Showing posts with label cookin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cookin. Show all posts

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Prickly pear cactus jelly, peppers, and beans.

Last Friday Mar 13 I received a gift in the mail from a blogger friend from southern USA. All I asked for was "some prickly pear cactus jelly", and I was going to buy it. She insists, it is a gift. What I got was a box full of goodies. It was from "Cowgirl". She runs the blog http://cowgirlscountry.blogspot.com/ . Jeanie and her way of life is what it is all about in my book. Seems to me, she completely lives off the land. Thanks for the goodies Jeanie. I owe you one.






The cactus jelly is excellent on toast. She also sent some cayenne and ancho peppers out of her garden, and a bag of Anasazi Beans. It was like she read my mind on the beans. I have never had much to do with dried beans, but not too long ago, I was kinda trying to find some things out about them, as I was planning on making a purchase just to try them out for a change. Well here they are. Anasazi? I've never heard of that one before. And now I know a little bit about the cave dwelling Anasazi indians and some other interesting facts from long ago also. I get smarter everyday. lol.


This morning I washed about 1/3 of that bag and put it in a bowl of water and let it sit all day. Then I proceeded to sort of follow one of Jeanies recipes. http://cowgirlscountry.blogspot.com/2009/01/anasazi-beans-with-jalapeno-bacon.html I did change a couple things, as I did'nt have any homemade jalapeno bacon on hand at the time. lol. When I sauteed the onions and garlic, I also threw in a couple of chopped up fresh jalepeno's. Don't know if thats what you're supposed to do with jalepeno's, but it seemed to work for me. I also put in one of those cayenne peppers, crushed up.






Long story short, here are my beans. The finished product. I know they are not quite as pretty as Jeanie's, but they were probably the best damd beans I ever had. There was alot of bacon in there for the amount of beans, but hey, a man needs his meat. If I could change one thing about these beans, it would be the quantity, should have made more, I did'nt want to get too carried away on the first time though. I'm not going to be doing very many blogs about cooking, because a simple man usually cooks pretty simple stuff. lol. I am, however, now addicted to dried beans and will be experiementing with different kinds and recipes.