Tropical Storm/Depression Fay is rolling over Baton Rouge today, so there’s nothing to do outdoors. When it rains this much, I like best to sleep, but the DH is snoring with the dogs, so cooking will make a close second. I like to make red beans and refrigerate or freeze them, then eat them another day. Here’s my recipe:
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
- 1 small or medium yellow onion, chopped
- 2 links andouille sausage (Richard’s, for preference)
- 1 lb red kidney beans
- Tony Chachere’s seasoning salt (or a mix of cayenne, salt, and a little garlic powder)
- 1 – 2 bay leaves
- olive oil
In a 2 1/2 quart stock/sauce pot, saute garlic and onion in a little olive oil for about as long as it takes to slice the sausage. Add the sausage. Let that get started, then add beans, and hot water to fill the pot. Add bay leaves, and Tony’s to taste. I like about a 2 second pour – which is probably somewhere between 2 and 3 tablespoons. I usually add a good pinch of sea salt first; I’m don’t handle a lot of cayenne pepper well.
Bring to a boil; reduce to a simmer, and let go until beans are soft – 2 to 3 hours. Serve over white or brown rice. Especially good when you add a chicken bouillon cube to the cooking water.
Refrigerate up to a week, freeze up to a few months. Mmm, mmm, good. Perfect dinner for when you get home after a rough day and don’t feel like cooking. Serve with garlic bread and/or a green salad.
Tomorrow I will start Bob Mixon’s online course which should teach me a little about what is necessary, architecturally, to create a successful implementation of Sharepoint. I’m actually really looking forward to it, since I have been dragging my heels since Sharepoint was dumped in my lap. Read my review next week.
I am also very much looking forward to getting my new hire started, which should help clear my desk enough that I can focus on something – anything – for more than the usual 20 minutes I get to myself now. Maybe I won’t have to resort to completely pretending to be out of the office if I can offload some of my smaller tasks… and maybe I’ll be able to make some progress on the larger projects that I have been wanting to work on for over a year…
Part of the reason that I like knitting is that it is the inverse of work – there is time for perfection, there is time to throw it away and start over again and make it right, or just better. Only these socks I’ve been working on… I’ve totally missed a column of pattern stitches and it is taking every ounce of teeth-grinding I’ve got not to rip back 1/2 of the sock and start again. You don’t notice when they are on, and I’ve got other projects I’d really like to start. Not being a multiple project person, ripping back would mean waiting another month to start on christmas presents that probably already won’t get finished. And I keep finding new things to make! So hard…
I’ve been reading Drucker’s Management lately, which is – totally surprisingly – a truly interesting read. Just about everything has an antecdote to illustrate, and it’s broken into lots of little digestible bits. I find myself picking it up and reading a few pages when I’m ready to throw the socks out the window, which is pretty high praise for what is essentially a textbook. One of the most interesting aspects is the books focus on the knowledge worker and how that differs from the traditional task-oriented worker – something which I really appreciate, being in IT. Lots of goodies there…
