Mark's Famous Beans

Famous with my co-workers anyway. ^_^

This is based off a couple of boston baked beans recipes, that I've adapted over the years.

I take a large crock pot and fill it up very full because this is really a double recipe. First, I put in 2 bags of navy beans (2 lbs total). I suppose you can soak them first, I normally don't bother because I cook everything for 12-16 hours. I usually start right when I get home, and then take everything to work the next day and let it cook some more.

So, put the beans in the crock pot. Add water. Usually I add a beer too, a nice dark thick one like a guiness stout, just for more body. Then I slice up a large ham, 1 lb or so. I slice it in big chunks, after it's cooked 12 hours it will fall apart into smaller pieces anyway. Next I add:

1/2 cup brown sugar, roughly. Makes it taste sweet and good.
molasses. Recipe calls for 6 tablespoons, but I just pour in as much as I want. Lots is good.
2 teaspoons salt, more or less, whatever seems right to you.
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon pepper, roughly.
1 onion, sliced up. Walla Walla sweet onions are best of course.

Other secret ingredients, not in the original recipe:

4-8 cloves of garlic, crushed. Whatever seems good to you.
Liquid Smoke. Just pour some in.
BBQ Sauce. Sometimes I add some, if I have some around.

Cook on high for a couple of hours, then turn it on low and go to sleep. Next day, it should look and smell pretty good. ^_^

At this point I usually chop up several stalks of celery and toss them in, then cook until I go to work. You can add them earlier of course, but they'll cook down so much that they almost disappear, so I like to wait to put them in until a few hours before eating. I pack the beans in a large rubbermaid bin thing for travelling, so it doesn't slosh out of the crock pot (which I wash out), then when I get to work I pour everything back in and turn it up on high for a couple of hours at least.

Anyway, everyone acts like its some fantastic secret recipe, because they turn out pretty good. But it's pretty easy to do. Cooking for a long time on low is what makes it good, the brown sugar and molasses cook into everything.

( This Is True )

Lazy day

Slept in too long.

Made some new live journal pictures to use. Woo.

Went out to CompUSA. Bought a new modem to replace the highly excentric one that I currently have in the computer I use most of the time. Was going to buy Half-Life or Counterstrike, but they wanted $30 for either. Decided it wasn't worth $30. It's a three-year old game at least!

But! I'm supposed to go to a Counterstrike lan party Monday, with... well I don't remember who all. miertam. shandower. virusfox. flinthoof. It's at Brian's house. At the moment, I'm not even sure if I remember who Brian is, or if he knows who I am. Shandower invited me, a decision he may well live to regret....

Drove to a Half-Price Bookstore in Edmonds. No Half-Life there. Spent $17 anyway, on, let's see... illustrated children's classics King Solomon's Mines and The Secret Garden, cheap copy of Wind In The Willows to send to my nephew (one of those books every kid should own -- it should be a law), and a nice trade paperback size copy of Glinda of Oz, for my Oz collection.

Drove to Half-Price Bookstore in the University District. No Half-Life there. I miraculously escape without spending money.

Drove to Dreamstrands, my comic shop. Still open at nearly 8 pm. Loot: Usagi Yojimbo, GTO graphic novel #4, Love HIna graphic novel #5, and the latest Ranma 1/2 video. I feel like I have to keep collecting them, you know, since we're nearly at the end of the line... but man the show really went downhill after season three or four, and here in season seven it sucks nearly every episode.

Also at comic shop, I saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol 2 #2 on the shelf. WHAT? That's coming out already? The comic shop guy was nice enough to dig out the last copy of vol 2 #1 from his private stack in back and sell it to me, so I got both 1 and 2. ^_^

Drove over to Fred Meyer's. They had Half Life: Blue Shift for $19.95. Although the box says "Half Life not required", I am not completely certain that I can buy this and then patch Counterstrike... so I went ahead and bought the Counterstrike box, which was $30 of course.

Darn the system! It's all a ripoff, I tell ya!

Drove to Teriyaki Stop. Got Teryiaki chicken with brocoli stir-fry.

Came home. Watched America's Most Wanted. Ate dinner, vegiatated in front of television.