Bean Pucks and Nearly Nachos

I do not like to cook. While I do enjoy baking up desserts for special occasions, I find the preparation of daily meals to be a drag (and, on the rare occasion I do it, usually an Adventure in Cooking). Not liking to cook is not really a handicap in this modern age, but something else is: being stingy. I am, and this basically means that I can't just indulge my laziness by ordering from Seamless like all the other Millennials. I have to be prepared, at all times, with a stockpile of frozen dinners and leftovers from the last time I dined out.

Sadly, though, two weeks ago, my refrigerator went kaput, defrosting all of my frozen ravioli, mozzarella sticks, vegetarian burgers, and the other usual staples of my heat-and-eat diet. Fortunately, I was able to keep the large bag of shredded cheddar, because I figured that would get moldy if it were going to go bad, and I didn't see any mold on it yet! But one can't live on cheddar alone. Being out of practice in the art of food shopping (I mainly rely on my boyfriend's Costco membership to supply me with all my daily needs), all I could think to do was pick up a can of refried beans when I happened to be at Wegman's the day after the disaster. I also picked up some corn nuts, because that was a really exciting thing I found in the bulk bins!

Last week, since those refried beans were fresh in my mind and since I basically didn't have anything else to eat at home, they became the basis of my meal in very short order. Now, I have to say, the dish that I'm about to share with you is one that I've been making in some variation or other for years, so it is no longer an Adventure in Cooking! when I prepare it. But since it is a recipe of sorts, I'll categorize it as such, since I don't have a blog tag for "Recipes I'm actually pretty good at making."

How to prepare Nearly Nachos

1. Start with a can of refried beans. Scoop about 1/3 cup of them into a microwave-safe bowl.
2. Top the beans with a solid handful of shredded cheddar cheese. If your cheese, like mine, has been frozen, fully thawed, then popped back into the freezer, it's probably going to be more of a brick of cheese than anything, so bang the bag on the counter a few times before commencing with the sprinkling. Make sure the cheese covers the beans completely, because the beans will explode everywhere without a protective coating of cheese.
3. Microwave the beans and cheese for 77 seconds. Time is always of the essence, and by choosing a time that you can enter with just two presses of the same button, you can save at least a few milliseconds!
4. In my goal to make my Nearly Nachos as close to the real thing (that is, something that I can find in a perhaps-not-too-authentic Mexican restaurant) as possible, I like to eat them with a bit of lettuce. This means ripping a few leaves off a head of romaine, and eating them as a side dish.
   
   Now comes the fun part—the toppings!
5. Get out a packet of Taco Bell mild sauce. You should always have a few of those around—grab one every time you visit a Taco Bell, and you will never lack for seasonings for your Nearly Nachos. Squeeze that sauce over the top of your beans & cheese.

6. If the beans aren't salty enough, you might want to add a dash of seasoned salt. I like to use the "Kartöflukrydd" seasoning that we picked up in Iceland. Nothing says "Mexican food" like an Icelandic seasoned salt! If you're smart and have sampled the beans before coating them with cheese, you might actually mix the seasoning in as a first step, rather than sprinkling it on top of the already salty cheese.
7. Next, if you have them, drop in a few black olives! Black olives aren't a regular fixture in Mexican food, but when I do find them, they make my day, and I always have a can of them at the ready.
8. As a condiment, you may want to add a dollop of plain yogurt. This is a cheaper and healthier alternative to sour cream. I usually put the yogurt on a side plate, say, next to my leaves of lettuce, for dipping into, so it doesn't curdle next to the hot foods.
   
   An alternative way of preparing all of these ingredients is to actually pile them onto tortilla chips and toast them in the toaster oven, in which case you'd have real nachos. But pay close attention to this next step—it's what turns this bowl of ordinary bean dip into Nearly Nachos!
   
9. Since I frequently do not have tortilla chips, I usually make do with what I have—which is either a bag of tortilla-chip crumbs that my boyfriend left behind after eating all the chips and subsequently forgetting about it, or a bag of pretzels (which I usually got from an airplane, because I never buy pretzels but do accept them when they are given to me for free). You'd be surprised at how well pretzels can substitute for tortilla chips!
   
   In this example, I'll be using pretzels, because I happen to have a bag of snack mix with pretzels in it. Ordinarily I'd just throw away the pretzels, but waste not, want not! If I can find an application for pretzels that does not require eating them plain, I'll be happy to keep them around! We're at the bottom of this snack bag by now, so finding a whole unbroken pretzel is a bit of a challenge. But that's actually perfect for Nearly Nachos, because you can just sprinkle the pretzel pieces onto the top of the whole shebang. Go ahead! Do it!
10. Now you're finished! This whole process takes approximately two minutes, perfect for anyone who hates wasting time in the kitchen. Grab a spoon and commence eating! Don't forget to dip each spoonful into the yogurt, and top off each with a bite of lettuce! Yum!

