Benign Sedition

I had planned to write a piece this morning inspired by an article about the hope of Spring, subversive agriculture and non-violent resistance to authority. In the shower I meticulously crafted the narrative: weaving the concepts from James C. Scott's "The Art of Not Being Governed"and Toby Hemenway's "Liberation Permaculture" together in concert with the soft spots in the armor of technocracy. I'd throw in examples of COIN failures across the world and finish up by bringing both the strident activists of the Left and Right together by shredding ideologies and unify their primary motivations (loosely, to make the world a better place) in the values they share rather than separate them by how they differ.

It was not to be.

Before I jump off into what might be taken as an anti-technological rant, let's clear things up. Firstly, I am not opposed to technology. However, I am also not a true believer of the technological quasi-religion that seems to have taken hold of American culture during my lifetime. I understand why it has become what it is. If you put yourself into the shoes of the 19th century everyman things like tractors, phone lines, train travel, electricity and the democratization of the internal combustion engine would be extremely useful and very seductive because of their eminent practicality in day to day life. The mid-century was quite dazzling. Supersonic jets, atomic energy, rockets to the moon, computers, etc. Were these things really useful to the average person? Certainly not, but they we're sexy. They told us a story of the "FUTURE!!!"  Whether or not you really wanted to colonize other planets or have a laser gun you be a fool not to be wrapped up in the ecstatic fever sweeping through the masses, fueled by the scientific manipulation of the human mind otherwise known as marketing. We weren't sure how it worked or how it was going to benefit us in any sort of practical way but, by God, we were for it.

Fast forward to the early 1980's of my early childhood. Flying cars? No. Colonies on Mars? Nope. Free Energy, world peace, the end of poverty, teleportation... did we even have a better train network than we did in the late 1940's? Fuck no. We had Space Camp, video games and all sorts of other consumer goods that were dressed up in the trappings of Futureness, but nothing tangible other than, arguably, jet travel being within reach of the man on the street. Luckily the marketing machine was still going stronger than ever:

If you were 7 years old, as I was, in 1984 when the above Grumman X-29 flew for the first time you were, like, convinced you were living in the future. Between this, the Space Shuttle and the SR-71 Blackbird the fact that we were not living in floating houses like the Jetson's apparently did not matter. What I now find hilarious about the X-29 is that forward swept wing jet fighters were being developed by the Nazi's in 1944 and the SR-71 took it's first flight in the mid-1960's. In other words, they were the past but we were still willing to buy that "most glorious future place of the Fatherland" was still coming, apparently.

I have a very particular memory of the late 1980's(or was in the very early 1990's?) which was watching Future porn TV shows reminiscent of "That's Incredible!" where goofy houses of the future, flying boats and all sorts of James Bond type novelty vehicles were trotted out to amaze the plebs while they watched it on television sets that were little different than those of the 1970's.

Accelerating in the background was the Information Revolution, which had begun during the Nixon administration to allow global financial stuff to happen 24/7, and by the late 1990's the internet was the new Futurism. Sure, web 1.0 was mostly populated by badly html'd Pearl Jam fan sites and message boards full of neck beards but that didn't mean that we couldn't speculate wildly on it and crater the US economy.

All the way along: What was the utility of most of the future hype bullshit that was marketed at us? The space movies, zippy looking jet planes and other assorted stories we were told about technology? Peer into the lives of the average American and you'll find that they are still living in a crappy house/apartment/trailer but now there is a large flat screen squatting in the middle of the living room where the 19" Zenith used to be and that everyone has a computer phone. Oh and their cars get 10 miles a gallon better mileage but if they break they can't work on them.

What would the guy at the beginning of this narrative of the age of technology have to say about this state of affairs? Not much positive I would bet.

You seeing what I'm getting at here? Maybe not, but I will proceed nonetheless.

Now, in the year 2017, the X-29 loving 7 year-old me would have thought we would for sure be living in the future promised by 2001: A Space Odyssey and yet, here we are.

