Pancake Day

I never ever celebrated Shrove Tuesday until I married Steve, but in the Commonwealth it's known as Pancake Day and our family does love pancakes.

Tonight we'll be eating Steve's friend Jenika's grandma's wheat berry blender pancakes.  They are my favorite pancake these days.  Steve makes all the pancakes in our house, because I can't resist the urge to give them a little pat/whack with the spatula when I flip them and apparently that practice ruins them.

Jenika's Grandma's Blender Pancakes

3/4 cups whole kernel wheat (wheat berries; nothing else works)
1 cup milk
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
2 t baking powder
1-2 t sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil

• Place wheat in blender and add milk.  Start on low and work quickly up to high.  Process for exactly 4 minutes.
• Add remaining ingredients to the blender and process for 30 seconds longer.
• The original recipe says "if batter is thin, you may add up to 1/4 cup flour," but Jenika says she's never had to do that and I don't think Steve has either.
• We're told that they taste best if made on an electric griddle set at 350, but we don't have one, so we always just cook them in a skillet.

Notes from Jenika: The only problem I've ever had with these was over-blending the batter. If you over-blend, it loses its texture. These are hearty pancakes. All of the wheat should have been blended up, but you don't want the batter overly runny.

The blended wheat does "settle," so before I pour each batch of pancakes I give it a stir with a rubber spatula (don't re-blend with the blender) so that the ingredients stay evenly distributed.

Pear, Hazelnut and Chocolate Cake

photo from BBC GoodFood

I made myself The Bairn this cake for his birthday. It is SO lovely.  I had to buy pears at the grocery store, because they're out of season and unavailable at the farm shops, which I do not do.  I brought them home and thought, "What am I doing making this cake all out of season?  Why didn't I stick with the Boston creme pie I had planned?" but as soon as I stuck my finger in the batter, I recalled what a delicious and pleasantly surprising treat this cake is.  I tried to convert the recipe into US measurements, but I was coming up with things like 4/5 C butter, so it's really more accurate in grams.  Cooking with scales is easier anyway. Buying one to make this cake alone will be well worth the purchase.


Pear, Hazelnut and Chocolate Cake
original recipe here

• 100 g blanched hazelnuts*
• 140 g self-rising flour
• 175 g butter
• 140 g white or caster sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 5 small, ripe pears
• 50 g dark chocolate, chopped into small chunks/slivers

Preheat the oven to 310 F.  Grease the bottom of a 7 inch round cake pan (a springform pan works really well).  Grind the hazelnuts in a food processor until quite fine.  Add the flour and pulse briefly.  Add the butter and pulse until it forms fine crumbs.  Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl and add the sugar and eggs (don't overmix).  Peel, core and chop two of the pears.  Lightly stir the pears and chocolate into the batter.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Slice the remaining pears and arrange across the top of the batter, pressing down slightly.  Bake approximately 80 minutes (start checking around 60 minutes), until firm to the touch.  Cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then remove from pan and cool on wire rack.  Best served slightly warm with cream or ice cream.

*To easily blanch hazelnuts, bring a pot of water and 2 T baking soda to a boil.  Add the hazelnuts and cook 3-5 minutes.  Rinse in cold water 1-2 minutes and slip the skins off with a clean dish towel.

January Report

What I'm Eating
Pear, Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake
Oh, man.  Get out your mixing bowl, kids.  This is a seriously good cake.   Friends served it to us yesterday and I've now decided to make it for The Bairn's birthday in a couple of weeks, because I need some more ASAP.  It calls to me in my dreams.

What I'm Reading
Chick lit.  I made a last trip to the library before it closed for 3 weeks and had to find sufficient reading material to last the duration very quickly, because Steve and The Bairn were waiting in the car and we had an appointment to attend.  In my mad dash around the library, I could only find chick lit checked in.

I finished The Little Lady Agency, which I liked quite well and now I'm reading I've Got Your Number, which is frequently annoying me, but perhaps just because one ought not to read chick lit back to back.  The formula becomes too apparent.  (But, really, why are the heroine's always good at shopping and smart 'in their own way'?  Why can't they just be SMART?!)

What I'm Buying
A house.  We have an accepted offer in on a house in the country.  Everything's still in process, so there's a very slight possibility the deal could fall apart, but it's unlikely.  We move in March (after painting absolutely everything in the place).

