Guess What I Just Realized?!?

If you go on Google and type in "kidney beans smell" without the quotes around it, my blog is the 3rd entry to come up!

I'm not sure if I should be excited, or really, really sad about that being the search that's driving people to my blog.

But if you're some poor soul who found my page by accident because your kitchen now smells funky, welcome!  Go open a couple of windows and then check things out here.

Also, as my public service announcement of the week:  If you're going to be cooking kidney beans this holiday season and using dried kidney beans out of a bag, make sure you boil them well before eating or throwing them in your slow cooker, because otherwise you'll end up with food poisoning.  This is probably really only an issue for my fellow slow cooker fanatics, because apparently slow cookers do not always get the beans hot enough to kill the evil toxin inside the beans.  Simmering them for 8 hours is not enough - they have to actually be boiled for a good 10 minutes.  (If you're cooking them on the stove, presumably you'll be boiling them long enough trying to soften them that whatever toxin is there will be killed.)  You don't even need to eat a lot of them to get sick - just 3 beans is enough to do it.  Scary, huh?  Personally, I think there should be more warning about this sort of thing - I mean, everyone knows that eating undercooked meat can cause problems, but I never heard anything about kidney beans until I started looking up recipes online.  Even then, a lot of recipes assume you're using canned beans, and don't warn you about the dried ones.

Alternatively, you could take the general stench and toxins as a sign that kidney beans are evil and to be avoided like the plague.

Anyway, my point is, if you're using dried beans in a recipe, do a quick search online to make sure you are cooking them correctly.  You don't want to end up fighting 15 people for bathroom rights because your chili recipe just poisoned them at your cousin's Christmas party.

R.I.P. Little Crock-Pot

Allright, so a 7qt slow cooker isn't exactly little, but it made for a better title.

Anyways, my slow cooker died a few weeks back.  I was washing the ceramic insert and noticed that there was a hairline crack running straight across the bottom.  After doing some research online, it appears to be a common problem with the model I had purchased, and once you notice a crack it's basically a ticking time bomb.  It might last you another couple of weeks, or tomorrow you could find it's shattered and your beef stew has leaked everywhere.  In other words, it's really not worth risking it.

Fortunately, this is the time of year to get a deal on slow cookers.  I'm steering clear of Crock-Pot this time, not only because it cracked, but because the lid tended to rattle and the last couple of times moisture was getting trapped between the insert and the actual metal pot, leaving a layer of funkiness I could never quite clean off.  Eventually I found a cheerful looking red one from Hamilton Beach which had surprisingly good reviews and only cost $15.  It's a 5 qt instead of 7, but I think that's really all I need - it's not like I'm cooking a Thanksgiving turkey in there.  I've been debating whether to hold off on buying it until after Cyber Monday in case someone has an amazing sale on it, but I use it pretty often during the fall/winter, and $15 really isn't a bad price.  So if I do end up just going ahead and ordering it tonight, I will post pictures of it later in the week.

I Guess We're Not Doing Such A Bad Job After All

Sometimes, on days where WeeBee ignores everything I say, I start to freak out.  On days that I'm incredibly sleep deprived, I start thinking that he will never listen to anything I tell him, and I will end up as the mother of a chainsaw wielding serial killer.  (Yes, when I'm sleep deprived, chainsaw massacres are a natural progression from throwing sippy cups and bouncing on the bed.)  Not to diminish the responsibility that serial killers have for their crimes, but let's face it, if your kid ends up being a serial killer, you screwed up somewhere.

Anyway, yesterday we were heading home after a very long afternoon.  Our gps had malfunctioned, we ended up driving around in circles for an hour, stuck on a detour, and ended up stopping at Ikea for ice cream out of frustration.  When we finally got back to our town, we couldn't turn onto our street because the telephone pole that had fallen six hours ago still hadn't been removed.  We were driving along our latest detour when out of nowhere WeeBee said, "Thank you, Daddy.  Thank you for taking us to the store and for ice cream."

I guess he pays more attention than I thought.