Blackened beans

Do you find recipes in magazines and tear them out, only to never actually make the dish? I do. I've got recipes ripped out of magazines from the early 90s that I will never make, but I still have them filed away just in case! I've been trying to curb that habit lately (and all the towering piles of paper!), so the recipes I save are usually simple ones where I already have most of the ingredients in the pantry.

A couple of days ago, I began prepping a Bean & Chard soup from Sunset Magazine by boiling and soaking some dried beans. Since our move last week, my energy level has been kind of low, so I didn't get any further than the boil/soak that day.

Yesterday morning, the runny nose and sore throat that the toddler had been fighting off finally got to me.

Today, around lunchtime, I decided that the Bean & Chard soup would be perfect for my worsening cold. Little did I know that white beans, even after a 48-hour soak, still needed a few hours of simmering time before they'd become edible. So much for planning ahead. I added a quart of homemade veggie stock to the beans and set the pot to simmer. I kept checking, but the beans didn't seem to be softening up, even after a couple of hours. By that time, I had to put my son down for a nap, so I headed upstairs.

Which is where I promptly, and blissfully, passed out for another couple of hours.

When I finally woke up, it took me all of two seconds to register the faintest smell of smoke, jump out of bed, and run downstairs to the kitchen. When I lifted the lid of my lovely, beautiful, new-to-me dutch oven, this is what assaulted me, along with a huge plume of smoke.

G*ddamn "blackened" white beans carbonized to the bottom of my pot. Eff me.

I think I mentioned before about my cooking skills. Do I need to tell you that the best investment we've made in this house so far is the fire extinguisher?

Especially since we've lived here for exactly one week today, and already this is the SECOND time I've burnt something on the stove?

Argh.