Beans and more beans

This week saw the creation of Red Beans and Rice, Minestrone, and "Stinky Feet" bread.

To start with, I love beans. At least the dry kind. Green beans, of any color, can just go away as far as I am concerned. Or leave them on the vine long enough to get dry and worth eating. My Mexican roommate would apologize when we had frijoles for dinner and I could never convince her that no apology was necessary, just keep the beans coming. So, needless to say, I liked the red beans and rice. Couldn't find all the appropriate New Orleans special stuff, but it is surprising what the small town grocery store does carry. I am getting to know those aisles better and better. I can go right to the salt pork, anchovies, and oyster sauce. We learned an interesting fact with this recipe. At high altitudes the cooking time of beans is increased considerably. The instructions said to cook for an hour. After an hour and a half we had to eat and the beans were mostly done. It was maybe an hour later that the beans were truly done. Doing some research, thank you "Joy of Cooking", we found that above about 3500 feet the cooking time doubles. We are 1000 or so feet higher. This is why Mom has always used the pressure cooker to cook beans. This does raise an interesting question. Do we follow the instructions to add all the flavoring stuff at the beginning of the cooking time and cook that twice as long as called for, or cook the beans half-way then add the rest of the stuff so the beans are half cooked without the tastys, but the rest is not overcooked. All these lowlanders just do not consider us high up people. The red beans and rice is a keeper though. Pressure cooker will be pressed into service next time though. It can be done in under an hour.