My kitchen is a complete disaster right now. I’m avoiding it by sitting in the living drinking coffee and not thinking about the fact that I have dishes stacked up everywhere from my afternoon of cooking.
So far, here’s what I accomplished:
- 1 loaf of bread that we’re eating (yum-love this recipe)
- 1 batch of refrigerator bread (from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day)
- 4 bags of pinto beans frozen for later meals plus dinner last night (*NOTE! The hot Rotel is seriously HOT.)
- Double batch of chocolate chip cookie dough made, 1/2 cooked, 1/2 frozen for later (best cookies ever)
- 1 batch of homemade granola made (Even Hunter likes it! He eats it as cereal.)
Those links will take you to the recipes that I use repeatedly. Tried and true.
For the pintos, there’s no recipe so to speak but here’s what I did for this batch:
- 1 pound of dried pinto beans (You can cook smaller amounts.)
- 1 can of Rotel (This time, I used only a 1/2 can of the hot Rotel and it still came out hotter than I expected.)
- 1 tsp of salt
- Pepper to taste
I rinsed, sorted and then soaked the beans overnight. The next morning I put them in the crockpot and added the Rotel, salt and pepper. Rotel is great for pinto beans. It gives them flavor and its a quick add in. Because my crock pot is dying, I cooked them on high for 8 hours. If you have a crock pot that is working properly, you can usually cook them for 4-6 hours on low and they’ll be done with the soak.
Once they were cooked, I scooped out 2 cup portions into freezer bags, added some of the juice to the top and froze them. We’ll toss them in a pot or the microwave for beans during the week and I don’t have to buy canned (plus these taste way better!)
I’m hoping to get a few more things done this weekend. I’ll let you know how it goes. For now, I suppose I should go start on the kitchen and feed these children before our ball game.
