Home Cookin’

Country cobbler from Cooks.com. The recipe is written sort of confusingly. I just cream together the butter and sugar in a stand mixer, then add the rest of it.

Blackberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream.

Breakfast!

Scrambled eggs with pepperjack cheese.

Another dinner:

Mixed green salad with tomatoes, walnuts, shredded Parmesan, and red wine vinaigrette

Really good chicken recipe I’ve been making for years from Cooking Light.

Sauteed chicken breasts with balsamic vinegar pan sauce and noodles with butter and Parmesan.

Lunch!

How you make this chicken salad:

Mix together the following:

chopped chicken

chopped celery

chopped walnuts

dried cranberries

mayo and/or plain yogurt or a mixture of both

salt to taste

Yum!

I usually use beans from a can. It’s easier and not that much more expensive than making them yourself with dried. Plus the few times I’ve tried to make them from dried up here at 6,200 feet, they took days and days (literally). But I wanted some black beans to make soup and I was out of the canned, so I made them from scratch. I adapted a recipe from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen. I didn’t have all the ingredients he called for so I just used some of them.

1 1/4 cup dried black beans, rinsed

6 cups water

1/2  an onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, peeled and  minced

4 sprigs of cilantro

2 dried chiles- I’m not even sure what kind of chiles they were- I’ve had them awhile from another recipe- they were the dark wrinkly ones- I just seeded them then sliced them up- didn’t roast them or soak them or anything.

Put everything in a pot and bring it to a boil, then simmer, partially covered till the beans are soft. After a few hours I was afraid they’d take another few hours so I moved them to the slow cooker so I could let them finish cooking with attention from me. They finished cooking in another hour or two and were really good. Next time I’ll probably just go ahead and start them in the slow cooker and see how that works out.