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.