 And this is why I will, likely, never write the article I intended. Because, on the way to my office to write I decided to pop in my headphones, listen to a podcast and dick around on my phonecomputer. My tight nest of thoughts scattered. My ambition sublimated. My will soothed by the false perception of doing something important.

This brings me to my real point: appropriate use of technology and the slippery area between work and play.

15 years ago you knew if you were relaxing/wasting time because you were plopped in front of a TV or reading People magazine. Nowadays you can check your work email on the bus and the next thing you know you have wasted the better part of an hour yelling at dumb people on Facebook. You will not get this time back. This is not an improvement.

Yes, there are infinite ways of being productive on a smartphone, but ask yourself the question I asked myself this morning: "How much time do I spend fulfilling the promise of the internet as the New Library of Alexandria versus how much time to I spend distracting myself, punding on the latest news, hate reading social media and looking for stuff I don't need on eBay?" Not just this but also: "What could I have done with the time that has just slipped away from me today?"

Now let's ask the larger question "How much human productivity was lost today by these means?" comScore says 198 million people own smart phones in the US as of 2016. Let's say that 2/3rds of those smartphone owners spend on average 1 hour a day dicking around. Both of those numbers seem fairly conservative but what the heck. 130 million hours of human production have been lost. Today. Considering that a human has 120,000 hours of dedicated work in their lifetime according to how we do things in the Western world that is 1000 lives worth of lost production in one day.

I would like to put this out there for you to consider: If technology does not improve your life and the lives of others, it is making them worse.

Wasting 1000 lives worth of work in one day does not seem like it is making things better. 

Stop dicking around. 

Start doing something meaningful.

Like making your own Hot Sauce?

Eggs, rice and beans, quesadillas and so many more things are just made better with a little bit of hot sauce sprinkled on top. Hot sauce is great because it is cheap and it doesn't really go bad, but is it as good as it should be? That depends. I use plain old cheap store brand hot sauce to adjust the seasoning on things like soups, stews and beans. This because I want acid and heat, not chile flavor. However, sometimes you do want the flavor. Sometimes you want to give a meaningful gift to your uncle or your dad. Sometimes you need to make your own hot sauce.

Recipe

1 cup White Vinegar
4 Habanero chiles, minced very fine
Salt

Optional

Garlic
Fish Sauce
Fermented Shrimp

Do

Combine minced chiles, vinegar and salt (and garlic or fish sauce or fermented shrimp or whatever) to taste in a glass jar. shake and refrigerate for 2-3 weeks, shaking when you think about it. Once the flavors have married bottle it up in recycled beer bottle or whatever and top with a cork. Old hot sauce bottle work surprisingly no well for this sort of thing because of their narrow necks.

Telling History with Dragons

No, this is not me getting lazy three posts into my new blog. This a template for what I want to celebrate here. To quote myself from my last post:

"Today I read an essay that examined the Gilmour Girls reboot, JJ Abrams reboots, nostalgia, Twitter, the left, the right, election fallout, Camille Paglia and what the definition of conservative actually means. It was written by a gay, Australian, former BBC documentary producer who writes books about magic.

Now that is the kind of diversity of thought I am talking about. Rich, weird, delicious diversity."

Well, guess what? This is the guy I was talking about giving you a short tour of human history using Dragons. Literally. 

If you like this presentation click the Rune Soup link to the right and sign up for his site. Yes. I know!  This is EXACTLY the kind of bullshit I hate but signing up is the only way you can watch his presentation The Campfires Edge which is like this video but 11,000 times better and this video is very weird and very good. Please yourself, either way.

How to Eat a Dragon

I've never personally met anyone who has seen, let alone cooked or eaten a dragon but I have met a few who've eaten snakes and one guy who seemed to cook them fairly often.

The gentleman in question was a standard west coast bohonk type that worked for the Water Department. I met him at the scene of an extremely large "Arizona Red" rattlesnake crossing the narrow two lane blacktop headed towards Silverado Canyon. How large is large? 8 1/2 feet long and about as big around as a coffee can in the middle. As a person who has seen my fair share of rattlesnakes, I assure you that this was the biggest I had seen by twice. 

