Me, I've never claimed to be Einstein and when I screw up, I usually do it by the numbers. . . .
Yesterday, I decided to make a big 'ole pot of Chili - one of my favorites! Svetlana complained that we had a bunch of bags of beans that "You NEVER use!" so, I decided to use some.
I found a couple of bags that had been opened previously and poured them into a smallish pot - oh, about two cups worth of dried beans from each bag. Now this is a gallon-sized pot with about 2 kg, (or so), of dried beans in it, filling the pot about half-full. I thoroughly wash the beans and then put them in the pot, filling it almost all the way to the top with water. I heat the water to a boil, turn off the flame and, (after putting a lid on them), set them aside to soak over-night.
I remember thinking while I was pouring the dried beans into the pot, though the red kidney beans looked OK, the black beans looked kind-of-small. When I buy black beans in cans they're usually something like two or three times the size. . . . Oh well, maybe these are a smaller variety - and I didn't give it a second thought.
After setting the beans to soak, I went back downstairs into my Dungeon to continue trying to figure out how to get my Dell Optiplex 740 to use hardware virtualization. (I ultimately succeeded, but that's a separate article.)
About an hour or so later, I went back upstairs to do something - and I decided to check on the beans.
WOW!
The beans had begun to push the top off of the pot. Not to mention that they had soaked up every darn drop of water in that pot. And, it looked like they hadn't finished soaking either. (Hmmm. . . . No wonder those black beans looked so small. . . .)
I immediately transferred them to a larger pot, (about 2x the size!), added more water, reheated, placed a lid on them and let them continue soaking.
This morning I came down to check on them - and darn if they hadn't filled THAT pot too. . .
Well, anyway, they were finished soaking - at least as far as I was concerned - so I got out my big chili-pot and went to work. I seriously thought about dividing the pot of beans in half, but I had no idea how to store them so they would not spoil. "Heck!" I said. "In for a penny, in for a pound.", so I ended up using the whole pot of beans in my chili.
By dinner-time we had a really nice pot of chili. Though it had a LOT of beans in it.
I remembered that when I saw that first pot, the beans pushing the lid out of the way, it reminded me of the Sorcerer's Apprentice - boy had I ended up with a lot more than I had bargained for!
What say ye?
Jim
