I made cheddar and scallion scones this morning, here is the recipe if you’d like to also make them. Yes the recipe calls for chives but I’m much more likely to have scallions. Also, I don’t bother using salted butter, and you can skip that pastry cutter mess if you have a box grater. Just freeze a stick of butter for 30 minutes and grate it! So much easier.
Speaking of recipes! Last week we had baked beans with our hot dogs. Typically my baked bean of choice is Bush’s vegetarian variety, but naturally these were not available when last I was at the store. I chose an inferior brand and when we ate them my husband asked, “Are these…healthy or something?” They were fine but they did not stand up to Bush’s, that’s for sure!
I was thinking about those beans as I cleaned up the kitchen that night and out of nowhere, I remembered the worst baked bean recipe I’ve ever seen. A woman I knew had a cooking blog that mostly focused on what she and her husband cooked together, but one entry was all about her Famous, Highly Requested!!! Baked Beans. She wrote alllll about how everyone who knows her requests these beans for every party and picnic and get-together. These beans had such good PR! By the time she was done talking about it I was like all right! Let’s see these beans!
The recipe went something like this:
1 pound navy beans
1 cup ketchup
1 cup mustard
1 cup barbecue sauce
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup molasses
1 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup maple syrup
1 cup grape jelly
Put all ingredients in Crockpot, cook on low for three days.
Now, I’m exaggerating to make you laugh (or gag!) but the peanut butter and grape jelly were definitely in there along with the ketchup and mustard. The cooking time was comically long and how any of this tasted like…well, anything after all those ingredients and all that cooking remains totally beyond me. Could people really be requesting these beans?! And if so, had they eaten…food before?
Bean recipes notwithstanding I am curious about whether or not there will be a such thing as cookouts and whatnot this year. I’m thinking no? Maybe if you invite fewer than 10 people and they all stand 15 feet apart and it’s outside? In practical terms, I am very much on Team Lockdown, as there doesn’t seem to be much else to do aside from wait for a vaccine, but I wonder how patient people can be once we’re in the thick of Famous Highly Requested Baked Beans season again.
Last night we ended up have a sort of trash-person version of chicken parm because every pizza place was on a two-and-a-half-hour wait or was just straight-up out of dough. If you ever find yourself in this situation you simply put some diced onion and 1/2 of a jar of pasta sauce on the bottom of a Pyrex dish, par-cook some frozen chicken tenders, place them in the Pyrex, top with parmesan and pop the whole deal in a preheated oven. Boil what’s left of a package of bucatini and go to town.
I’m calling it Famous Highly Requested Chicken Parm!