Beans and Grains Anonymous

Hi, I'm Heather, and I have a dried goods problem.*

As I've hinted at before, I have this thing for beans.  And grains.  I don't know where it came from; like most things, I blame The Husband, as I had never encountered a dried bean before I met him and now look at me. 

But, whatever the reason, it's clear that this little issue isn't going away anytime soon.  So I decided to document my current bean-and-grain situation, in hopes that visualizing the extent of the madness might help me come to grips with my addiction.  As they say, the first step is to admit you have a problem.†

First, the beans:

Also shown: my classy Gladware collection.

There you have it: our 24 varieties of bean.¥  Aren't they pretty?  Doesn't it make you want to go out and buy some beans, to marvel in their colors and sizes and...

NO.  Must stay strong.

So, yeah - 24 types of beans. 

Ok, incredibly nerdy taxonomy‡ time: 

Our 24 beany varieties represent seven genera (Cicer, Lens, Vicia, Glycine, Vigna, Cajanus, and Phaseolus).  Half of the beans come from the Phaseolus genus, with nine varieties being of the P. vulgaris species (your common New World beans, like kidney and pinto and such).  The second largest genus represented is Vigna (beans of Asia), which includes most lentils and azuki beans.

/taxonomy

In addition to beans, we/I have also accumulated a lot of grains, somehow.∆

Celiacs and other glutenphobes - look away!

In columns from left to right, we have: corn (polenta, posole); grains-but-not-really (quinoa, couscous, amaranth); rice; and wheats/other cereal grains (last two columns).  For those of you keeping track, spelt is my favorite grain.

Well, now that I've seen my beans and grains laid out like this, I am simultaneously impressed and ashamed.∞  No matter what these photos may suggest, I am really trying to keep this whole bean situation under some semblance of control.  Though I'm pretty sure that, in addition to learning old-timey skills for food preparation, having a large store of dried goods would be a helpful bargaining chip in a post-apocalyptic world...£

Next time on "Trips Through the Pantry," perhaps I'll show you my collection of 33 loose-leaf teas.  Or my 20-something varieties of dried pasta.  Or my 60ish different kinds of spices.  Or the oil and vinegar shelf.

Maybe I really do have a problem. 

A tasty little problem.
__________________________________________________________
*Hi, Heather.
†The second step is probably to not buy two more pounds of beans while at the Ferry Market in San Francisco last weekend.  But it's not really my fault - I was there with a friend who is definitely a Bean Enabler.  You can't just expect me to not buy anything when she's standing there buying $30 worth of beans, now can you?  No, you can't.
¥Eagle-eyed readers with a rudimentary knowledge of numbers might notice that there are 25 containers in this photo.  However, two of the faux-Tupperwares contain the same type of bean; once is a spiced bean, and the other is plain.  Thus, there are actually only 24 distinct varieties of bean.  So don't write me angry letters.
‡This (taxonomic classification) is what I do every week at the museum.  It's either a short bit about bean genera or a long rumination about the complexities of mollusk taxonomy.  I figured getting dorky about beans would go over better, but if anyone's interested in gastropod identification and classification, I can talk about that.  Oh lord, can I tell you about that.
∆ I think it has something to do with gnomes.  Grains - ??? - PROFIT?
∞Impshamed?  Ashpressed?  Lupus?
£ Seriously, if society as we know it were to collapse tomorrow (or Tuesday, depending on your level of optimism re: mid-term elections), I could survive pretty well on all the stuff in the pantry (assuming I had access to potable water, a pan, and someone to make fire, since I don't know how to use a lighter.  Or a match.  Maybe I should start learning how to summon flame with flint and tinder, or else knowing how to make butter isn't going to be much use when the lights go out and the darkness creeps in, eyes glowing and fangs bared, the wind howling a night dirge to a moonless sky.).