No Wonder My Chin is Doubling

I made another pie this week.

I know.

It was an emergency.
 
A couple of weeks ago, I saw an ad for free citrons on Kijiji.  I wasn't entirely sure what citrons were, but the ad said they were good for marmalade, and Steve and I were pretty sure citrons were in mixed peel, so Steve took The Bairn away on a little field trip one day to pick them up in another town.

This is a citron.  It's not what we expected.  It looks like a watermelon on the outside and it's about the size of a pie pumpkin.

Steve brought home 10 of them.

Some online research revealed that they're also known as pie melons and that they're popular in Australia.

It seemed wrong not to make a pie with pie melon, especially after they sat in my car for two weeks and we weren't sure how long they would keep.

Fortunately, we're friends with the proprietress of the Pie of the Month Club, who recommended this recipe (scroll down) for a watermelon rind pie.

You chop and boil the citron and then mix it with sugar, flour, raisins, pecans, vinegar, and, um, some other junk.  Spices.  It does not look (or sound) like it will be good when you pour it into the pie plate.

But then it is.  It's really good.

It only used up half a citron, though.  Oh, dear.

If You're Tired of Pumpkin

Pinterest tells me that everything I'm currently eating should include pumpkin.  At first I didn't argue.  I made my pumpkin breads and soups and curries, but Steve is not really a pumpkin-lover, so I stopped with the pumpkin and turned to another delicious fall food favorite--CRANBERRIES.

Steve bought a giant bag of local cranberries with which we made the following:

• cranberry sauce (canned by Steve)
• cranberry bread (made by my parents while babysitting my screaming boy child)
• cranberry and apple crisp (inspired by a crisp Steve made in Scotland; it uses honey and lime zest and it's so delicious that as soon as our friends with the beehives give us our honey supply for the year, we're making another couple of batches)
• Nantucket cranberry pie (recipe from the Pioneer Woman as adapted from Laurie Colwin, author of my favorite food memoirs)

The cranberry pie was a huge hit.  I think it will be my new Thanksgiving pie.  

I actually undercooked this pie.  I ate the piece on that plate and then threw it back in the oven to set it up better and get more of a crunch on the top.  Delicious both ways.  So delicious that we ate it all before I could get a picture of it fully cooked.

Nantucket Cranberry Pie
from Pioneer Woman

Ingredients

• 2 C cranberries, heaping
• 3/4 C pecans, chopped
• 2/3 C sugar
• 1 C flour
• 1 C sugar
• 1 stick (113 g) unsalted butter, melted
• 2 whole eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 t almond extract
• 1/4 t salt
• 1 T sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Generously grease a pie or cake plate.  

Place cranberries in plate, cover with chopped pecans, and pour 2/3 C sugar over cranberries and nuts. 

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, butter, eggs, almond extract, and salt.  Stir together gently.  Pour batter in ribbons over cranberry mixture. 

Bake 45-50 minutes.  Sprinkle 1 T sugar over the top 5 minutes before end of baking.

Food is Delicious Even for the Infirm

My mom told me today that my posts have been quite grouchy lately, and I told her that I have a COLD and there is delicious Sudafed in my cupboard because Scotland still lets you have it without making you promise that you're not cooking up meth in your bathroom but I can't have it because the pharmacist told me that it would hop The Bairn up (via his milk) as it's a stimulant.


Here are a few recipes making me happy even with a cold, though:

No-Stir Granola from America's Test Kitchen via The Frugal Girl--whipped it up super speedy (while feeding The Bairn his sweet potatoes) tonight and it's loooovely.

Slow Cooker Lazy Cabbage Rolls from Simple Bites--ate it for dinner tonight and it's very hearty and nice on a fall day.

Autumn Chopped Salad from Espresso and Cream--we had this two nights this week.  I didn't follow the directions for the dressing (why buy?).  Instead, I made up some of Rachael Ray's maple syrup dressing. Steve says it is the best salad of his life (even on the day when I left out the bacon) and that the dressing is the best part. 

How to Make a Pie Entirely for Yourself on Someone Else's Birthday

While Steve and I were housesitting for our friend Becky over Christmas, we watched Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives every night and longed for restaurant foods other than curries and fish and chips (we were a wee bit burned out on Scottish fare).  One night we saw a blueberry goat cheese pie featured and I determined that as soon as wild blueberries were in season (in 8 months), I would make it and love it.

