2011-04-08 Preparing for the Big Party

Yes I'm behind on blogging.  Oh my. 

For the party, I took on the task of making beans and salsa.  I figured 2 roasters of beans and 2 gallons of salsa would be enough.  On the afternoon of April 8, Sister abenanna took Mom to get her hair cut, a manicure and a facial.  While they were out,I started making salsa - Sister Sue had brought me over 2 gallon bottles and I thought that would be easy easy.  Ha ha ha ha ha.  I had forgotten I would be making this in the house of my Mom who no longer really has a sharp knife, a blender or even really a decent can opener.  Plus the only cutting board she has is made of glass which is not really good for actually cutting anything.

After struggling with a dull knife and a glass cutting board, I finally got yellow and green onions chopped up and divided into the two bottles.  Next task was the garlic.  I removed the skin from 2 whole garlics and then diced them as fine as I could with the knife at my disposal - sure missed my garlic press.  I next decided to open 6 cans of fire roasted tomatoes for each gallon of salsa.  I looked through the drawer and found this battery operated thing that you kind of attach to the lid and let it do it's thing around the lid - 2 times around on each can got the tomatoes opened - or at least the first 12 cans then it died.  A new battery did not fix the problem so that went into the trash and I looked for a different opener.

After opening all of the cans, I dumped them one at a time into a bowl and using the old biscuit / doughnut cutter (the one we each have - bought in South Dakota), I coarsley chopped them.  Then I chopped up green chiles (fresh roasted the day before at Shope's in Coolidge - the smell of them made me long for some chile rellenos).  I also cut up cilantro but put it in a plastic bag to wait until Saturday morning to put it in the salsa so it would be fresher.

Having all of this completed, I took a break.  I wanted to start the beans late in the evening so they could cook all night and I wouldn't have to worry about finding a refrigerator to store them in.

We had picked up 40 pounds of beans at Sam's Club and had decided we needed to cook about 20 pounds.  Sister abenanna brought over 2 roasters from the school.  After dinner, I cleaned beans and divided them between the two roasters to cook.  I brought them to a boil and then turned them down so they could simmer all night.  They would be done by morning.  With the beans under control, I diced up 2 pounds of bacon and cooked it until it was nice and crisp then put it in a bowl to add in the morning.

Mom and I watched tv for a while and then headed to bed about 10 - beans were still simmering nicely.  Sometime between 12:30 and 1:00, I woke up and decided to check on the beans.  In one roaster, the beans were darker than the other.  I turned up the heat and watched it for a while only to discover that roaster had died on me.  What to do, what to do.

I moved as many beans as I could into the good roaster then started searching for pans.  Mom had a small crock pot so I grabbed it, filled it with beans and plugged it in - hoping it would work.  She has 4 burners on her stove and so I distributed the rest of the beans between 3 - 1 1/2 quart pans and 1 pan that was maybe about 4 quarts.  It was tight but everything fit.  Only problem was that I needed to keep an eye on the beans so that these small pans wouldn't burn.

About 6:00, I called brother abenanna and told him I had a broken roaster.  He said he'd bring another one over.  When he got there, the kitchen was a mess and I regret that I didn't take a picture of all of the pans I had going to get the beans cooked.  I moved the beans back into the 2nd roaster and cleaned up all the pans, crockpot and broken roaster so the kitchen would be clean.  Put the bacon into the beans and also some diced chile into one of the roasters (normally I put chile in all my beans but since the chile was kind of coarsley chopped, I was afraid children would not eat the beans because of the green stuff).

I stirred the cilantro into the salsa and then grabbed some of Mom's dolls and a few other things and headed over to the church to help set up.  At that point, I was feeling like it is definitely going to be a very long long day.