These are a few of my fairly recent favorite things

Random thoughts about food from the hours I have spent patiently waiting to eat Slow-baked beans with kale:

• I've never used so much tomato paste in one recipe.
• Not counting garbanzo and green beans, I had never eaten a bean until after I graduated from college.
• One of the first things I tried to cook for my husband (who was a vegan at the time) was this black bean "hummus", corn and roasted tomato pizza (there was no recipe). It was easily the least delicious thing I have ever ever cooked. He ate a whole slice.
• That was my first bite of black beans (I was 25). It was also my last for three years because it took a while to get that bad bean memory out of my mouth.
• Love doesn't make bad things taste better.
• Like the rest of you, when I cook beans, I am chanting: 

Beans, beans, what a wonderful fruit;

the more you eat, the more you toot;

the more you toot, the better you feel;

you should eat beans for every meal."

• I didn't see kale without an orange slice twisted so unartfully on top until 2008. That means I didn't know kale could actually be eaten until 2008.
• Kale chips are wonderful when you sprinkle a little apple cider over them before baking.
• I like to eat.
• My next "big" meal cooked in a pot will be one of my favorites from the Showcase of Crusted Arts: Crab Pot Pie with Pimento Cheese Biscuits. 
• It is a bit odd to use my big yellow pot for something other than frying things up in a pan.
• A reporter for the local paper asked me why I make my own butter and it felt like someone asked me why I breathe air. 
• There is no butter in this dish so maybe I should make some bisquits.
• Today, there were Twitter conversations about whether people say soda or pop; pronouncing see-ment or suh-ment; what to call winter hats;  what people call stove burners; subs, grinders, heros or hoagies; coo-pon or cyu-pon; etc. But nobody talked about how to spell bisquits or biscuits or biscquits or biskeets.
• If you make this recipe for slow baked beans with kale, you should really arrange to be out of the house for the last hour and half of baking because oh my goodness, the sounds of my stomach growling are preventing anyone from doing anything.