Anyway, frater bohonk pulled over to look on the large sandstone colored serpent just ahead of us and sprung from his Water Dept. utility truck to retain a shovel from the bed and unceremoniously lopped the head of the snake off and shoveled the carcass into the back of his truck. 

When I asked what he was going to do with the snake he responded that they were "Good eats" (a full decade before anyone would hear from Alton Brown). 

Recipe

His preferred preparation was to skin and bone the snake and then marinate the loin segments in salad dressing for a few hours before grilling and serving over a Caesar salad.  Taste? Predictably: "Like chicken!"

Pairing
 

A sprightly Picpoul de Pinet

Social Media, Mmmm... Not So Much.

I’m leaving Facebook… sort of.

To be clear, I don’t mean “leaving Facebook” in the sort of foot-stomping, temper tantrum “I’m taking my ball and going home!” kind of way that so many people did during the heated run-up to the election.

I’m leaving Facebook, and the rest of social media, in the same way that I left New York City.

I didn’t leave NYC because I hated it, I left because it because it no longer suited my needs. I had changed. New York had changed. I left. From a pro’s versus con’s list kind of way it was becoming increasingly illogical to continue to live there. I still go back from time to time and I find it enjoyable in that context. This is the kind of leaving I mean.

So what are my reasons? Well, for one, I don’t really find anything of much interest to me on Facebook, or most social media, anymore. The level of discourse (and level of interest in things beyond the most base and echo-chamber-y meme dumpster information) has seemingly disappeared from my feed. In short, it’s become, at best, Boring and, at worst, Sad.

So, that’s one reason but, the real reason is that I have to make a morally reasoned stand against censorship and limiting speech.

Obviously a lot of people are talking about the War on Free Speech that has begun recently. While I certainly don’t agree with extreme positions from either the left or the right, I do think it’s important to have diversity of ideas, even if they are fucking terrible ideas. With free access to information comes responsibility. Basically, the ability to read, understand and make personal decisions, using reason and critical thinking, about the quality of the information presented.

Allowing multi-billion dollar corporations to make these decisions for you, with algorithms and blacklists, certainly isn’t the answer. Why? Frankly, Google, Facebook and other effective information monopolies do not have your well being in mind. They are for-profit corporations. They do stuff that makes profits. Stuff like selling your data, manipulating your information feed and, ultimately, manipulating the way you think. I find this kind of thing creepy and dangerous.

Obviously, it’s not like the social interwebs just became creepy in the past six months or something.

They started out, with Friendster and what came after, as really useful, fun platforms that augmented and enhanced real world communities, or what I would call “distractions with utility”. I struck the same bargain that many people who understood this type of technology at the time did: I was willing to accept a bit of Silicon Valley creep for free access to these networks that I found pleasing.

Fast forward to today where you routinely experience people who, more or less, live through social media in an unwholesome soup of flame posts, clickbait, Ads disguised as real posts, FOMO, memes and all kinds of other manipulative cultural trash. Of course this isn’t the way that all people co-habitate with social media. It’s a spectrum that spans the above scenario to people who have no social media presence at all because they think it’s a waste of time. You’re probably in the middle. I was in the middle.

More to the point, by the time that social media began to alarm me with it’s increasingly skeezy moves, I had become somewhat dependent on these networks for a manifold of personal and business reasons. I was stuck in a trap of convenience. Should I chew off my foot or hope that the trap becomes obsolete? Man, I really did want to keep that foot.

Circling back to the censorship issue, sort of leaving Facebook, etc., etc. I can’t and won’t give any more time or energy to a system that will say out loud, let alone implement, these kinds of opaque censorship “solutions”… as much as I can.

