bits, I'd like those bits to be found wrapped in something besides skin.

By the time the brother-in-law got to the house, the sizzling had quit, and the flame was back where it was supposed to be, but I let him in anyway, apologizing for the fact that he was probably wasting his time and that he was about to enter a house that wasn't so much a house at the moment but a hovel. He said OK, had a look at the heater, and seemed to think it was no big deal, that maybe my water heater was just working overtime from where I'd showered. Even though I shower all the time and don't hear that sizzle afterwards. He told me how to turn off the gas in an emergency (if can I find a wrench as the house is blowing to smithereens), said all would be well, went to look at the hole in my yard he's been promising to fill for roughly a year, then headed back home.

And then I got hinky.

All of a sudden I started to smell gas, and my eyes started to burn. Now, you know me, and what's worse, I know me even better, and somewhere I knew that this was all in my head and that I was suffering from the aftermath, a little fight or flight, but I still went and opened all my doors and windows. Then just to see if I was safe, I popped out a lighter and fired that baby up. I didn't blow to smithereens, but it still didn't help, and well, I was hinky and that was that. But I tried to put it aside, finished getting ready for the day, made a list of recipe ingredients I needed from the grocery, and headed out the door, hoping the Poderosa would still be waiting for me when I came back.

And it was.

While I was at the grocery, I encountered the second problem of the day. Apparently celebrities eat fancy foods that we hicks in B'field aren't familiar with. I couldn't find some of my ingredients. Oh, I guess I should tell you at this point in the story that the dishes were Roquefort-stuffed Burgers and Baked Beans. I had a hell of a time finding mango chutney, but I was expecting that, and as hard a time finding Roquefort cheese, which I wasn't expecting at all. In fact, I started trying to come up with ideas for a mango chutney substitute, and guess what. I couldn't think of one, because I don't know what chutney really is. I mean, what would you use? Anyway, I didn't have to go through that mind-bending drama, because I found some chutney and the first ingredient on the jar was mangoes, and so I was ready to roll. It was 2:45, I was expecting Mr M about 3:30, and so I got home to my still-in-one-piece house and thought I'd get started on the beans to get them prepared and in the dish before he got there. Then we could play or watch movies, and I'd slide them in the oven when the time came.

Mr M arrived at about 3:15, and the first bean hadn't gone into the dish. The first onion wasn't sliced, and in fact, the dish was still in the cabinet. And this presented the third problem of the day.

I asked Mr M when he walked in if he wanted to play clarinets, or did he want me to do the bean prep. He said bean prep, as he was getting hungry, so I started, hiding the cookbook from him the whole time so he couldn't spoil my joke for me. I put all the ingredients together, and though I didn't like the way it looked, I figured Mr Arkin must surely know what he's doing in the whole bean milieu, and I got ready to put the dish in the refrigerator to let it rest while we frolicked around the Pod.

Now.

Now, I read these recipes, really I did. However, I read them earlier in the week when I was planning my little ruse, and as you all know if you've read the blog lately, I'm going flat-ass nuts. And so I even though I'd read all of what was before me, my eyes just about popped out of my head when I saw at the bottom of the page, "Bake covered for three hours." It was 3:50 at this point.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "This says cook for three hours!" Then I kept reading.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "This says cook for three hours covered, then uncover and cook for two more hours!"

I was looking at five hours worth of beans.

And it was at this point, after the water heater and the mango chutney and the hiding of the cookbook and the five hours of beans, that I just collapsed with the helpless giggles. Maybe it was the gas fumes I was imagining, I don't know, but I was weak at the knees, and couldn't tell Mr M why I couldn't stop laughing.

And so we played some clarinets and argued a good bit (we do it for fun, you know), watched a movie I didn't like (sorry, Mr Chaplin), and then I decided I'd start the burgers even though it was only about 7:15 and I still had way more beans in my future. I had some salad, scoured around and found some instant (but good instant) mashed potatoes, and I announced that the beans were for dessert, but that he was eating those beans because the success of my evening depended on it.

I made the burgers, got out the salad, did the potatoes, and we had that. Now, I'm not really so much the Roquefort fan at all, but I didn't think these burgers were half bad. I was chowing down, all proud of myself, and I (Miss Validation 2007) asked Mr M, "So, how are the burgers?" He said something while chewing and I didn't quite get it, so I asked for a repeat. "I don't like them," he said. And I began to cry.

Well, not really. I began to mock cry, waah-waahing while actually laughing my ass off, but again, I couldn't tell him why. All I could say was, "Well, wait for the beans," and leave it at that. And even though my burger was quite satisfactory, I could only eat half of it, and have decided that maybe my new dieting regime should be to stuff everything I eat with Roquefort cheese, but maybe that's another blog for another time.

Now, by my calculations, the five-hour beans should be making their debut at around 9:00. 9:00 came and I didn't think they were quite ready to make their appearance. They were so liquidy. I'm used to baked beans being rather thick, and these were more like what we call around here soup beans. So on Mr M's suggestion I skimmed a little liquid off the top, put them back in the oven, and let them, well, bean some more.

They made their appearance at 9:30, I doled us each out a little cup of them, and we went into the living room to try them out.

I thought they were OK, but they didn't really give me any beangasms. However, Mr M seemed to be quite fond of them, and pointed out what to me had the been the selling point of this recipe from the get-go. Coffee. There was brewed coffee in these beans, and though I couldn't taste it, he seemed to like it quite a bit.

And this is when I decided to let the cat out of the bag. I showed him the cookbook, told him whose recipes we'd eaten that evening, I was cracking up, and - well, he wasn't. He got that, "Yes, the joke was on me" look, but didn't laugh hysterically. Then I just kept going on about the beans and how I was sure I'd done something wrong, he kept asking me if I followed the instructions to the letter, I said yes, but that maybe there was something in that bean prep I did that ruined it all, for these were nothing like the beans of my familiarity.

"Well, maybe Alan Arkin fucked up!" Mr M shot back, and this made me laugh even harder.

And so, Mr Arkin, I'm sure you're a lovely person and a wonderful cook, and you apparently have five hours to make beans, but your dinner of this Saturday past wasn't a screaming success. Mr M proclaimed that he wouldn't go to your house for dinner if you offered the burgers, but would consider it for the beans, and even went on to suggest that they might be a good dish to have at the big soiree he's throwing next weekend for the Sauerkraut Band.

If you have another five hours to spare, you're invited to come to his house and fix them up. Because I'm not so keen.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* By the way, somewhere around about hour four of the bean project, I got an email from Stennie with a link to a webpage containing a recipe for actress Jean Arthur's own fudge. Had I only seen it sooner.
* You all did extremely well on the "Guess The Picture" game. Between you, you got them all. Barbie Doll legs, ice (in the icemaker), the new vacuum (the hint was to look at the white powder at the bottom of the picture), a Virginia Tech pom pom, and the fuzzy inside of my pink clarinet case.