I’ve had time to cook lately, which has been a nice change of pace. Last night I made a Espresso Black Bean Chili that I’d discovered when I was staying with my folks at Woodthrush Woods. I really like this recipe, although I cut it in half and still have more chili than makes sense.
I froze some of it and stuck it in the freezer. The challenge there is that three large haddock now fill our freezer. Right before Julie headed out of town, she popped in and dropped these off. The gang had gone fishing with Tóti and caught ridiculous numbers of haddock. These are not small fish and, although they’ve been cleaned, they are whole fish and take up a lot of space in our tiny freezer. It was not easy to fit everything in, so the bags of frozen chili are nestled between the fish.
Meanwhile, the pot in which I’ve cooked the chili is carbon black on the bottom. I don’t know what it is about this particular pot, but everything that I’ve made in it chars. It’s really frustrating. I had to scrape the bottom of the pot, trying to release the crust. I alternated between letting it soak, while I did other dishes, and scraping it. As I turned from tossing some of the scrapings in the trash, I whacked into the cabinet door–left open from the other dishes.
I broke the skin, but not badly. It lines up nicely with the wrinkles on my forehead, so I don’t think it will leave a mark. Still, it seemed like a good idea to put an icepack on it. Except that it was behind the haddock. As I held the first of the frozen fish in my hand, I briefly considered just putting it on my forehead and lying down.
Rob came in and found me about then and took over the dishes, including the pot of carbon. So, I guess that the frozen haddock did relieve me of one my headaches.
Ouch! Thank heavens for the haddock.
How often does one utter that sentence?