Blueberry season coincides with Steve's birthday, so I baked this last week for his special day.  I did not ask him how he felt about goat cheese before making it.  Turns out he's not as big a fan as I am.  He wasn't really loving his birthday treat.  He kept assuring me that he didn't "not like it." 

Fortunately, I thought it was super tasty and after my brother tasted it, he broke out into a happy pie dance in the kitchen.  Mixed reviews.


Blueberry Goat Cheese Pie 
(adapted from Food Network recipe via 3 Sisters Cafe)

Ingredients

Filling

• 1/2 cup soft goat cheese
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• Pinch salt
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil
• 5 cups fresh blueberries

Topping

• 1 cup sliced almonds
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup melted butter

Mix all filling ingredients except blueberries together.  Add blueberries.  Pour into prepared pie crust.  Mix topping ingredients together and spread over pie filling.  Bake at 350 F for 45 minutes and allow to cool.

The Bread You Bake When Your Facing is Melting Off

Steve believes it is the End Times and that the heat he's experiencing is more than a mere mortal can endure.  I'll concede that when it becomes the summertime and the earth heats up to normal summer temperatures and you live in a third floor apartment without an air conditioner and you get a day or two of 99% humidity, it's quite hot inside and that you should eat pasta salads and leave the oven alone.  There's no reason to start in with any kind of crazy I-wish-it-were-winter talk, though.  I NEVER wish for winter. 

To keep our home at its lowest possible temperature while still eating food, I baked this bread in the slow cooker yesterday.  It's a revelation.

The instructions are from the creators of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (I assume you all already know about them, because I was buying the cookbooks at the library when their first book came out and I had to purchase approximately 52 billion copies of it and there were still never any available on the shelf).

Basically, though, you just take your bread dough and slap it in the slow cooker on a sheet of parchment paper for an hour or two (they recommend an hour, my slow cooker took almost two).

I used the artisan bread master recipe and it came out beautifully crusty on the bottom and soft on the top, although the top crust was very pale.

It did in fact take me all of five minutes of actual work to make and it kept the house nice and cool, which was nice, because it meant I didn't have to spend my evening holding The Bairn in front of the fan and telling Steve that he should just try the hot water bottle ice pillow, because it truly will deliver him from heat stroke.

My Favorite Dish

This is our new favorite dish.  I make this pad thai all. the. time. And by make, I mean request that Steve make, because the wok makes me nervous.  The dish comes together so quickly and it is by far the best homemade recipe I've ever found for pad thai.  I really shouldn't have made it (read: have had Steve make it) tonight, because we never have leftovers and now there's nothing to send for Steve's lunch tomorrow (which he may not know yet, because I just ate the remnants while he was talking on the phone*). 

We adapted it slightly from this recipe.  Our version would look more like the traditional dish, but we generally use more and larger noodles than called for.

Favo(u)rite Pad Thai  

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons oil
• 1 chicken breast, sliced against the grain
• 5 cloves of crushed garlic
• 1 carrot, diced
• pinch of cayenne
• 2/3 cup tamarind juice (substitute 1/3 C lime juice and 1/3 C water if necessary)
• 160 grams rice noodles (we usually use more like 250)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 3 tsp brown sugar
• pinch of salt
• 3 tablespoons crushed roasted peanuts
• 2 tsp chopped spring onion
• 1 cup soy bean sprouts

Instructions: Heat oil in a wok and add the chicken. Cook briefly until the meat whitens. Add garlic, carrot pieces, chili powder and stir until fragrant. Add tamarind juice and noodles. Turn the heat to medium and stir fry for a few minutes. Turn the heat down to low and move the noodles to one side of the wok so you have place to fry the eggs. Add the eggs and scramble. Add fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, salt, peanuts, the sprouts and spring onion and turn the heat up to high. Stir fry until thoroughly mixed. Serve with a piece of lemon or add a teaspoon of sweet chili sauce.

*Steve says we can still be friends even though I ate his pad thai, but he doesn't feel bad about that doughnut he ate without me now.

