The Magical Fruit

I've always loved beans.

I grew up in La Puente, a gritty suburb of Los Angeles where some of the white flight from the dust bowl in Oklahoma ended up.  We were them.  My grandfather died on the farm and my dad became the man of the house.

At fourteen.

 After untold years of drought, they came west with the rest of the Okies (I can call them that, I am one) and set roots.  Most ended up in towns like La Puente, El Monte, West Covina and Baldwin Park... any place you could have a chicken or two, the roads may or may not be dirt and the rest of the town Latino.  You stuck out like sore thumb.

Our first house was on Los Angeles Avenue in Baldwin Park, just East of Main St, a quarter mile from the drive through dairy.  We would walk there on hot nights to get ice cream made from the fresh milk.  It was always the best ice cream in the world on a 90 degree night.  The neighborhood was different than us and my Hesian uncles parked bikes on our culdasac to make a point, our neighbors all spoke Spanish.  We would Spanglish a bit but the universal language of the neighborhood was, when the goat went missing, there were great tacos to be had the next night.  Oh so true.  Oh so good.

In my teenage years I always heard, "Ah, Mijo, you are too skinny..." and someone's mom would shove a homemade tortilla with butter in your hand, or a potato and chorizo burrito, menudo, or a plate of refried beans.  I loved those beans and studied method after method, all individual to each family.

Here is my version.

Saute onions, garlic and hot peppers in oil, add beans (use any beans you've canned, they all work - recipe to follow) with liquid and simmer until soft.  Salt and pepper to taste and mash with a potato masher.  Simmer until they hit the desired thickness.  You don't even need to add fat to come up with a great product, simply cook down your onions, garlic and peppers in a bit of hot water, add your beans and off you go.

It brings me back every time.  Weewee's mom used to serve the best beans, but don't tell that to Mrs. Rodriguez...

Pressure Canned Beans:

1 C Beans of choice
Water to within an inch of the top of the jar
Clove of garlic
Teaspoon of salt

Process at 10 lbs for 90 minutes.

All basic canning rules apply.

Eat, eat!!!!  You are too skinny!!!!

How Expensive is Air, Really?

Apples for $2/lb.  Dried apples for $4.29/lb.  Once you step into a grocery store, air becomes rather expensive. 

Here's how to not pay for air.  Get some apples - the size does not matter. So, see if there are some smaller, odd-shaped apples in the clearance section.  We are lucky enough to have an apple tree in our backyard.  When we thin the tree to enable the tree to focus its energy on the remaining apples, we weren't sure what to do with those premature apples we plucked.  Drying them is the perfect solution.



Take about a dozen apples.  I used to waste 1/2 a day coring, peeling and slicing them by hand.  Then I discovered something that had been around for centuries—an apple peeler.  Before I went to work one day, I ordered one on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Apple-Potato-Peeler/dp/B0000DE2SS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343015245&sr=8-1&keywords=apple+peeler).  On my way home from work, I swung by an Orange County Womens Republican Federated (www.ocfrw.org/) annual garage sale in my grandmother's backyard.  I take two steps in and my mother walks up with an apple peeler for $2 and says, "I don't know what this is, but it looks like something you would use."  Patience is a bitch.

Back to the matter at hand.  Core, peel and slice the apples. 

Put them in a bowl of cold water with about 1/4 of a cup of lemon juice.  Let the apples sit in the bowl for at least 20 minutes.  If they're in there for less than 20 minutes, they will brown and have a higher potential of rotting.  If you leave them in there longer than 30 minutes, they will be soggy and take forever to dry.

After 20-30 minutes, take the apples out of the bowl of lemon-water.  Slice each apple so that each ring is sliced.  Place one layer of apple rings per tier of your dehydrator.  Let them dry for about 8 hours—this is what makes dried apples very expensive, the application of air.