Beans Beans Beans

The musical fruit! And we had quite the concerto last night!

It's difficult doing a menu plan when I never really know what times Keith will be here and what times he will want to eat, and will he want a full on dinner or just something light because he needs to take a nap or whatever, but I'm still trying to be a little creative with the whole it's time to eat thing.

Yesterday I decided to make dinner for lunch and did some applesauce glazed boneless pork chops and Hard Rock Cafe Bar-B-Que Beans. I had forgotten that I had one of those top secret restaurant recipe cookbooks in my quite large stash of books, cookbooks and otherwise here at the house. I was going through the recipe book, automatically rejecting anything that called for big long lists of obscure ingredients, but pulled out some that sounded quite tasty and not too hard to make, this recipe being one of them.

It was DELICIOUS but next time I make it I will take some Beano first because oh my did I ever get gassy last night! Maybe it was because I ate two helpings of the beans at lunch and another one at dinner, but gassy indeed.

Here is the recipe.

2 cans pinto beans with liquid, 15 oz cans, which is actually a lie because nothing comes in a 15 oz can, they are all 14.75 ounces but anyway, two normal sized cans of beans, not drained.
2 tbsp water
2 tsp cornstarch
1/2 cup ketchup (or catsup if you prefer that spelling and I always want to pronounce it 'cats up' when I see it written that way)
1/3 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp diced onion (I always use sweet onion in just about anything calling for onions)
1 tsp prepared mustard (you know, what goes on hot dogs)
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp coarse ground pepper (or whatever ground you have at home)
1/2 cup shredded pork or leave this out if you don't have any pork laying around. You can also put some cooked crumbled bacon in instead but I was too lazy to cook and crumble any bacon.

1/ Preheat oven to 350
2/ Pour entire contents of the cans of pinto beans into a casserole dish that has a lid. I used my 2 qt round pyrex dish since that is the only one I have with any kind of lid.
3/ Dissolve the cornstarch in a small bowl with the 2 tbsp of water. Add this solution to the beans and stir.
4/ Add the remaining ingredients to the beans in the dish, stir well and cover.
5/ Bake for 90 minutes or until the sauce thickens. Mine never did thicken all that well, but anyway. Stir every 30 minutes. After removing the beans from the oven, let them cool 5-10 minutes before serving.

Again, DELICIOUS! For some they may be a little too vinegary, but I really really liked them, which is kind of obvious since I ate three helpings yesterday.

And today is my birthday and also our 10 year anniversary. Can I get a big WHOOP? Actually it is not that exciting although I do kind of wonder that we've made it 10 years without strangling each other as we are both not all that easy to live with sometimes. We don't really have anything planned, Keith is still out on the rails somewhere so will be sleeping when he gets home, but maybe we'll go get a pizza or something tonight and stick a candle in it. Being 58 is not all that exciting either, except now I only have 4 more years until I can start drawing my social security. And I'm not waiting until I'm 65 or 67 or 70, the difference in how much I would get is not all that much and I want my money the minute I can legally start getting it.

Happy Birthday Jennifer Mimi Sitting Again and The Evils of Splenda

First off, Happy Birthday Jennifer!

Here is a cat picture for you. Yeah, gee thanks, Mom. Just what I've always wanted!

I was going to do some dusting this morning since I still haven't cleaned our knick knack cupboard in the living room after the dust storm on Sunday, and got as far as putting a cleaning rag on the counter. I came back later to find Little Miss Must Sit On Things sitting on it. It's a folded up cleaning rag so only a small part of her actually fits on it, but even small things must be sat upon apparently.

You can just barely see a corner of it under her.

And now for the Splenda part of my post. I've been using Splenda instead of sugar for quite a few years now and have also been gassy for quite a few years, something I just assumed was a part of getting older or eating too much fiber or whatever. But, the past few weeks I've been having really bad stomachaches and extra bad gas and cramping and just not feeling well. I'm of course thinking stomach cancer or some other horrible disease of the digestive system but then got to thinking about the splenda. We had discussed whether or not it gives you gas in the past and had googled it and yes, it can. I had tried some other sweeteners, stevia and monk fruit, but the generic knock-off splenda is a lot cheaper than those so I went back to it. Much to my stomach's distress, I guess. I threw away the splenda and got a stevia/sugar blend that tastes good and whaddya know, my stomachaches are largely gone and I'm not so gassy anymore.

