Recipe Reduction 83-82

Don't worry, it's not turning into a recipes-only blog. I'm just stuck a couple of very long books right now.

Pattypan Squash With Cajun Beans
from Fat-Free Vegan

It's hard to ruin Great Northern beans, but this recipe comes close.

Back in the old days, we called them white beans to distinguish them from pinto beans which were the only other color bean we frequently ate. We might encounter red beans or kidney beans in a salad, but they weren't real beans, and neither were Lima beans or black-eye peas.

Nowadays I'm a bean sophisticate. I have cannellini beans in my pantry, along with mayacoba, Christmas and black. Lentils, chickpeas and green split peas make frequent appearances.  But for a good old-fashioned comfort food, I turn to white beans.

So if beans are so good, why would I want to cook them with onion and celery and stuff and then drown them in cayenne, oregano, basil, fennel and sage? I don't know, but it proved a point--don't mess with beans. If they're too bland for your taste, dress them at the table with sweet relish, hot relish, or salsa. Leave the rest of the junk in the kitchen.


Okra and Rice Casserole
from Southern Living

Not bad, and with the quarter cup butter it might have been good. But I already know that a generous dollop of butter improves almost any dish, so what was the point of making a mediocre dish fattening?

I have a valid complaint to make about the recipe--it's weird. It has you start with making a roux, then chopping up seven vegetables and adding to the roux. Not exactly "quick and easy." Then you take two 8.5 ounce packages of microwaveable basmati rice, microwave them, and assemble the casserole.  What's with that?  I've never even seen microwavable basmati rice, and I would never consider buying a pre-packaged convenience food version of something as simple to prepare as rice!

You pour a cup of dry rice out of the bag, add water, and simmer on the stove for 20 minutes. And if you buy the big bags of rice at the Asian market, you don't even have a plastic bag to throw away.

Is it possible that a person writing a recipe wouldn't know how to cook rice? Or that he  thought his readers wouldn't? Very weird.

So here's my lunch for the week. I hope someone invites me to go out.