Should I delete my various accounts, cancel my ISP and burn my laptop? No. Totally quitting social media and/or the internet is stupid for obvious, cutting off one’s nose to spite the face type, reasons. My info is already out there and I seriously doubt that it is going anywhere anytime soon. All of the bells of cyber-life cannot be unrung, to think otherwise is just insane.

With this in mind I’ve decided to “leave” in a rational, measured way. I’ll check my social media once a week just to prove to myself that I haven’t missed anything at all and check my messages so I can tell people to contact me using email, like a fucking adult.

Dear God! Wherever WILL I get my information from?

Well, increasingly, I have been getting it from good, old fashioned blogs.

No, not those kinds of aggregator, lists of lists or news sites.

Nope. I mean blogs written by one person who I think is smart, funny and interesting, even if almost no one else thinks so. They are out there and they are awesome. Lots of them. (and NO I don’t mean sites that provide an indy version of the echo chamber/bubble for whatever my political/social/cultural world view. I mean sites that make me think, challenge my preconceived notions and are outwardly hostile to ideology) Today I read an essay that examined the Gilmour Girls reboot, JJ Abrams reboots, nostalgia, Twitter, the left, the right, election fallout, Camille Paglia and what the definition of conservative actually means. It was written by a gay, Australian, former BBC documentary producer who writes books about magic.

Now that is the kind of diversity of thought I am talking about. Rich, weird, delicious diversity.

I like this kind of thing (and by “like” I mean it fills me with hopeful awe of things human beings can do. When was the last time you felt good or hopeful reading the internet for more than 5 minutes?) for the same reasons I like and prefer Jackson Heights, Queens to a Walmart. Jackson Heights is alive, real and exciting. A singular place that only exists in Jackson Heights, Queens. Walmart is dead, fake and is only slightly better than being stuck in a hospital waiting room. You can sample this corporate esthetic anywhere you got and it always tastes like bland, gray sadness and smells like old band-aids.

The hospital waiting room cannot be avoided forever but I figure I can make it a point to spend as little time as possible hanging out there.

 Recipe

Buy a TV dinner (I recommend Salisbury Steak). Heat according to directions. Eat as much as you can stomach and then leave it in a parking lot somewhere.

Pairing
A nice inky glass of growing paranoia

Grapevine Fires

Something odd happened to me today.

I frequently walk home from the library in my small New England town that serves as my office while listening to a podcast. Today was no different. The subject of the podcast was what was to be expected of the Trump presidency. (An aside: If you're as sick of seeing fake soul searching, heartfelt personal essays full of deeps thoughts about the residue of the 2016 election, you can breath easy. This is not about that.) I began to ascend the street that climbs a hill, at the top of which is my extravagantly 1980's house. Across the street from my home is an 18th century graveyard full of large, gnarled hardwood trees now naked and skeletal in this, the heart of North Eastern Winter. The roadway of the cemetery is sunken and rounded on it's edges like some of the ancient country lanes you seen in rural England. Like many truly old grave sites, it is not well maintained other than the monthly mowing it gets in the Summer months and many of the stone grave markers has fallen over from frost heaves or rascal teenagers.

As I began to trudge up the hill the podcast was winding down. The hosts were making jokes and finding places between the bricks where the grass could grow about potential Trump upsides. Self-educated, independent American minds is what I think they were hoping for. As the broadcast faded out, bumper music started to play. I hate bumper music. I don't listen to podcasts for recreation. I listen to them to expose myself to new ideas and to listen to intelligent, reasonable people talk to one another. Bumper music is a waste of time, but this time it sounded strangely familiar and the freezing rain was starting to come down (real freezing rain, not metaphorical freezing rain) so I delayed skipping to the next in my cue.

The tune was somber and sweet. It sounded like something I had perhaps heard in a dream recently and I had been taking Melatonin. As I reached the halfway mark of the hill, now turning steeper as the overgrown wall of the graveyard's edge came just into view the lyrics went:

"The wake up call to a rented room

Sounded like an alarm of impending doom.
To warn us it's only a matter of time.
Before we all burn
Before we all burn
Before we all burn
Before we all burn.