Sorry, folks. I lied. You're not actually finished. 

After you have eaten your delicious dinner for one, you will undoubtedly have some refried beans left over. If you're anything like me, you can't work your way through a can of refried beans before it starts growing mold. The solution is bean pucks! Basically, these are single-serving portions of refried beans that you stash in the freezer until you're ready to eat them.

This is how I make them.

How to prepare Bean Pucks

1. Take a small muffin tin (one can of beans will probably yield no more than 5 bean pucks) and spray the inside of each cup with cooking spray.
2. Then fill the cups to the top with refried beans. Simple!
3. Place the muffin tin in the freezer, and a few hours later, you will have a tin full of bean pucks.

If you let them thaw just slightly, they should fall easily out of the muffin tin. My tin is so flimsy, I can actually squeeze them out from the bottom, but that's leaving dents in it, so I don't recommend that method to those who respect their kitchen equipment. Return your now-liberated bean pucks to the freezer in a container of your choosing.

The next time you're hungry for Mexican food, just grab a bean puck from the freezer, thaw it by microwaving it for around 44 seconds, then spread it out in the bowl and fix yourself some Nearly Nachos!

Worst Dog / Best Dog

Bubalou is the worst dog. In addition to the puking, peeing, and noisy separation anxiety that he unleashed on us as soon as we got him, we have discovered quite a few new annoying habits over the last few years.

He's an escape artist, able to leap tall chain-link fences in a single bound. I thought having a house with a fenced yard would be an improvement over an apartment, because I could let the dogs run around in the yard unsupervised. But no, you have to keep your eye on Bubalou every moment he's outside, because when he gets in the mood for a stroll in someone else's yard, he's gone in an instant.

He also loves to eat dirty clothes. The way we discovered this was a mystery story. Early on in our ownership of him, we once found a puddle of vomit with what appeared to be a striped cloth in it. Where that had come from, we had no idea. Until a week or so later when, folding laundry, I found one of my boyfriend's shirts, made of striped fabric, with a great gaping hole in it. We figured this was some weird manifestation of Bubalou's separation anxiety—when one's favorite human is absent, one must eat his clothing out of desperation? But apparently, it was not just limited to Al's shirts. When we moved to the new house, I started finding my underwear ripped to shreds in the wash. I thought they were snagging on something in the machine, until one day I found a similarly destroyed pair of panties sitting on the couch, next to a telltale pile of chewed-up food wrappers (stolen from the recycling bin, of course). Apparently, Bubalou's clothing-munchies go not just beyond Al's shirts, but beyond a separation-anxiety thing, too. Leave him unsupervised in a room with a laundry hamper, even if you're just down the hall, and you can return to find him gnawing on his latest sartorial snack.

Shortly after we got him, I mentioned how much Bubalou was costing my boyfriend. Well, the expenses certainly haven't decreased. Between the training, emergency vet bills, and medications for him, not to mention all the property we've lost to his clothes-eating habit, Al calls him the "11,000 dollar dog." While I don't know how accurate that figure is, I can say for certain that I myself dropped $4,300 to help him survive a cardiac condition in July, so I'm sure it's pretty close. This special-needs beastie makes my ex-rabbit's vet bills look like pocket change!

So yeah. If I had to give out a prize for the worst dog, I would give it to Bubalou. But if I were to give out a prize for my favorite dog, guess who I'd give it to. Bubalou! In spite of his innumerable negative traits, he has somehow managed to charm his way into my heart with proportionately more endearing ones.

Yeah, I'll admit that some of his appeal is due to nothing more than his cuteness. I've told him many a time (though I get the feeling he's not listening!) that he hit the genetic jackpot when it comes to his looks. With his cloud of ginger fur, his expressive face, warm dark eyes, and perennial smile, he just looks like the physical embodiment of happiness!
 

But I'd like to think that I'm not so superficial that I only like him because of his baby face. At least some of it can be attributed to his adorable personality.

Bubalou is, among the many names I've given him, Cuddle Dog.* He is thusly dubbed because, more than any other dog I've known, he seems to be most comfortable on or immediately next to a human lap. When I come home from work and sit down on the couch, it is usually not long before I have a Cuddle Dog jumping up to join me. He loves cuddling at any time, but it's especially pronounced when he's nervous. Kneel or sit down when there is a crowd, thunderstorm, or groomer in the vicinity, and you will have a lapful of fur before you can say lickety-split!

