Bean Efficiency

We've been shying away from using beans in everyday dinners for several months. Then at our most recent hot dog cookout last Saturday, as I was putting out side dishes, I had a thought that baked beans or BBQ beans would be so good with that meal. And I've often thought how quick and easy bean and cheese burritos would be to make on a night when I needed a meal on the table in a hurry. But alas, cooking beans from dried requires advanced planning.

On Monday afternoon I was restocking containers of dried foods in the pantry, and I saw that the pinto bean container was about empty. This was the end of the previous sack of pintos, and I have a replacement sack of pintos ready to be opened. So I decided to cook up all of the older pinto beans and prepare them in a couple of ways that my family would enjoy.

And that's what I did. I cooked up the pintos, refrigerated them overnight (I got a late start cooking beans on Monday), then today I made enough refried beans for 3 family meals of burritos or beans to go on nachos and 2 family meals of BBQ beans to have with a hot dog cookout or to serve with cornbread and salad/fruit for a simple supper type of meal. I've now got 5 family meals of cooked and seasoned beans to help ease us back into putting beans on our meal rotation.

I know, a lot of folks cook up lots of beans at once and can or freeze those cooked beans. I just haven't consistently been one of those people. So this was my version of cooking beans once to eat for several meals.

The Menu Journal

chocolate-dipped strawberries for dessert at last night's gathering

I have this mini notebook that I've been using to record holiday and large gathering menus. I write down on one page the full menu and on the opposing page things I could have done differently or any opinions I had about how the preparations went.

The notebook itself was a freebie notebook I received when doing kitchen help at a tea. It really is tiny, about 3 X 4 inches, the kind that looks like a composition book, if you know what I'm talking about.

There's just enough room on a page for a menu or hints and tips.

I sometimes include whether something was a packaged product or pre-seasoned by a manufacturer, frozen or fresh, etc. Occasionally I add shopping lists, if a dish or recipe is particularly complex or requires unusual ingredients (like a spice I don't normally have on hand).

I began recording this information a couple of years ago, as I would frequently have post-thoughts about a gathering that I wanted to remember. An example, yesterday my son and daughter-in-law came over for a family dinner to celebrate my husband's and my birthday. I served a turkey breast, among other things. Afterward, I thought I should have looked through my jars of homemade preserves to find a spicy or herb-y preserve that would compliment the slices of turkey, something like the rosemary-rhubarb preserve that I make in early summer some years. I also might note if a menu was relatively easy to do.

I look through these menus when I'm planning another dinner, lunch or brunch. I know I can just do the whole thing again, or I can take parts of one menu and combine with parts of another. Having these lists and tips makes the whole planning thing so much easier. 

I keep the menu journal right alongside my most used cookbooks. Someday, perhaps my daughters will enjoy leafing through the various menus as they plan their own family celebrations.