It's Janet - Miss Jackson if you're pasty. (UPDATE)

Ok, first things first:  this post is about pasties, the food (where "pasty" rhymes with "nasty").  Not the other pasty, which rhymes with "hasty" and is only occasionally edible.*  Make sure you remember this, or else this post will get confusing and probably rather weird by the end.^

So, pasties.¥

The pasty is, essentially, a self-contained pot pie.  Originating in Cornwall (or Devonshire, depending on who you believe), it was a common food for Cornish tin miners who were unable to come back aboveground for lunch.  The thick, dense crust, which was folded over the filling and crimped closed, made the pasty easy to eat with one hand, which is quite useful when you're hundreds of feet underground and covered with dirt and soot and arsenic.§  The dirty bit at the end, where the miner had been holding the pasty, was then discarded; this not only prevented the miner from consuming arsenic and dying of poisoning,ˇ but the leftover bit of crust was believed to appease the mine demons.‡

I am not a Cornish miner.◊  But, I do certainly like mouse books, which is of course where I first learned about pasties.±  They also come up in another series of books I enjoy, this time about a cat who solves mysteries, sort of.∞  Anyway, these cat books take place in northern Minnesota (or Michigan or something), where pasties˚ are common.  So it comes up a lot, and this is where I learned the pronunciation and the traditional filling (steak, potatoes, onions, rutabaga).

I decided to finally attempt to make pasties€ after a visit to the Cornish Pasty Co. in Tempe.  I think I got the Vegetarian Cottage Pie, but don't actually remember.  Whatever it was, it was pretty tasty, but I definitely came away thinking I could make it myself.  Also, after the day of chili and cornbread (and pie), I had decided that, PHX weather be damned, I was going to start using my oven and eating like it was autumn, even if it killed me.

Finding a good pasty recipe is a complicated undertaking, mostly because of the small handful of variations and the vehemence with which those variations are defended by their respective camps.  This is a good place to start (and possibly be overwhelmed) with your own pasty making.†  (The sweet pasties at the bottom of the page also sound tasty - like a portable fruit pie, but vastly superior to this.)  I actually got my crust recipe from here, because it seemed a bit lighter; I was pleased with the result, but am thinking that a proper shortcrust would be good too.  As for filling, I was distinctly untraditional: I blanched and mashed some potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower, then added that to a pan of onions, garlic, bay leaves, rosemary, cremini mushrooms, and peas (a slice of smoked Gouda cheese went on top of one of the pasty fillings, too).  We ate them with a bit of homemade ketchup and were full of autumn (sort of) cheer.

Also, sorry - no pasty (of either variety) photos today (I forgot to take one).  Instead, I offer a picture of Pannekuchen tangled up in a ball of yarn.

Not a magic cat.

UPDATE: If, like The Husband, you know nothing about music from albums that have sold more than 2,000 copies and are thus sellouts, this title is a reference to the 1986 Janet Jackson song, "Nasty."
*But significantly more related to the person in this post's title.
^Though the other pasty (the...article of clothing?) would be relevant to the crafty nature of this blog.  I could turn it into a side business:  Hasty Pasty, for the stripper on the go!
¥The food.  Stay with me here, people - we've got a lot to get through.
§No old lace, though.  Too frilly and murdery.
ˇSooner than he would just by being covered in arsenic all day, I suppose.
‡No, really.
◊Or minor.  Or myna.
±Again, I am talking about the food.  The quests that the mice go on are not for sparkly tassels so that they can go about topless; besides, they are mice and they don't have the same social mores as humans so don't worry about it anyway.
∞And before The Husband gets on here and starts making fun, let me just say that the cats themselves to do not actually solve any mysteries; their owner, a wealthy former newspaper reporter, does.  The cats cannot talk; they are normal cats.  Though one of the cats is sort of magic, but not really - even if he has extra whiskers and that might make him more perceptive and/or magical, he just does the things that cats do and his owner connects the dots and then the bad guys somehow get caught.  If you've ever owned a cat, you would know what I'm talking about if I had any idea how to actually describe what I mean.
˚I am mostly referring to the food, but since I have never been to northern Minnesota or the UP, I cannot comment on the popularity of the hasty pasty.
€I give up.  Pretend this is whichever one you want.
†Also, be sure to check out the Star-Gazing Pasty recipe at the bottom of the page.  Trust me.  Ignore the bit about herrings if you need to.

apparently all caps is not acceptable title behavior.

Faithful readers!*  I have been remiss in my blogging, but I have a reason!

