Rice & Beans

Monday blahs, camped out in a movie theater for the first part of the day, went to the supermarket to pick up ingredients for dinner, and spent the rest of the day cooking. Put me in a much better mood.


TODAY'S COOKING
Rice & Beans: An experimental batch, and a large batch. The short grain brown rice says 1 cup of rice to 2.5 cups of water, I used 4 cups of water. For the first time, I took a pound of dry black beans and rehydrated them instead of using canned. In the bean reconstitution process, I threw in half an onion, half a green pepper, bay leaves and salt to give them some base flavor. Made sofrito with 2 onions sauteed to soft, threw in chopped green peppers and softened. Added half a head of minced garlic for a minute, then threw into a blender with a whole bunch of cilantro and blended to smooth. Put beans, rice, water and sofrito into one large pot and simmered about an hour until the rice had absorbed much of the liquid. Salted as I went a long, added a shot of hot pepper sauce and some ground black pepper. Final dish was milder in flavor than I thought it would be, but good. It's currently vegan, but I think a ham bone or something would have done a lot to deepen the flavor.

Chocolate Chip Cookies: After a low-eating day, craved sugar after dinner, so whipped out a bunch of chocolate chip cookies. B bought a mess of Nestle's Morsels a while ago for something I never ended up cooking -- they're hard to eat by themselves because they don't taste that good, chalky, not very chocolately, just fakey, but when put into a cookie with real brown sugar, real butter, real vanilla and real eggs, it kinda saves them.


AM SNACK: 9am, banana


AM SNACK: 11am, wholewheat pretzels, good peanut butter, pickle, water, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5


PM SNACK: 1pm, handful of cashews, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5pm, health salad, pickle, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5


DINNER: 6:30pm, shrimp, rice & beans, cookies, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5