I
relaxed on the chesterfield the other night, reading the newspaper while a
clicky corner of my brain was asking, "What shall we have for supper all
week?” I know this is grounds for
divorce but Jimmy never minds. When it's slop like stew, Swiss steak or beans,
he’ll eat it all week happily and I add my own variations, a dash of garlic or
a piece of toast.
I
read a cozy little piece in praise of slow cookers. I was fascinated by the recipe sent in by one
woman. She, like me, always forgot to
soak the beans. She dumped them in her
slow cooker unsoaked and said in seventeen hours she had Lovely Baked Beans.
With
a cry of delight I leapt up, turned on my slow cooker, tossed in beans, plus
molasses and stuff and again relaxed.
Seventeen hours, I thought, that's tomorrow night. In the morning I bethought myself of salt
pork which I never have, so tossed in three leftover sausages and a slice of
ham. The beans at this point were very,
very hard, about the same as when they went in and I felt a tremor of unease,
which I shook off.
That
night the house smelt lovely. The
sausages and ham had overcooked to a deep dark brown; the beans were still very
hard. We had an omelet, which Jimmy doesn't much like. He begged me to fry some
bacon and open the canned beans but I wouldn't.
What's the sense, I asked him, of opening canned dumb beans one night
then eating lovely home-cooked baked beans all week?
On
the third day the meat had turned black, the beans were still hard. We had poached eggs for supper and Jimmy
looked broody which may have been all the eggs but why did he eye me so
malignantly? On the fourth day with
fears of botulism in mind, I tasted the beans and they were still crisp, so
I've given up. Even the dog can't have
them.
Seventeen
hours for unsoaked beans forsooth! Where do they get these fantasies? I'm for
responsible journalism and if unsoaked beans can't cook in over 100 hours, all
I can say is, “Don't leave today, Jimmy! I'll open the canned beans.”
