Makeshift Dinner

This morning, as I was making our coffee (which takes a while, since we use a Chemex), it occurred to me that we didn't really have any food in the house, and that planning for dinner in the evening, when it was snowy, might be a problem.

So I took a quick survey and discovered we had some dried beans. I got out our crockpot and poured in the beans. Then I chopped an onion and added it. I added two bacon ends, retrieved from our precious supply in the freezer (no Piggery until the spring market!). I added a little bacon grease and some salt. Then I turned the crockpot to low, put the coffee in thermoses, and went about my way.

Judson noticed the beans cooking this morning and offered to pick up anything I'd need for the rest of dinner. I asked him to get a vegetable and some garlic. He picked kale.

Tonight, I finished up dinner in around half an hour. I chopped some garlic and onion and a chipotle in adobo sauce. I boiled the kale until it was just tender in salted water in one pan. In another, I sweated some garlic and onion and then added rice, cooking over medium heat while stirring until the rice had turned a milky white. I then added water and salt, brought it to a boil, covered, and reduced the heat to low to finish cooking the rice.

After the kale was tender, I drained it and rinsed it in cold water to stop the cooking. Then I ran it through our salad spinner. I melted about 2 tsp of bacon grease in the pan I'd used to cook the kale, then sweated the remaining garlic and onion. I added the chipotle, and then the beans and some of their cooking liquid. When the rice was finished cooking and resting, I added the kale to the beans and added some lime juice and some epazote (not really necessary, just interesting).

I served the rice and beans with some flour tortillas we had left from early last week (they seemed fine). Good dinner, cheap, and easy!