We bought some wine and some paper cups
Near your daughter's school when we picked her up
And drove to a cemetery on a hill,
On a hill.

Watched the plumes paint the sky gray
As she laughed and danced through the field of graves
There I knew it would be alright
That everything would be alright,
Would be alright
Would be alright
Would be alright
Would be alright."

I pay attention when synchronicity starts popping up in my life and the last few days had been more full of it than the entire previous two years. Some people think that synchronicities indicate that you are on the right track or "doing the right thing", or whatever... I don't know what they signify, but I tend to observe them none the less "just in case".

Anyway, I'm not much for sentimental, touchie-feely music these days. The world is too full of dicks that need kicking for me to indulge in that sort of thing. But the timing had split my skull like a bullet through a banana. It was too much to ignore. In a matter of moments I found myself sitting on a toppled headstone and crying as the dim gray skies pattered the hood of my parka with perfectly clear, frozen rain drops. 

As it turns out the song was "Grapevine Fire" by Death Cab for Cutie. When I later googled the lyrics and found out I had been emotionally hustled by the mother of all mediocre, emotionally manipulative bands of the early 2000's I cried again. In fact I'm crying as I write this, much to my chagrin. The point is that, sometimes, even Death Cab for Cutie can be the vessel of an important message from the universe. No matter how much it pisses you off. 

And what was that message? Change and Uncertainty. Maybe you've noticed lately that the whole fucking world seems to have lost it's mind? Change and Uncertainty. You could certainly pick out particular elements that lead to it: automation and software making many types of jobs obsolete, various looming crises in debt-based economics, the end of materialism and and the rise of scientism, the education system becoming increasingly poopy and potentially obsolete or even the recent election that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. You could probably go on naming nuts like Forest Gump for hours or days on this topic but it boils down to the fact that we're just in a really weird place right now. A moment of massive Change and Uncertainty and it scares the shit out of us. 

I was watching my son tonight as he stretched and sighed in contentment, fitted tightly under the arm of his mother and tucked beneath the soft down of our bed cover as she read him a book about ducklings. At that moment I think I would have given almost anything to feel that kind of warmth and comfort I can just barely remember from my own childhood. I found this spontaneous emotional desire shocking. However sweet and tender I might have been at age 2 that was a long time ago and the intervening four decades have forged me into an emotionally muted, unsentimental dick, of sorts. I just don't do that kind of thing very often and it really snuck up on me that I could become so overwhelmed by the afore mentioned Change and Uncertainty as to have a plus-sized emotional outburst twice in the same day. 

There's an epiphany here somewhere, I'm sure of it...

The thing is that this is not an easy time to be an alive adult human. We're seeing the shadowy outlines of the kind of radical change that only my grandfather, who was born before cars or airplanes and lived to see world war, atomic bombs and space flight, could understand. If you want to get tied up in knots about how scary the world has become in the post-end-of-history era, be my guest. Go right ahead. One thing I can tell you for sure is that stress and strain will not put a dent in the gears that are currently turning. What you can effect are your friends, family and yourself. If you're an uptight dour dick, the effect will not be positive. Take it easy on yourself. Lighten up. You're only human.  

Now a Recipe:

 Grilling over burning grapevine clippings is a long tradition at small vineyards in the Mediterranean and they really marry with the simple flavors of rustic Med cuisine. Certainly you can grill anything over these burning grapevine fires but I think fish or marinated white meat things (like chicken or rabbit) OR lamb are best. What follows is a dual purpose dressing/marinade that you can use for either.

Ingredients
1/4 cup decent olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (NOT cheap stuff)
3-4 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped fine, no woody parts
2-4 cloves garlic, minced fine
1 tablespoon paprika or Aleppo chili powder
freshly ground black pepper, salt to taste

Make
Combine all the ingredients and mix thoroughly. This stuff should be pretty salty and acidic because you're using it to completely season unseasoned fish or meat so make it taste that way when you adjust the seasoning.

