you've heard the old joke, no, i don't know that song, but, "humm" a few bars and i'll fake it?
well, i am that sort of cook.
i bought some tires i shouldn't have, and had some auto repair bills and the like, so i am stretching my last few dollars to the end of the month. the menu around the villa gets reduced down to rice and dehydrated potatoes, and stews and casseroles. it's really not all that bad, i probably eat more veggies and the like than i do than when i am living off the fat of the land.
be that as it may, i decided i would make a bean casserole.
so.--
one can of bush's "grillin' beans."
one can of s&w "cuban" black beans, with some stuff thrown in, presumably of a cuban motif. i don't know, how do beans acquire nationality? beats me.
one package of jimmy dean's hot sausage.
some mission tortilla's rounds, that's corn chips to you, but very good ones.
some sun dried tomatoes, just about any brand that puts some stuff in it. don't be stingy.
a whole onion. (it's best if you use walla walla sweets.)
brown the sausage and the onion. mix it all, the whole mess, together until in looks more or less right, and transfer to the corning ware baking ware. (actually, you sort of "plop" it into the baking dishes, ... , no other word seems so descriptive as ... "plop." trust me on this.) but, wait, i forgot the most important thing.-- after mixing, but before "plopping," be sure to put the most important ingredient of all into it, some black strap molasses. i say, that in general, it is preferable if you put in just precisely too much. i prefer the kind with no sulfur. (nor, brimstone.) (by now, you'll have noticed even a complete idiot could make this, and i am well qualified for this kind of cooking. trust me.)
bake the living snot out of it, at about 375 degrees or so. i like to reduce it a bit, take the water out of it, and let the sugars kind of jelly.
(who in the hell said it was health food.)
take it out of the over when the beans just start to get a little crunch to them, and when it has assumed a nice blackened aspect. a bit of an attitude.
it is just ummers, .... , it just tastes pretty dog-gone good, if you ask me. it takes just long enough, and just enough work to peel and dice the onion, and to brown the sausage. sort of a no-brainer, and it comes out surprisingly tasty.
in my humble opinion, i think it is the molasses that does it. you could probably bake shoe leather in molasses, and have it come out fairly well. (but, that's an expedient toward the end of the month. i'll keep you posted.)
john jay @ 04.01.2012
p.s. a little "blue moon" belgian-style pale ale goes along pretty well, too. made in golden, colorado and probably connected, one way or the other, to coor's brewery, i would suspect.
on a weekend, maybe another blue moon doesn't hurt anything, either. just don't drive.
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