Homemade Nutella Made at Our Home

Did you notice when homemade nutella made the rounds on Pinterest?  Steve did, so we made some.  Here's how the division of labo(u)r went down:

Steve: Purchase hazelnuts and chocolate chips at the bulk store.
MBC: Advise against buying quite so many hazelnuts.
Steve: Slave away at boring post-doc to pay for ingredients.
MBC: Munch on chocolate chips while Steve is at work (they are very good with a handful of almonds), causing Steve to panic that there will not be enough chocolate for nutella.  This is silly.  There's plenty of chocolate for nutella, just not quite enough hazelnuts.
Steve: Adjust recipe to account for hazelnut shortage.
MBC: Measure out chocolate chips.  When scale goes over weight, eat off excess.
Steve: Threaten to hide all future chocolate supplies.
MBC: Bathe baby (who gets no nutella, although he screamed and grabbed long enough the next day that I gave him some banana) and put to bed.
Steve: Roast hazelnuts.  Grind hazelnuts.
MBC: Melt chocolate.
Steve: Combine chocolate with condensed milk and then with hazelnut butter.
MBC: Unsuccessfully look for pint jar for storing end result.
Steve: Successfully locate pint jar in baby's room after stern warnings not to wake baby OR ELSE.

It's good.  It's not quite as smooth as Nutella from the store, but it's VERY tasty, especially now that it's sat overnight in the fridge.  I've been eating it with a spoon while Steve's at work, which is going to make Mr. I-Hoard-My-Halloween-Candy-Until-April sad that he married someone who eats her chocolate treats in the car before she even leaves the store parking lot.  We used this recipe and we'll probably make it again, unless I go find the receipts and discover that buying hazelnuts costs as much as buying several jars of Nutella from the store.

Summer Projects Have Begun

Steve is so pleased to be reunited with the pressure canner.  They're best friends.  They like to stay up late and braid each other's hair after I stomp off to bed at 8:30 in an attempt to get a full five hours of sleep at night (have not broken the news to my girls' night group that when they come over next week they'll have to party it up without me after 9:00ish as my head explodes at that time if I'm not in bed yet).

Steve's new trick with the pressure canner is to use every bit of a food item in two different canning projects.  A while back he made applesauce and then cooked the apple peels and cores to make apple syrup.  Last week he took all the juice out of rhubarb to make a concentrated juice and then made a conserve (which he calls breakfast chow) from the leftover pulp.

It's a good thing someone in the family was willing to pick up the domestic goddess reins around here while The Bairn and I continue our very busy schedule of sleep deprivation.

It's the Delicious

I've been hankering for some Asian food, but
(a) our restaurant options are limited in our small town and
(b) we are frugal. 

I'm especially tight-fisted with our money at the moment because I'm deeply enamored with a TV show about couples heavily in debt.  It came on one day while I was calming down the screamy Bairn, so I couldn't get up to change the channel and then I fell in love with the program.  In every episode, a couple explains how they amassed huge amounts of consumer debt and then the star of the show, a financial guru-type person, comes in, puts the debtors on a cash budget, and assigns them weekly challenges to help them out.  I wish we could be on the show, not because we have consumer debt (we don't), but because one of the challenges this week was for the couple to get massages.  Yes, please.  Occasionally, after a particularly compelling episode, I force Steve to have a budget meeting with me or meticulously save receipts from all of his purchases.  His life was simpler before we had a TV.

Sooo, we've been making Asian food at home.  Last week we made pad thai, using this recipe, which was very good and very simple.  And then the next day, I made these Asian lettuce wraps, which were super delightful.  I tossed the leftover Jasmine rice from lunch (chicken tikka masala) into my lettuce cups to cut the heat and because Jasmine rice is yummy.

Meal Planning

My ability to cook without being interrupted by the micronapper is quite low these days and my sink/kitchen is often unavailable to me when I'm doing laundry, so I've been meticulously meal planning the last few days.  And I suddenly realize that in addition to being the targeted audience of those commercials for hand-softening dish soap (I totally identify with the woman with the dishpan hands), I'm the audience for all those pins on Pinterest for '50 billion slow cooker recipes that take 20 seconds or less.'  We've downgraded our meals a bit so that I can actually do other things (like unpack all our worldly goods) in the day

On the rota for the next week:

• Pierogies (they come frozen, friends, and I use them when I want to accomplish more than one thing in a day) with farmer sausage (Steve, he is in love with the pork products) and chow (would buy in 10 gallon jugs to accommodate the spouse if possible)
• Slow cooker Vegetable and Chickpea Curry
• Fish Chowder and homemade bread (I started making bread every week when I discovered that each loaf costs $0.70 when I bake it myself)
• Rotisserie Chicken (we'll be down in the valley all day) and macaroni salad
• Black Bean Taco Salad (with leftover rotisserie chicken)
• Chicken Soup (with rotisserie chicken carcase) and homemade bread
• Gnocchi and salad
• Sloppy Joes with oven fries and vegetables

Anyone have any particularly quick and tasty recipes to suggest for upcoming menus?