Cook
So, this is where it gets tricky. Not all fish likes to be grilled and fewer still like to be marinated and grilled. When in doubt grill gently un-marinated and un-seasoned, then baste with the flavor paste above towards the end or use it as a topping relish of sorts. Or both.

Meat, on the other hand, doesn't give a fuck. Rule of thumb: the darker the meat, the longer the marinating. So beef heart: 24 hrs. minimum. Lamb leg: 8 hrs. Rabbit: 6-8 hrs. Chicken: 3-6 hrs.

To cook with the grapevines you need A) dry grapevine clippings (get these from vineyards in the early Spring when they prune their vines) and B) a charcoal grill or the like. Start with charcoal and get a good bed of white coals going then add the clippings a minute before you want to start grilling. Taste the romance.

Pairing
Box wine and paper cups

How to Cook a Pot of Beans

So I figured if this blog is going to be called How to Cook a Pot of Beans the best way to kick it off would be to do so with the the promise and spirit of the title.

I like cooking beans. I like what they represent: they are cheap, durable, hearty and nutritious. They are not fancy. They are antithetical to the various strains of food fashion industrial media bullshit complex. Beans are not sexy.

However, if cooked properly, with care and love, a regular old $1.89 bag of grocery store dry beans can be transmuted into a sublime substance that feeds both the body and soul.

First off, this is not one recipe, it is many. There are a number of preparations of beans that are all worthy of praise and explanation and I will try to explore as many as are practical. Second off, I have a lot of food biases, as you will see. If you do not share them please see your way to applying the techniques provided to your palate. I am not claiming to be an expert, merely a man with experience and opinions.

Let's get started.

Or, rather, let's take on a tangent topic immediately: pressure cookers.

I like pressure cookers for the same reason that I like beans: they are not flashy, cool, sexy, popular or written about at all in turd soup of corporate food media. They are too grandma-delic and bereft of the strong smell of scienceness that things like sous vide, emulsifiers, culinary foams and liquid nitrogen have. In other words, they are the two door hatchback of culinary science.

What does this have to do with beans?

A lot. In my extremely biased but knowledgeable opinion, the second generation pressure cooker (these develop pressure using spring valves, rather than the 1st Generation weighted valve set-up) makes the best beans.

Why this is is very simple: the spring valve does not allow the flavorful "bean essence" to escape into the the air while it cooks. Does this sound like I will next try to interest you in a palm reading or sell you an Astrology chart? I know it sounds flaky, but I'm not sure how else to describe what's going on.

Attempt number two: When used properly (turn down the heat after the pressure button pops up so as not to vent precious bean essence) a gen 2 pressure cooker does not eject any of the cooking liquid as steam into the outside world. Instead it keeps the steam and all of the volatile chemical flavor and aroma compounds IN the pot, yielding beans with much improved flavor from the normal simmering pot method of bean cookery.

In addition to better flavor, the pressure cooker allows you to cook the beans to soft and silky in 25 minutes or less. Did you hear that? 25 fucking minutes!!! You know, like 3 hours and 45 minutes less than a proper stove top pot of beans. And they taste better. And you can make proper, thick beef stock in 1 1/2 hours or braise short ribs in 45 minutes or cook Carnitas in 35 minutes or steam tamales in 15 minutes... This is why I brought up the pressure cooker, because it not only will make the best pot of beans of your life in less time than most people spend in the shower, it will also change you goddamned life (a slight exaggeration).

Onward. 

Let's talk beans. I like plain old dry Pinto Beans. Yes, you can get fancy and use Ojo de Cabra or Rattlesnake beans for the following recipe. And, yes, they will taste better but they will also cost double or triple or more. Organic dry Pinto Beans from the bulk section of the closest yuppie grocer are plenty good for me and they're so cheap as to be almost free. As the posts here develop you'll begin to notice a theme of thrift and common sense. It starts here and it starts with bulk organic beans. If you have the unending need to spend more than you have to because it fills the hole in your heart read someone else's recipes.