So, remember when I went to New York and it was autumn and lovely, and I mentioned how Arizona decided to tone it down a bit when I returned so that I could go outside and not get too stabby?

Yeah, that's over now.

Since I've gotten back to PHX, the temperature has decided to hover perilously close to 100º, which is exactly the same thing that happened this time last year, when I first arrived in Arizona.^  I had all these grand designs for fall cooking and baking, but the heat broke my resolve.  Fortunately, The Husband stepped up his game, and we decided that maybe, just maybe, if we pretended like it was fall and we made fall foods, perhaps we could trick the weather into changing.  

And one of the great fall foods, of course, is chili with cornbread (with smuggled apple pie, oh yes!).  I had asked The Husband to write about it, because he made it, but he responded, "Blearghª, it's just chili."  So, herewith I am going to try to re-create the chili-making.

First, choose 10 or so varieties of bean from our almost nonsensical collection.‡  Next, because you are clearly anticipating a long, hard winter that will require sustenance, through several handfuls of each bean type into the pressure cooker.  Put pressure cooker on the stove, then check email and Google reader.  Once beans cook, start chopping tomatoes (or use canned tomatoes, whatever), and dig out the frozen corn and peppers.  Chop some (a lot of) garlic too, and some onions, and throw everything into a pot and let it simmer.  Go read a few blog posts and comment on Facebook.  Put in spices.  Taste, then add more.  Yell at NPR story.  Add some more pepper, because everyone has tastebuds of steel, right?∆  Spend 20 minutes sifting through prodigious music collection to find perfect album for chili.  Serve.  Go get more milk, since your wife drank both your and her glasses before finishing even half her dinner.

So, yeah, it was spicy.  But!  It was tasty, especially when you add some sour cream and avocado and cheese, all of which cuts the mouth-burnination quotient greatly.  There was also green sweet cornbread (made with honey and blue cornmeal) and fig-cranberry-apple-ginger pie.  I don't know much about the construction of these two delights, other than that the pie contained Jonagold and Pippin apples (Pippins are kind of my new favorite apple, by the way); if you want the details, you'll have to ask The Husband.  Or just raise a ruckus, and perhaps he'll cave to peer pressure and finally write the damn post himself.

Next up, pasties!  (Not those kinds, pervert - this is a family blog.)

*All five of you!
^Happy One-Year-and-One-Day anniversary, PHX!  Except that it's not happy, because you're a punk and like trotting out heat waves like show ponies.
ªAt least, I think that's what he said.  It is very hard to transliterate guttural mumblings.
‡Please note that this makes up less than half of our total bean hoard.  Like I've said before, we (I) have problems.
∆Wrong.

A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

Summer in Arizona, to be blunt, is terrible.  It is truly horrifying to wake up at 8am and have it already be 95ºF, and for it still to be in the triple-digits at 11pm.  Two weeks without air conditioning in the car didn't help matters; it actually got so hot in the car once that my eyes STARTED BURNING.*

The other problem with Arizona summers is that they drag on.

I thought I smelled brimstone.

Seriously, they seem to never end; you'll be taunted with a day or two of pleasant (read: mid-90s) weather, and then your dreams will be crushed with an extended heat wave.  So, in an effort to retain some of my quickly dissipating sanity,∞ I went home to WNY for some family time and a much-needed respite from the heat.

And New York did not disappoint.  My first day home, I woke up, made a cup of tea, and sat out on our back deck and crocheted for a couple of hours.  This was what I was working on:

Let us hope certain family members do not read this blog, or else the jig is up!

And this was what I saw whenever I looked up from my yarn:

Is it still leaf-peeping if it's my backyard?

The next day was cold and rainy, which was pretty much exactly what I was hoping for.  You know what's good on a cold, rainy day, apart from yet more tea and several hours spent reading whilst cuddling with cats?

This.

After much cajoling, I managed to get a ride down to the Cider Mill, where I acquired a cinnamon sugar doughnut, a buttermilk doughnut, and a quart of cider†.  The cider was gone within a couple of days.  The doughnuts barely lasted 30 minutes.