Moral of the story? Sometimes it's better to pay more and not have a stomachache and gas.

Sugar Free Ice Cream and Other Stuff

I love ice cream (who doesn't). But, I'm not supposed to eat ice cream because it's full of sugar, so...when I saw some new sugar free ice cream in the freezers at Vons, I'm all like YESSSS! It's a brand called Clemmy's and it's totally sugar free and natural and kosher and all that and comes in the usual chocolate, vanilla, butter pecan, and a chocolate chip peanut butter. I tried the chocolate a week or so ago and it was good, not too chemical sweetener tasting, but I woke up in the middle of the night with some bad gas pains after eating it. I didn't really connect the two at the time. But I should have. I had some of the chocolate chip peanut butter yesterday after lunch, and yes, I ate too much of it because for me eating ice cream is like potato chips, you can't just stop at one. It's more like uh-oh, I can see the bottom of the carton so I'd really better stop.

Well, a few hours later my stomach started to really hurt and I was having REALLY BAD gas, not just REALLY BAD gas but REALLY STINKY REALLY BAD gas and I'm finally realizing that the sugar free ice cream is giving me the REALLY STINKY REALLY BAD gas. Because it's sweetened with zylitol, the same sweetener in sugar free candy which I don't eat because it gives me REALLY STINKY REALLY BAD gas.

So, no more sugar free ice cream for me because the pain (AND STINKY BAD GAS) was so not worth it.

We are still waiting to hear from Savage if Keith has a job or not. He went over there on Monday and talked to them and they say they are waiting for the go ahead from corporate headquarters and there is a lot of work piling up and they really need him back, but we are starting to think that they are just jerking him around and hoping he will go ahead and find another job. He hasn't heard from the cement plant yet either so that prospect isn't looking so good either. He's going to give them the rest of the week and then if no phone calls give up on them and get out there Monday with resume in hand. I am getting a little worried.

He's been keeping busy with working on the unfinished kitchen, putting up the shelf he wanted above the window over the sink, and getting the doors out to put back on the pantry and laundry closet. He hung the pantry door up although it's not painted yet and has no handle on it, and the kitchen looks really strange with a door back up and not being able to see the messy pantry closet and the trash cans. You get so used to how something looks, even if it looks bad.

He got distracted, though, and started pulling out the wood he's been saving for the back patio cover that he's been wanting to build for the past 3 or 4 years and was messing around with that stuff, so I fully expect the kitchen to not get finished but at least we'll have a door on the pantry even if it's not painted.

He even put up a couple of platforms in the tree out front for Lucy to sit in.

High Fiber

I am always on a quest for foods high in fiber. Metamucil after dinner, double fiber bread, check the ingredients on the box of whatever to see if there is any fiber at all in it.

So, when looking at the tortillas in the grocery store planning to make some bean burritos (beans and their wondrous fiber) I decided on the whole wheat with flax and grains and loads of fiber and only 100 calories healthy tortillas.

Never again.

I really don't like whole wheat tortillas, they just don't taste right, and these extra whole wheaty flax 100 calorie tortillas tasted even worse. Keith said they tasted like eating mold. Yum.

And then not twenty minutes after eating my moldy tasting burrito my stomach started to hurt.

There is such a thing as too much fiber in your tortilla. Too much gas producing stomach ache making fiber. I'll stick with the unhealthy low fiber white flour tortillas from now on.

I can't eat those high fiber granola bars either, unless I want to spend the rest of my day passing gas that is. I bought some Kashi bar things, they look like a peanut log with nuts on the outside of them and an almost candy bar like filling, and they taste good but again, twenty minutes later your stomach starts to swell up with gas and hurts and I'm sorry, but that's not a fun way to get your fiber.

What's weird is the double fiber bread doesn't bother me at all.