The Mushroom Day Trip

Saturday we buckled up The Bairn and headed to the Annapolis Valley, one of my favorite places in Nova Scotia. It's a fruit-growing region and I just love one of the college towns down there. It's pretty and covered in fruit stands and full of people wearing babies on their chests and eating homemade pasta at the farmers' market. When I tell Steve I want to live there, he informs me that we can't because it's full of snobs and I inform him that I am all set to be one of those snobs. Sign. Me. Up.

I've never seen such a great farmers' market.  We bought tomatillo and slow food Italian tomato seeds.  I had Moroccan chicken on quinoa and gelato from the vendors, and Steve ate a huge, sloppy pork sandwich with sauerkraut and a potato pancake from some Germans before indulging in a big glass bottle of unpasteurized chocolate milk.  I ate my quinoa on a wooden box while I chatted about midwives and birth experiences with someone wearing a baby, and practically every single person who caught a glimpse of The Bairn came over to speak to him about what a nice and smart and handsome boy he is (oh, he IS).

Then we rushed off to Steve's mushroom farm visit.  I stayed in the car with our sleeping baby while Steve learned the difference between regular brown mushrooms and portobellos (they let the portobellos grow longer).

We bought 2 pounds of mushroom seconds at the farm and have been eating them every day since.  Steve made an amazing mushroom sauce Sunday night and served it over the spinach and cheese ravioli we made and froze several weeks ago.  Woo, baby.  If you'd tasted it, you would want to marry Steve too.  I'm pretty sure that if we offered it to the people of the Annapolis Valley, they would welcome us with open arms.

This is not a particularly appealing picture.  If I were a food blogger I would spruce it up with some parsley on top and a fancy salad and better photography skills but as it is we just wolfed it down like this and appreciated the deliciousness.

 

How Pinteresting

With our cookbooks still in the UK waiting to be shipped, I've finally managed to make some of the food on my Pinterest boards. 

Last week we ate

Roasted Butternut Squash Quesadillas
Steve says these may be the best thing I've ever made for him.  Steve cut up the squash in the morning, which I think is the hardest part of the recipe.  I made homemade flour tortillas (with The Bairn strapped to my chest in his sling--very poor idea), which Steve was crazy about and claims made the recipe.  Very very yummy.

Pretzel Cookies with Chocolate & Peanut Butter Chips
Salty and sweet is always a good idea.  We ate the whole batch in less than three days, which is why we should never ever make cookies in our house.  I think they taste much better after they've cooled.  Really good but I still prefer my House of Dittmer cookies, which also have chocolate and peanut butter chips.

Mexican Chicken Lime Soup
Steve made this one and we changed it a tiny bit.  It calls for chicken thighs, which are tastier than chicken breasts, but we used a mixture of both because chicken breasts were on sale.  Steve also cooked the chicken in the pressure cooker because it was bone-in and then took the meat off the bone and added it already cooked.  Very tasty, but even tastier after we added a dollop of sour cream to cut the heat.

This week we're going to eat oatmeal morning, noon, and night because I can't think of anything I feel like cooking and the only things that beckons on Pinterest are desserts that will send us to an early grave.

Why We're Married

I saw a set of tiny Jell-o molds in the Salvation Army last week and thought to myself, "Oh, yeeeeah."  I showed them to Steve and he agreed that our life could not be anything but massively improved with the potential to make darling little jiggly treats for ourselves.  We snatched them up, naturally.

Yesterday Steve made his grandmother's famous jellied salad (and, no, she has no connection at all to Utah).  Steve rightly noted that a less textured jellied product would show off the beauty of the molds better, but I still feel like the joyometer in our house went up a tiny bit when we unmolded these babies. Woo woo $1 bargains!

