Red Beans & Rice Time, Fo Sho

Dirty Coast Shirt - Believe in the Trinity

Somehow I always seem to end up around Louisiana people. Maybe it's leftovers from part of my mom's family marrying one of those crazy french named people and moving off to Baton Rouge. Maybe it's the transplants who ended up in the north just long enough to teach me how a cook a few things like their families used to do it. Either way I appreciate the lifestyle and the food. With plenty of cocktails around, plenty of family and friends clogging up the kitchen, and plenty of food on the table.

My first real meal in the kitchen of my new house was Red Beans & Rice. I had been craving it since I had a terrible bland version of it at Pappadeaux recently. I think their recipe was 1) make white rice 2) open can of red beans 3) dump beans into rice and stir. It was depressing.

So here's the recipe I use that I told my childhood friend Emily I would give her. The recipe has lasted a generation or so with only slight variations to accessibility in certain regions. So hopefully you enjoy and tell your mama n' dem I said hello. 

* Note: This includes the same amount of heat as the original version I learned and how I like to eat it...and I like HOT food. Please, if you have a palate that needs less heat, do a Yankee Adjustment and half the cayenne. You can always add more in if you need it. 

Red Beans & Rice

Not a great pic from my kitchen,
but you get the idea.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 cup chopped onions

1/2 cup chopped celery 

1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper

sea salt 

freshly ground black pepper

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper* 

1tsp dried thyme

4 fresh bay leaves

1 lb boiled ham cut into small cubes (Tasso ham if you can find it. If not then go for a good quality ham  that is not flavored)

2 links of Andouille Sausage cut into cubes/slices (if you cannot find Andouille, use a classic smoked sausage of high quality)

1 lb bag of red beans, soaked, rinsed and picked over (you can use canned but the flavor isn't as good)

3 tbsp fresh minced garlic

water

steamed rice (I like Texmati long-grain made with butter and a pinch of salt) 

1) In a heavy coated dutch oven heat the oil over medium heat.  Saute the onions, celery and green pepper together for 2 minutes. Then add the salt, pepper, cayenne* and thyme and saute for around 5 minutes. 

2) Add the bay leaves, ham, and sausage to the pot and saute for another 5 minutes. 

3) Add the beans and garlic to the pot and then add water enough to cover over the top of the ingredients. Bring the pot to a boil. 

4) Reduce heat to medium-low, leave uncovered, and simmer for 2-3 hours. Stir the pot occasionally and ensure that the contents remain moist in the pot and slightly soupy. If the water cooks down too far add more to prevent dryness. 

5) As the beans become soft after a few hours use a wooden spoon to mash half the mixture up against the sides of the pot. Continue to cook for another 1-2 hours until the mixture becomes creamy in consistency.  [I like mine together to have the consistency of risotto but you can leave it a bit more soupy if you please. Just not too watery or thin. - S]

6) Remove bay leaves.

7) Serve ladled over steamed rice with french bread.

Cancer - It's Not Just Our Astrological Sign

I'm tired. In fact I am exhausted. Maybe I didn't realize it until this morning, after the good news we never thought we would get. On my standard morning commute post a morning of no hot water in the shower, Starbucks getting my order wrong, traffic and totally normal living stuff I finally realized I was wiped out for a totally different reason.  And I should be the opposite. What the hell was wrong with me?

Summer 2011 back in Illinois

Two years ago, the week before Christmas, I was told I had about 6 months left with my mother.  The cancer she fought off when I was 16 was inexplicably back with a vengeance. Yesterday we found out that she was having her status changed from "Terminal" into "Remission". A thing they never really do in the medical establishment. Once it metastasized into her hip, she was a "get your affairs in order" goner. And now...a survivor. Why did I feel so overwhelmed? Why did I not know what to say to my happy friends last night? Why wasn't I screaming from the rafters now that I got everything I had spent all my breaths asking God for over the last few years? Why did I feel sad and guilty that not everyone gets this break? Why did I want to do nothing but cry? Not just sort of cry, but uncontrollable crying. The kind that not even Christian Dior's Waterproof Black Out Mascara can handle so it heads to the safety of the corners of my face.

Then it occurred to me what might be the problem. When you love people who are sick, or you lose people who are sick, it fundamentally changes the fabric of everything in your life. Small ordinary moments take on a gravity that is hard to describe. You don't plan for Thanksgiving. You plan for your last Thanksgiving with that person. Every conversation could be the last. Every phone call could be the same call you got when your dad was dead. And Steve was dead. If I had known it would be the last time I would have paid so much more attention. And because you can't possibly live with thinking that way on a daily basis without going mad with pressure you find a thousand coping strategies to survive.

There was a part I never talked about that made it the most difficult for me. It wasn't the being alone part. I'm not alone. I have an amazing family of friends that love me and care for me. It was the feeling I couldn't shake that it was my job to be the one that took care of the end, swept the floors, and shut off the lights for that which I love.

The last 15 years of my life has been concerned, in one way or another, with finding out how to live around cancer while it tried to take everything I loved from me. I am an only child and lost my father to cancer in my early twenties. I buried one of my closest friends last year. I have friends who are currently fighting for their lives. I wasn't ready to be an orphan or say goodbye to anyone else but I had been preparing myself for it for so long. What do you do when you don't need to live that way anymore? When you don't feel like you are quietly drowning? When you actually start actually feeling again? Dammit. It hurts.

I realize again how I functioned. My friends are amazing. They kept me going and picked my head up when I hadn't been able to sleep in days.  They poured me into and pulled me out of a glass of Scotch when I needed it. When I threw myself into my career they were my cheerleaders. We shot guns, slept on couches, played music, went to California with an achin' in our hearts, watched football, sat together in hospitals, wrote F*ck Cancer in permanent marker on our arms, dropped off supplies on doorsteps, and reminded me that being destructive wasn't my best look.

When I needed someone else to help be positive and support my loved ones in ways I could not they stepped up. EVERY. TIME. I don't have friends who ask me "Is there anything I can doooo?" with that weepy make-themselves-feel-like-they-are-doing-something-by-talking thing. They just do it. I can never thank them enough for the strength and patience they have shown me these last 15 years. Surround yourself with people of good character and you will never feel alone.

In the ensuing years I learned a few things.

• There is so little I understand about the nature of the universe...but I'm listening. 
• They are called miracles because we have to find a way to explain the unquantifiable. Call it whatever you want, I'll take it.
• I am grateful to God for tolerating the incessant singularly focused barrage of my thoughts and questions. I am sure he would enjoy some diversification and I'm looking to get into that now. He may give you what you ask for simply so he can get some new topics to work with. Try it. 
• I am grateful to those of you who have been here for me. Karma is a very real very powerful force and you all certainly have some good things coming your way. This one's for you...