Less on the Hunga and more on the Rican.

Comfort. That’s what food is to me. And something that gets me all comforty is a classic Puerto Rican dish called arroz con habichuelas. When Satan Mom actually cared about cooking, she did this dish pretty well. Nowadays it’s like she made a pot of red mortar and I don’t eat it if she cooks it. Rice and beans. There are lots and lots of variations of this dish around the Caribbean and southern US… it’s red beans and rice. And it’s delicious.

I do arroz con habichuelas (abby-chewellas) Johanesen style. I took my mom’s recipe and tweaked it a bit. It’s a simple recipe that is really flavourful. Because there is a stark lack of Goya products out here in Oregon, I have no adobo or sofrito or other spices to help me out, so I improvise a little.

You start with the triumvirate of yumminess. A few cloves of garlic, one medium yellow onion and green pepper. I also *should* have been soaking the kidney beans (preferably the light ones, not the dark ones)… Unfortunately I hadn’t soaked them the night before, so I had to use dark kidney beans from a can… but yes, soak your beans and poke your beans..heh heh. Oh, that reminds me of a cute little story told to me by a curmudgeony gentleman known as ‘the Hoff’. We were eating fresh lima beans from his garden, and he told me that I should poke a hole in each bean to let it off gas before I eat it so it would give me gas problems later. LOL! I can’t eat beans now without thinking of the Hoff telling me to poke my beans!

Anyway, I digress.. I chop up the triumvirate. Chippety Chop. This is a recipe of experimentation, I don’t put specific quantities in there, and every time I make it, it’s a little different. So feel free to be bold.

Grab half of a block of salt pork. Some people say you can substitute bacon for salt-pork, but oddly, bacon is too salty! So find a little block of salt pork and chop it in half, and then cut it up into little cubes and toss them into a bit of hot oil in your cooking pot, and fry them into crispins. I love crispins. This adds a nice flavour to the beans that only a protein can do. You vegetarians can figure out how to get that Umami taste in there.

Once the crispins are nice and crispy, and there’s a lovely browned layer on the bottom of the pan of crispin essence (teehee) toss in the triumvirate and fry them all up together. I cook hot, I like to cook on high-heat… So I move quickly. Once I’ve done that, I huck in a little basil, coriander, a smidge of cumin and a little basil, a touch of salt and let these flavours get better acquainted with one another. Don’t burn the ingredients, and don’t cook on a low heat so the vegetables just sweat out into a soup.

Once the aromatics start to fill your kitchen, it’s time to pour in the beans. I used two cans, I could have used three easily enough… but that’s all I had. See how colourful that is? I wish you could smell it firsthand… it’s so fragrant and appetizing. Mmm… comfort. The beans and the liquid that comes with them deglazes all that crispin essence from the bottom of the pot and mixes that concentrated goodness into the beans.

While these guys get to know one another, I open up a big can of pureed tomatoes and a small can of diced tomatoes. Into the pot they go. I let them simmer up and then turn the heat down low. This should simmer and reduce.

I also put on a pot of brown rice since brown rice takes a long time to cook. For the meat (because I am married to a man who requires his carnivorous tendencies sated) I picked out a small pork shoulder roast at New Seasons.

I made a dry rub for it. I put into a little bowl about a teaspoon of the following spices each: white pepper (and pork are friends), basil, thyme, garlic powder, salt. I mixed it up with my hand and rubbed it all over the pork shoulder. I popped it into the oven at 375 on a little rack over a drip pan. White pepper sometimes smells like feet at first… but trust me, it’s like heaven on pork.

Anyway… the house filled up with the aroma of comfort food, and soon enough I’d served up a heaping plate of pig-out. The beans will be even better tomorrow.

There you go. My Puerto-Rican bastardized beans & rice. Enjoy.

The Curse and Craigslist.

Being a Hungarican has its drawbacks, but there’s one drawback in particular that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. That is HAIR. Hungarians and Puerto-Ricans are pretty swarthy, hair-rich folk. Many have dark, heavy hair. Having a genetic double-whammy in the hair department creates what I call The Hair Curse; the onset of HFHS (Hungarican-Facial-Hair-Syndrome). When I hit 35, some weird switch turned on that started the unending growth of eyebrows, moustache, and beard hair. It doesn’t matter if you are man, woman or neuter; if you have Hungarican DNA, you’re bound to suffer from the onset of HFHS; an embarrassing side effect of this particular blending of nationalities.