You and Your Squash, Part 2

Let's pretend these are better pictures, okay? It's hard to photograph anything in our dark, dank tenement.

We are slowly working through our 14 spaghetti squash.  We usually just pop them in the microwave and serve them with our favorite spaghetti sauce, but last week we made mock coconut cream pie with one.  It's a crustless, not particularly sweet pie, but it has a really nice, creamy texture that Steve, rightly, says reminds him of flan (which he pronounces all Canadian).  It makes a particularly nice treat at around 2:00 in the morning when one is up being pregnant and insomniatic and healthier than the pecan tassies which are also great in the wee hours.

Mock Coconut Cream Pie or Scottish Spaghetti Squash Flan

• 2 cups cooked spaghetti squash 
• 1 cup skim milk 
• 4 eggs 
• 1/2 cup evaporated skim milk (or use all evap milk) 
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour 
• 1/4 cup sugar 
• 3 Tablespoons butter  
• 1 /2 teaspoon vanilla 
• 1/2 teaspoon coconut extract 
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder. 

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Spray a 9-inch pie plate with cooking spray. Spread squash over bottom and up sides of plate (it rises to the top while baking).  In a blender, process remaining ingredients until smooth. Pour over squash and bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until a knife comes out clean.

You and Your Squash, Part 1

I grew this pumpkin with my bare hands.

And now I am eating its guts.

This single pumpkin has given us all of the following:

1. one pot of spicy chicken and pumpkin stew (it's really a curry)
2. one pumpkin roll
3. one ill-conceived serving of pasta with pumpkin mash
4. two holiday pumpkin bread wreaths (very tasty yeast bread from King Arthur Flour)

We have two more pumpkins sitting in our windowsill.  One of them may be sacrificed for a pumpkin pie tomorrow.

I Regret

We grew jalapeno peppers in the greenhouse this year and knew we would never make enough curries and salsa to use them up fresh, so Steve found a way to preserve them with this recipe for Cowboy Candy (candied jalapenos).  The recipe indicated that I should wear gloves when slicing up the jalapenos but that would have involved a bus trip and I didn't feel like spending an hour with the unwashed, so I just skipped that measure (oh, Health and Safety!).

Fortunately, my hands only burned for the one day.

Someday I'll Stop Writing about Canning

Steve comes from a part of Canada where baked beans are a staple. Baked beans and brown bread are a traditional Saturday night supper (using the word supper is also traditional). We don't really eat baked beans in my family, but I agree that Steve's homemade version is a very nice meal, especially on a rotten, stormy night like today, but they take many hours to prepare, so we decided to can them to make them available on short notice.  Yesterday we put up 12 quarts.

Some of our summer canning efforts.  Baked beans on bottom shelf.

Here's how you do it:

1. Soak 5.5 pounds of haricot beans overnight in your giant jam-making pot. 
2. Forget to buy all the ingredients the day before, so spend the morning walking downtown to the grocery store. Stop at the library to pick up season 1 of The Gilmore Girls too. Consider buying chcolate-covered peanuts, but ultimately decide to resist the temptation. 
3. Come home and eat lunch to restore your energy, while you tell your unborn baby that he is getting big and fat and making you tired. 
4. Put the pot of beans on the stove to boil. 
5. Chop your onions and pork and combine your sauce ingredients (ketchup, mustard, brown sugar). 
6. When the beans come up to a boil, add the other ingredients. 
7. Realize that your pot is not big enough to hold everything and transfer part of the mixture to the remoska. Be sure to do this in the messiest way possible, using the most kitchen impelements possible.
8. Cover the jam-making pot with foil and heave it into the oven. 
9. Regret not buying the chocolate-covered peanuts. 
10. Start watching Gilmore Girls. 
11. Check the beans after each GG episode (about 50 minutes). 
12. Worry that nothing seems to be happening in the oven. Add water to the beans in the remoska as needed.
13. Repeat the checking, worrying, and chocolate peanut regretting for 10 hours.
14. Wash and prep canning jars.
15. Lie down and wonder if maybe your baby will be a tap dancer when he grows up, as he seems to be practicing for it in the womb.
16. When your husband gets home from work at 10:30 pm, let him fill the jars and process them for 75 minutes.

We're going to try a bottle of them tonight. And then I'm going to buy some chocolate-covered peanuts.