Chili Beans



Chili Beans with Cornbread

     This is not a hard recipe to make, but there must be 1000 ways to make it.  The basic way is pinto beans.  Take a bag of dried pinto beans and put in a pot of water with a dash of salt.  Bring to a boil, and cook until tinder.  This should take about 2 hours.  Since tomatoes are in season we used fresh tomatoes cooked down, but for the blog we'll use can tomatoes.

2 cans of diced tomatoes

1 can tomato sauce

1 can tomato paste

2 lbs. hamburger meat

1 onion

1 large bell pepper

     Take a large frying pan and brown your hamburger.  When done strain off hamburger and set to the side in a dish.  Take your diced onions and green peppers and brown in the same frying pan that the hamburger  was cooked in.  When done strain off excess oil and put the hamburger back in and, add the tomato paste and chili powder.  The trick to the paste is to open both ends of the can, and push the bottom of the can threw.  Stir the paste into the onions, peppers, and meat well before adding the sauce, and diced tomatoes.  That was easy.  Now, you can add celery salt, garlic salt, or garlic powder to taste.  I prefer 2 or 3 cloves of real garlic.  I also like to add 2 chopped up jalapeno peppers to the onions and green peppers.

     Strain your pinto beans and add to your sauce, put back on stove on med/low and simmer for about an hour.  Keep stirring so as not to burn.  At this point some people add a can of kidney beans, it is up to you.  With this much information, and a little creativity, you could be in the next Great American Chili Bean Cook-off.

Canning Salsa



A little some thing HOT!

     This is a must have around my house.  Not just good with collard greens, even with a bologna sandwich, you got to have a pepper.

     This is easy to make no cooking.  Just stuff as much as possible into a jar, and add apple cider vinegar.  That's it.  I usually put cayenne, and tobacco peppers in whole.  I slice jalapenos peppers.  Chunks of green tomato''s are good, and got to put in 3 or 4 cloves of garlic.  Here we have cherry tomato's that go great on the pizza.  There is the delivery guy now.

Bread and Butter Pickles

  Stocking up!!!  Keep in mind that we have a small garden.  Peppers and tomatoes you can grow on a balcony.  Last year our cucumbers didn't grow well, so we bought them at the farmers market.  Today we are making salsa.  Easy too, but you need the stove for this one.  You need to cut up a large pot of tomatoes.

     First fill a large pot of water and bring to a boil.  Wash your tomatoes, rinse and plug the sink.  Fill

the sink with your tomatoes and pout the hot water over them and let set till cool.  This is so the tomatoes will peel easy.  Cut tomatoes in chunks and fill, cook on medium.  Go find some thing to do, but come back to stir.  We are cooking this down to remove the water. 

In the other pot we have our jars, in the other lids.

We're canning 101

     While we are waiting, lets get the cutting board out, and a sharp knife.  Here we have 6 cayenne,  2 tobacco, and 8 jalapeno peppers chopped up fine in the bowl.  Add 3 or more cloves of garlic, a whole onion, and 2 large bell peppers.  Yellow and green for color, I'll use green because they are from my garden.

  

5 hours later
we pour off the water left, later you can use it for soup, or tomato juice.

We have added our peppers and onions.  Time to pour it up into jars.  Our jars and lids have been in a few inches of hot water.  Be carefull the jars are hot use a towel.
Now, set your jar back into your pot.  When finished you'll have 7 and 1/2 jars, put the 1/2 jar in the refrigerator.  Then fill the pot with hot water to just under the lids.  Bring the pot to a boil, then turn it down on low for 20 minutes. 
After that let cool, and lesson for each lid to "pop".  That means they are sealed, and you did good.

Art, for art sake

     Not sure what to post today to top yesterdays post, it is still making me hungry thinking about it.

I'm always surprised at some of the art I come up with.  Like this picture, just scribbled on a piece of paper, ended up on t-shirts.  Some of the best ideas just happened.  When I sit down at my desk and try to come up with something, I'm still sitting there days later.