They’re not nice soft little blond hairs, no… they’re jet black wire-brush hairs that grow at accelerated rates. If left unchecked, and I do not tweeze, veet or wax on a regular basis… I could end up like HER (who I might add, is 99% likely to be a Hungarican herself--as many circus bearded ladies likely are):



Except *she* doesn’t have the massive eyebrow issues we do. I’m not lying, if I didn’t wax and tweeze and trim my eyebrows regularly, they’d look like these:


My dad’s eyebrows look like two grey flokati caterpillars inching across his head. Really. Case and Point -- see image of my Papa below:


Mom too has mega-bushy eyebrows--to which she does nothing, and allows to grow out of control into shagsville. My eyebrows grow SO long, I have to comb them out and trim them with scissors. I had one that was as long as my whole eyebrow once. I didn’t notice because it kept lying the length of the eyebrow, but then one night, I slept wonky and it was all Spocked out across my forehead like some freakish comb-over. Suffice it to day, Harry got yanked. I get Spocky a lot in the morning. It’s embarrassing.

I’m all for a nice, full, natural eyebrow (I have a thing about those super-plucked arcs of ugliness some ladies do to themselves…); there’s a place for natural eyebrows, but my genes take natural to the freakish end of the scale… It’s a cross I’ll likely bear for the rest of my life, unless the come up with a permanent removal solution that will keep me from getting five-o-clock chin-shadow.

Onto less disgusting things…

I’ve become a craigslist free-stuff addict. I’ve been using the heck out of that page since I put my old sofa set up there. Since then, I’ve used it to give away a small secretary desk, the foam frame for our water-tube mattress; a box of old cook-books I never use, and a bunch of betta-fish paraphernalia from my office at work, where I once kept them, and where the poor things tragically died when the furnace stopped working in the middle of winter.

There’s something really satisfying about giving something you don’t need to someone who wants to use it for something. The desk was a really cute vintage desk that nobody wanted to buy, but I got a billion emails for within the first hour of its being posted on free-stuff. It went to a woman who wanted it so badly; she wrote me a special story about how she appreciated pieces with a little history and hoped she could add to its story by owning it… The foam frame, which for any of you who do upholstery of any kind, was a total score for anyone who got it, went to reupholster benches on a boat project… that stuff (4 ¾ thick upholstery foam) is super-expensive per yard… he got a pristine, king sized bed worth of it for free. SCORE. The books were begged for by various people; who I am SURE will use them more than I have. I’ve had them for 13 years, and they never came off the shelf once except when I boxed them up to move them to a new residence. I can’t remember ever cracking them open. So I figured anyone who’ll drive 45 minutes to pick them up will appreciate them more than I did. And the lady who wants the betta tank paraphernalia is equally excited and making a special trip (getting her mother’s car) to fetch it.

It’s funny to me that people will go through such lengths for free stuff; I guess it’s all relative to what one’s passions are. For instance, if someone put up an ad for free fabric, horse tack, or art supplies, I might make a little trip somewhere to fetch them.

Speaking of horses… I’m still undecided on whether or not Tag and I are to become best friends for life. I’m still in the ‘can we really afford this sort of irresponsible and kind of selfish thing?’ phase. I haven’t met him yet. With a ball coming up on Saturday and EPA reports to be submitted this week; I haven’t got the time to drive up to Washington to meet him and give him snacky treats and smooches and to fall hopelessly in love with him so that I could never walk away without taking him with me. Yes, I’m afraid of that part, because if we come to the conclusion that we cannot afford him after I’ve met him and scritched behind his ears, and let him take carrot pieces out of my hand with his floopy horse-lips, and hugged his huge neck, I am not sure if I could bear the heartbreak of not having that again. Augh, I am trying not to get my hopes up, or to put myself too much into that mindset yet that horses are in my life again… but I already have a strong urge to stop at the feedstore on the way home each day for a fresh bottle of Neatsfoot oil and saddle soap to get my tack back up to snuff again. Not good. L8tr.