Gino's beans and barley

OK, it's the time of year for hearty sticks to your ribs but still mostly in one pan meals.

I made this recipe up myself. I had had some packaged beans and rice and while I liked it OK, rice is not always my friend. Further it seemed to me that the packaged product probably wasn't necessary and that the meal should be pretty easy to make for myself. I decided on barley instead of rice, my more or less favorite soup at that time was beef, vegetables and barley. My theory as I set out was, as always, start with good ingredients and try not to screw it up.

Lots of different beans would be good, the ones I like best are small red beans. They are roundish instead of oblong, a more aesthetically pleasing shape from my perspective. But black beans should be good, pinto should be good, the only place I wouldn't go is the white and or light colored beans like your white navy bean which would obviously lack contrast with the barley.

The bag directions for the beans are for cooking half a bag so that's where I started. This recipe has lots of places where it looks like it could easily be halved and this is one of them. My recipe makes WAY too much food so I really probably should start thinking a bit more about halving, but I confess, I haven't tried that yet. Here, for example, it would be easy to start with a half of a half a bag.

The bag directions on that barley call for a cup of barley. There's another place where halving the recipe would be easy.I want to do it mostly in one pan so I intend to cook the beans and the barley together. The beans are soaked overnight before cooking. The actual cooking directions call for 6 cups of water with the half bag of beans and 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours. The barley calls for 3 cups of water and 1 to 1 and 1/4 hours.

What I do is start with 8 cups of water. I start the beans and set a timer for half an hour. When the timer goes off I add the barley and once again set the timer for half an hour. The two main ingredients now simmer together and my experience has been that they finish together.

Another half hours goes by and we are up to one hour for the beans. I set the timer for yet another 30 minutes. Today I diced up a pound of ham steaks, a red pepper and a green pepper. I want to saute the peppers and I throw the ham in with them to combine all the flavors. This looks like another place where the recipe could easily be cut in half.

Here's what that looked like today.Here are the other two ingredients, some frozen corn and some canned tomatoes. I shopped at a different grocery today and was disappointed to not be able to cook with God's Brothers' tomatoes. I suppose one can of tomatoes is just as easy as two.

The third ding comes around, one hour for the barley, one and a half for the beans, and it is now time to prepare the corn. I set the timer for 15 more minutes and pop the corn into the microwave for four.When the timer dings again I have had the barley in for 1 and 1/4, the beans for 1 and 3/4. Today, as usual, they were done. Here's what that looked like after the mixture had been drained.I add the corn and the tomotoes, mixed it all together, cover and put it back to low heat for another 15 minutes to give the flavors an opportunity to start to work together.A couple of scoops into one of our Pfaltzgraff Juniper cereal bowls and prepare to enjoy.Hmmm, hmmm, good and good for you.

Veggies Are My Friends -- Part Two -- Soup

This is what we had for supper tonight, Veggies Are My Friends, Vegetable Soup version. It is based on a recent post on Pioneer Woman Cooks. It caught my eye because some of the vegetables are roasted, and I do like roasted vegetables. I've heard of people roasting summer squash and tomatoes, but had never tried it until today.
My proportions are different than PW's, but it's soup, so it doesn't really matter. I put one zucchini, one yellow squash, half a box of mushrooms and a few leftover tomato pieces in a bowl, drizzled it with a little olive oil and threw in some salt. Tossed it, put it on a cookie sheet lined with foil, and put it in the oven at 500 (!) degrees. The recipe said 5 or 10 minutes, until the pieces start to brown.
I think I didn't put it on a high enough rack in the oven, because I left them in for about 15 minutes, and they never got very brown. Didn't matter, they were good. I kept snitching pieces off the sheet while I was cooking the rest of the soup. Once they're done just let them sit until the end. I had some spinach so I grabbed a big handful and chopped it up and added it at the end, also.
These are the usual soup base characters ... celery, onion and carrots. I chunked them up and sauteed them for a while (5 or 10 minutes is good), then added the chicken broth. I added a few cups of hot water eventually. There's plenty of flavor, so it didn't water it down at all. I also added a bay leaf when I added the broth.
Once the pot looked like this, I added the chicken broth and cooked another 10 minutes.
At this point I added the tomatoes, green beans, cannellini beans and a cup of pasta (pinto beans work too, or black beans.) I rinsed both of the beans. I probably could have used less pasta and more beans and it would have been even better. Some whole grain pasta would be good instead of what I used. I let it simmer for 10 or 15 minutes or until we were ready to eat.
Shortly before we ate, I tossed in the roasted vegetables and the spinach, and let it sit for a few minutes. I added a heaping teaspoonful of tomato paste to thicken it up and make a richer broth.
I've gotten a little tired of bean salad, so I think I will be eating this with my lunch for a while instead. The roasted vegetables really do add a ton of flavor to the soup. I have two big plastic containers of it left -- fortunately, veggies are my friends.

Lemon Bars

We headed up to OSLO's and Brad's for an extended family supper tonight. Grilled pork steaks and chops, with cheesy potatoes, Texas baked beans and other sides. It was all very, very good. I volunteered to bring a spinach salad, chocolate pie and ..... lemon bars. Yep. The church lady lemon bars.
Brad said he didn't think he'd ever had them -- clearly he's never been to a funeral in Minnesota or Wisconsin. Here's how I made them. There's a Betty Crocker mix!
The crust comes in a separate package, that gets pressed into the baking dish just the way it comes from the package, and baked for ten minutes. There is also a package of lemon filling mix that requires three eggs and one third cup water, then gets poured over the hot crust and returned to the oven for 25 minutes. Next time I think I'll make some green jello. (Yes, that is my biking gear in the background. I had assembled it all in preparation for a ride, and was too lazy to move it when I took this photo. Sorry.)