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.