Let’s Eat - Beans Impromptu (pinto, red, black, black-eyed peas)

Let’s Eat — A Writer’s Guide to Cooking
Beans — I can’t imagine life without them. And what a terrifying science fiction story it would make — the final days of a world in which the bean supply had been destroyed by marauders from another galaxy. Imploring empty beanless hands, held out in grief. Bean-starved mothers trying to comfort their despondent beanless children. Meaningless bean proclamations made by world leaders. Scientists desperately seeking the illusive bean gene. Grim — very grim indeed. Anyway, here’s what I did this time around. My plan was to make a nice potful of pintos, doubling this recipe. When I discovered that we had only about a cup and a half of pintos in the larder, I brought out the dregs and bags of the other types of beans we had: black beans, red beans, and black-eyed peas. There were also lentils, green and yellow split peas, and pearled barley, but since I made lentils with green and yellow split peas and pearled barley last week, I decided to leave those out. In all, then, four kinds of beans. Since I wanted to use about four cups (two pounds), I finished off the half-cup of pintos with red beans. Then I thought, well, that doesn’t look like enough, so I added about another two-thirds of a cup. Then I finished that off with black beans. Knowing how black beans can change the look and taste of things, I didn’t want to use too many of them. So for the last cup, I started with about a quarter-cup of black beans, then finished it off with black-eyed peas. A quick summary, then: a cup and a half of pintos; a little more than a cup of red beans; not quite half a cup of black beans; and about two-thirds of a cup of black-eyed peas ( I didn’t quite fill the last cup. It was beginning to look like an awful lot of beans.) The result — again, doubling* the previously linked pinto recipe, minus the lentils and pearled barley — was one of the most flavorful batches of beans we’ve ever had. There were just enough black beans to make things colorful and interesting, and the black-eyed peas lent the dish a wonderful earthy flavor that made me want to go out in the gathering dusk of early summer and plant a garden. *I didn’t double the celery and bell pepper.	Also by William Michaelian POETRY Winter Poems ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4 52 pages. Paper. —————————— Another Song I Know ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1 80 pages. Paper. —————————— Cosmopsis Books San Francisco Signed copies available Main Page Author’s Note Background Notebook A Listening Thing Among the Living No Time to Cut My Hair One Hand Clapping Songs and Letters Collected Poems Early Short Stories Armenian Translations Cosmopsis Print Editions Interviews News and Reviews Highly Recommended Favorite Books & Authors Useless Information Conversation Flippantly Answered Questions E-mail & Parting Thoughts
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Let’s Eat — A Writer’s Guide to Cooking