Apple Baked Beans and Breakfast Greens

The challenge: To cook all the recipes from this book within a year. TWO DAYS LEFT! Can you feel the panic flowing through my veins?!

I decided to do apple baked beans and breakfast greens for dinner together because, well, what the hell. They seemed to go well together hypothetically, and I needed to get all the recipes done for my Thug Kitchen challenge. Why I did all this on a day where I’d already made Banana Cream Pie and Chocolate Fudge Pops is beyond me, but a desperate girl’s gotta do what a desperate girl’s gotta do.

Picture the scene. I am quite frazzled by now. I am reading and rereading recipe instructions because nothing is sinking in any more. I have just spilled ice cream every where and frantically cleaned it up, while trying not to puke in my own mouth. (If you don’t know the back story clearly you did not read the last blog about the chocolate fudge pops. Click here if you want to.) My hair is in disarray, my fuse is short, and my sense of humour is turning sour.

I go to make the beans, and throw the beans that had soaked overnight into the saucepan only to realise that they didn’t need to be in there. The goddamn onions did. While I sort that shit out and swap things around my kid comes in pleading for bananas and I have to chase him out of the kitchen before he eats the banana cream pie I’m making on the side.

My head is spinning. I manage to burn the onions but get the beans in there with the broth and other fantabulously tasty ingredients. I pause to take satisfaction in the way the molasses drip and ooze off the spoon into the beans. I leave that shit to do its thing while I move on to make the breakfast greens. (Did I mention that I also had a skype call in the middle of all this with my mother-in-law?)

The breakfast greens…well what can I say, fresh kale is still in hiding. I’m not sure if i’s had a threat on its life or what, but it has been seen by no man, woman, or child in this community for the longest time. So I got some fresh spinach and set to work. I mixed the liquids in a glass as the Thugs instructed, and then I fried tempeh like there was no tomorrow (there isn’t! Tomorrow is the LAST DAY of the challenge!)

I added the liquids and the spinach, whilst also occasionally stirring the apple baked beans. This bitch can multitask like no other. The spinach wilted down, and it was good to go.

Once it was all ready I screamed for my family to get their asses to the table. I’m not sure if I was screaming out of relief of being done with cooking for the day, or if I was getting in touch with my inner banshee, but either way it was cathartic.

It was glorious. The two things went really well together too. The beans were smokey and delicious, and the breakfast greens were full of delicious flavour and great texture. I think they’d both be great side dishes, or work well as a breakfast together.

The breakfast greens would make a really hearty, delicious, breakfast on their own too.