     I really enjoy the inter net.  I can look at all the other artist's art they post.  A lot of what I see, is what I call non-objective art, or non-representational art.  Which just means that it makes no attempt to look like any thing in real life, or even the illusion of reality.  There is so much of it, some is good, very good.  Then others, I see they have large inventory's of paintings.  They must not sale that good.  Myself, I'm more a realist. 

Now, don't get me wrong.  Imagination I admire very much, just wish I had more of it.  My brother is a surrealist, and the things, artist like him come up with, just amaze me.

This one here is done by my brother.  It is t-shirts, cards, posters, and even a video on you tube.  Just look for Steve Hester, or stev0 on you tube.

Doodle Art. EPIC 25

www.youtube.com

This is the B/W drawing I'll use as a template to make the color version. Visit my web site http://steve-hester.artistwebs​ites.com/ or contact me for posters...

Something I read in art history; about what is real art, and is there a scale to rate art.  Now, we have computer art, but I think back to Pablo Picasso's Bulls Head.  Nothing more than a seat and the handle bars of a bicycle he cast in Bronze.  It sits in Galerie Louise Leiris, in Paris.  You never really know when it comes to art.

 

     One of these days, some one might be willing to put one of mine up for the world to see.  But that is not why I do it.  Nor is it the reason my brother does.  IT , what ever it is, is some thing that just has to come out.  I lose sleep over some paintings, I get head aches from others, and still have no idea what IT is.

 

Fried Green Tomato's & Cornbread

     My  favorite subject, food.  The best food is southern, so pull up a chair, get a pencil and paper,  we're cooking.  Now I know your mouth is watering,  but there is more to fried green tomato's than the recipe.  First do you have buttermilk?  If you don't, you need some, and get a quart, because you will want to put it in every thing we are cooking. 

     While we are cooking, I'm going to show you where I live.  Put you in the mood, for what we are cooking, and you ask?  What are you cooking?

Fried Chicken

Okra

Fried Green Tomato's

Rice & Grave

Cornbread

     Now every good cook in the south has at least one  Iron Skillet , we have several.  The one you must have is for cornbread.  A seasoned iron skillet is one that has been oiled real good and baked in the oven empty, and never soaked it water after that.  Just take a paper towel, and wipe it out after use.  I can not stress how important that is.

Mills in the South, Stone Ground flower and corn meal.

     Now, we have our buttermilk, corn meal, and flower.  Let's get started, first slice your green tomato's into slices, then crack an egg into a bowl, with your buttermilk mix well,  just enough to cover the tomato's and set in the refrigerator for now. 

Today, we don't much cut up a whole fryer.  It comes frozen in bags of thighs, legs, and breast.  We also get our biscuits frozen, but that is another story.  Ever how you get your chicken,  Place it into a bowl salt and pepper, and soak in buttermilk in the refrigerator.  Told you to get a quart, and save back a glass for desert, a bed time treat.

     At my house the bends in the refrigerator, are full of red tomato's, and okra.  The counters, and windows too.  We don't just use Masson Jars just for drinking sweet tea, or cider.  We're canning, tomato's, and snapping greenbeans, boiling jars, and we have familey in and out.

I love South Carolina, we have every thing here.  In the low country, the rice, and tea plantation were the main crops.  Little is known today about it, but South Carolina was where royalty, and the wealthy, got indigo.  The deep reddish blue flower they made purple dye from.  But let's get back to the rice, we're cooking.

You need a covered baking dish, cornning ware is what we use.  A cup of rice, a cup of water, and in the oven at 350 degrees.  While you are at the oven, take your iron skill,et, put a generous tablespoone of margarine or butter in and put into oven until hot.  This will be for the cornbread, so lets get to making cornbread.

Get a bowl, Do Not Measure, this is where I use to mess up all the time.  It is about a cup of each flour, and corn meal.  A little more corn meal, than flour.  Now, add 1 egg, a little milk, and mix until it is like a cake batter.  This is the imporant part, take the melted butter in your iron skillet, and pour into the batter hot.  Mix well, and pour the mix back into the skillet.  Put this into the oven with the rice, should be  ready in about 20 to 30 mins.