That night, as part of my on-going effort to teach my family the value of vegetables, I improvised a little vegetable barley soup, full of good things like kidney beans and turnips and cabbage and broccoli and onions and carrots and celery (and barley).  I also got to bust out the crock pot, the likes of which I haven't used for years; the soup turned out good, after an extended cooking to get the beans to soften (crunchy, undercooked food seems to be a trend, here).  With a good hunk of crusty bread, it's a pretty solid way to end a chilly day.  Also, the weather started cooperating.

It's nice to be back in a place where one can stand in the middle of a main road and not get run over.

This was also the night where I taught one of our cats to play tetherball.

Not very athletic, this one.

It was a good game, until the RattyCat fell over and refused to get back up.

Friday involved more tea, more cider, a trip to the farm stand, the worst allergy attack I've had in months, the consumption of A LOT of Benedryl, an 8pm bedtime, and 12 hours of sleep.

Fortunately, this left me well-rested for Saturday, when my mother, my grandmother, and I drove up to the Finger Lakes to go to the Windmill (a large outdoor flea/farmers'/craft market) so I could get some good apples, visit wine country, and go to the best ice cream place in New York.

We used to go to the Windmill a lot when my family would go camping on Keuka Lake, the smallest (and most y-shaped) of the Finger Lakes.  My brother accumulated quite the Pog collection from there¥, and I always buy lots of vegetables and baked goods from the Mennonites.  This time, not only did I get some excellent apples, I also got this sweet apron:

Me?  Owls?  What a surprise.

Apron Owl is watching you master cakes.

and adopted this hand-carved decoy, named Rutiger, who joins Declan as our guard ducks.

Quack.

Onward we went to Seneca Lake, where we visited my favorite winery and I loaded up on my favorite wine.^  It's also quite pretty there, up on the hill overlooking the lake.

Mmm, future wine.

We also stopped at a couple of other wineries, but enough booze:  what about the ice cream?  Well, after over 150 miles of driving (and several missed turns), we arrived.

Oh, my mother will be displeased with this photo.

This is it.  Cayuga Lake Creamery in Interlaken, NY.  (Incidentally, we saw our third Finger Lake of the day:  can you guess which one it was?)ª

The ice cream selection:

The ice cream:

Don't be thrown off by the forced perspective: the ice cream cone was not as tall as the building.

This was mine: after much indecision, I decided on a scoop of sea salt caramel on top of a scoop of gianduia in a homemade waffle cone.

The verdict?  Delish.  And pretty reasonably priced, too; they were substantial scoops, and I actually feared I wouldn't be able to finish mine.£  Was it worth it?  Opinions most likely differ amongst the travelers that day, but I'm certainly glad I went.‡

Sunday morning found me waking up well before dawn to catch my flight home.  Arizona decided to greet me with sub-100º temperatures, which I appreciated.  The Husband and I have already planned an apple pie-baking day to celebrate my glorious return (and my bounty of apples), and Pannekuchen seems to have made a new friend.

Not shown: five seconds later when Pannekuchen tried to bite Rutiger's beak.

*Also, having to wear mittens when it is 115ºF so you don't burn your hands on the steering wheel while driving?  What?  No.
∞I'm going to say it looks like this: 

†This is normally where I would go off on a ranting tangent about how unpasteurized cider is so much better than pasteurized, and how things have never been the same since the fascists took unpasteurized cider off the market just because a few kids and/or old people got sick or died or something, but it's not like there wasn't a warning on the label and I drank the stuff for years and never got sick and the problem is today's kids being all mollycoddled, and besides a little exposure to bugs or bacteria is good for you and GET OFF MY LAWN, WHIPPERSNAPPERS.  But I won't.
¥Seriously.  One summer, that's all he bought.  I'm still not sure that he ever knew that Pogs were used in some sort of game; if he did, he certainly didn't know how to play it.  We keep a lookout for them, as the stall is still there (though it now sells marbles and rulers and cassette tapes).
^The 2008 Lemberger, if you're curious.
ªIt was Cayuga Lake.  If you didn't figure that out, you might want to go back and re-read the previous sentence.
£I lead a rough life.
‡Not least because this means that I am now winning in the (unspoken?) competition between The Husband and I over visiting all of these ice cream places.  IN YOUR FACE, HARD J!