A Basic Pot of Beans

1 lb. Pinto Beans
1 small or medium sized yellow onion
1 Anaheim Chile or other mild green chile, roasted, peeled and diced
2 tablespoons lard or cheap olive oil
1 tablespoon cumin
salt
hot sauce
1/2 tsp Baking Soda (regular pot cooking only)

First thing in the morning dump your beans in a bowl and cover with 2-3 inches of cold water. When you get home that night toss the lard or olive oil in a pot over medium heat and add the onions and chiles. Fry until the onions start to get a little soft and then add the cumin and cook until you smell cumin. This is called "blooming" the spices. Do not burn or scorch the cumin or it will be bitter and you will have to start over.

Once the cumin blooms, drain the bean water, rinse the beans quickly and then add the beans to the pot and cover by an inch with cold water. If you are using a pressure cooker lock on the lid, set the pressure knob to "2" and crank the heat to high until the pressure indicator pops up and then reduce the heat to low and start your 20 minute timer. After the timer goes off remove the pot from the heat and allow it to cool until the pressure button drops down. About 10-15 minutes. Then add salt and hot sauce until the beans taste right. Maybe mash the beans up and simmer a little longer to thicken the texture. You are DONE.

If you aren't using a magic wizard pot but rather a mortal, regular style pot, you should do all the same onion and friends stuff listed above and then simmer the beans for about an hour, watching carefully and adding water if they start to run dry. After an hour the stripes of the pintos should be gone and they should all be a nice even tan color. Get your stirring stick out and at the ready then add the baking soda. Now stir those beans like crazy until the foaming and bubbling subsides, about 1-2 minutes. Listen UP: if you do not stir frantically and long enough after the baking soda is added some of your beans will be hard while others will be soft. No bueno.

What's the deal with the baking soda anyhow? PH dude. PH.

By making the PH of the beans more Basic (alkaline) you greatly speed the cooking process and soften the beans to where you want them in 45 minutes more simmering rather than having to wait the 3-4 hours it would take for them to get there naturally. As a brief aside, if you'd like to fuck with someone cooking beans, or any other legume, simply add a few tablespoons of vinegar to their pot and walk away. Those beans will NEVER get soft unless YOU add baking soda and save the day. Do with this knowledge what you will.

After the beans get soft (about 2 hours in) you'll want to build flavor by mashing the beans somewhat and then waiting for a crust to form on the bottom of the pot and then scrape it up with your stirring stick. Repeat this 3-4 times (another 30-40 minutes of your life you will never get back) then add salt and hot sauce and/or vinegar until the bean flavor pops. Remember that you made the beans basic so you will need much more acid (vinegar or vinegar based hot sauce) to get back to the acidic and thus flavorful side of the PH spectrum.

End of line.

Variations on the above theme:

Chuckwagon Beans

Substitute bacon for lard or olive oil by roughly chopping 3-4 slices of bacon and rending the fat in the pot over low heat until the bacon is crisp but not burnt. Proceed with the above recipe as normal or omit the onions and chiles and add 1 tablespoon or so of GOOD chili powder such as Bolner's or Gebharts (which I hear you can get from WalsMart) for a true austere bean eating experience.

Black Beans... if you must

Use olive oil, not lard. Omit the green chile and sub in a smallish green pepper. Add a couple minced cloves of garlic and a diced rib of celery.

Refried Beans

Take any of the versions above and mash the shit out of them with a spoon, fork, potato masher or (ideally) bean masher. Next heat 2-3 tablespoons of lard or olive oil in a large skillet and then add 3-4 cups of mashed beans to the hot fat. Fry the beans like a potato pancake till it forms a crust then flip them over and fry the other side (2-3 minutes a side) and serve.

Quesero Beans

Take your beans and add way too much cheese (Monterey Jack, Mild Cheddar, whatever). When it melts, stir it in and serve, covering it with more grated cheese.