We're Cooking Now

All this is making me hungery, I need some more tea.  Now you have to have Duke's mayo for this but with all these mader's in the kitchen time for a 1/2" slice of tomato, for a mader sandwich. 

Sorry back to supper.

     Since zip-lock bags were invented, no more big mess with the flour, and corn meal in the kitchen.  put some of both in a bag with salt and pepper.  Now for the okra;  don't let it grow over 3".  They are to tough, when they are big.  Slice them about 1/4",  put into bag shake, and into hot frying pan of oil.  Do not flip over until brown on one side.  OK.  Repeat with green tomato's.  Get the tomato's out of the refrigerator.  Put into bag shake, and into frying pan.  You can use the same one as the okra, but wait till the okra is finished first.  The best part, the chicken.

"Southern Fried Chicken"

Take the chicken soaking in the buttermilk out of the fridg.  Get another zip lock bag this time just flour, salt, and pepper.  Shake real good, and here is the real trick.  A large frying pan that cooks even.  Large seasoned iron skillet, or even electric fryer, will do.  Hot oil, do not even start till it oil is hot.  You can check to see if it is hot by dropping a little of the drippings in it.  No one likes soggy fried chicken, that's what you get when the oil is not hot.  Do not turn over untill done on one side. 

Check the oven the rice and corn bread is ready.  Flip the corn bread out upside down on plate, and get out of the way before you are trampled over.  Tell every one to go wash thier hands, and set the table.  You have to make the gravy.  Every one is scared of gravy, it is easy.  Leave the crunchy parts of the chicken in the pan, but pour off most, but not all the oil.  Leave about a table spoon.  From the zip lock bag you floured your chicken with, put a couple spoon fulls into your frying pan and stir.  Add a little more flour while stirring add a glass of milk slowly.  After the milk goes in you can not add any more flour, but you can add Kitchen Bouquet for color.

Ask the Lord to bless this food,

and dig in.

Hope you enjoy

Yall come back to

Charles Kenneth's Corner

P.S.  With that left over buttermilk.  Get a glass, crumble up cornbread, and chopped up onion into it.  Pour buttermilk, get a spoon, and eat this before bed time.

Bad Brushes? or Bad Eyes?

     It was brought to my attention this morning when a Facebook friend said;
"My brushes will not work right today, so I think I'll punish them and put away for a few days."
My reply was that it is not the brushes, but the minds eye was not working.   When an artist, or any one else who is involved in something is distracted the work suffers.  Have you ever noticed that you lose all track of time, while painting, reading a  book, or sewing for that matter.  That is the place your creativity comes from.  When you look at some thing, and really see it.  Your brush,or should I say your hand, will  follow your minds eye.  Myself, I just get up, and walk around my chair once, or twice.  It is not the brushes fault.  Try really looking a something.  Pick it up, turn it over, really look at.  Then set it down.  You will see it differently. 
     When a painter, makes lots of drawings of a subject before painting it.  He is seeing it.  The more drawings, the better he sees it.  Then the better the painting will be in the end.  If a painter can't see the subject in his minds eye, he has not truly seen what he it trying paint, and will fail.       

That went well

I'm so glad that it was not hard to do this

the hardest part was getting my profile photo on here.

I have been wanting to do this for some time, and now that I have, I'm at a loss for words.

Even though I will post about art a lot of the time, right now the tomato's are ripe.  5 bushels so far, canning, and eating tomato sandwiches is the food of the day.  Smelling garlic and rosted tomato's  in the oven for freezing.  Store bought just are not the same.  We don't grow a lot, but greenbeans, tomato's, squash, and okra, are a must have in this house. 

Now, cucumbers for bread and butter pickels, cayenne, tabasco, and jalapeno peppers, are some of the extras.  There is just some thing about growing your own food, that in a small way.  Makes you feel like you beat the system.  Even if you really didn't.

    

 



welcome

     This is where I vent, and share my thoughts about Art, News, Events, and some times just to Gripe.  Once again welcome, and I hope you not only enjoy my blog, but come back time and again for up dates.