Bubalou also likes to cuddle when you're mad at him, which I assume is nature's way of keeping you from killing him. No matter what he does wrong, it only seems to make him cuter. Unlike Jack Jack, who has actually become much more manageable since Bubalou joined the family but irritates me with his cowardly reactions when he does mess up, Bubalou seems to think that the best way to atone for his errors is to shower you with more love! Either that or he's too stupid to realize that he's erred at all (I would not put that past him). But regardless of the reason, it's hard to be mad at him when his reaction to your anger is to rush towards you with a giant smile on his face and his entire hindquarters wiggling. The worse you feel, the closer he tries to be—it seems he was born to be a therapy dog.

Bubalou seems to always want to please you. Even if he's too dumb to figure out how, and even if he works himself into a fit of anxiety trying to do it right, he's ultimately trying. I appreciate him for that honest attempt, even if it always ends in failure.

Obviously, my intention from the beginning was to distance myself from him as much as possible, since he was an unsanctioned addition to my household. But even more obviously, that resolution didn't stick. I've given up on calling him Al's dog and now just call him our dog. I am pretty much an unabashed Dog Mom on Facebook, posting nothing but pictures of my baby doing those silly things that no one loves quite as much as the person who posts them.

As I was just trying to wrap up the writing of this post, the ever-restless Bubalou wandered up to my desk to stare at me with his usual happy face. I gave him a little head-pat before turning away to finish typing when, without warning, he upchucked on my floor.

And this is how I know I love him. The dog is disgusting, but I'm not even mad. I just resignedly wiped up the vomit and gave him another head-pat. Sometimes you have to take the bad dog with the good dog.

Since there is no such thing as too many cute dog pictures, here are some more shots of Bubalou that I never got around to oversharing on Facebook.

Jack Jack is jealous there isn't room for two.

Making it really difficult for me to do yoga.

I give up.

Taking a walk during the solar eclipse.
Notice the crescent shapes in the leaf shadows!

*Since I didn't have Bubalou when I wrote my Pet Names post, you never learned his other nicknames, which include: Cuddles, Bubbles, Buba-roo (for his kangaroo-like jumping), Bubba, Bubby, Bubs, Bub, Li'l Bub (stolen from the Internet cat), Happyface Dog, Anxiedog (as in "anxiety"), Yapper (shared with Jack Jack), Puffball, Puffboy, Puffer, Bubble Puff, and Puff Puff.

Half Empty or Half Full?

Is the glass half empty or half full? I get asked this question a lot (probably because of my penchant for personality tests!), and every time, it annoys me. It's a stupid way of obliquely asking whether I'm an optimist or a pessimist. Pessimist, obviously, from my reaction! But I'd tell you that without having to dance my way around an old, tired, confusing metaphor that (metaphorically, and ironically) doesn't hold water!

From the first time I heard about "the glass" being "half empty" or "half full" as a measure of one's baseline level of negativity, I found it confusing. I'm guessing I was a pre-teen at the time, so I was still firmly into concrete thinking, and here's what I thought:

Why did it have to be one or the other? Halfway is halfway—it's exactly in the middle. It is both half-empty and half-full at the same time. You could use either term and still be correct! Is this some kind of Zen koan? (No, I did not think that thought at my pre-teen age, but I do now.) Why are you trying to make me decide!?

It had to be explained to me (I assume, after I'd gotten over my indignation at being asked a question with no right answer), that the goal of the question wasn't to produce a correct answer as much as an insight into whether the current state of the glass is more good or bad—and, by association, the state of mind of the person answering the question.

At this point, I'm pretty sure there was no further discourse on the nature of the half-empty/half-full question, but, like any good Zen koan, it lingered in my mind, for me to mull and puzzle over every time I heard it asked again.

We have all come to accept that "half full" reads as "good," and is therefore associated with an optimistic outlook. I guess this is because the phrasing focuses on the amount of liquid that is there, thus emphasizing abundance, which is generally associated with good. Whereas "half-empty" focuses on how much liquid is gone, thus emphasizing depletion, which is generally seen as bad. But in real life, there are plenty of circumstances in which having less of something would be preferable—for example, if the glass contains repulsive cough medicine that you just want to get down as quickly as possible. In this case, calling the glass "half-empty" would indicate an optimistic viewpoint!

It seemed to me that this was less a question about how you impose your emotions on the world and more simply a question of context. If I were, for example, in the middle of filling the glass, I'd probably call it half full. But if I were in the midst of draining it, I'd call it half empty. The circumstances under which the glass arrived at its current state have everything to do with what words are used to describe it. The inherent goodness or badness of the situation do not come into play.

Even in a situation where a value judgment could be made on the relative fullness of the glass, how the words are used could completely change their interpretation. If I were, for example, a bartender filling the glass, and a server were trying to whisk it out of my hands, I would stop them by exclaiming, "It's only half full!" In this context, even though I used the words "half full," I'm still conveying the negative aspects of the situation.

In the end, the question is less about what's in the glass and more about what's going on around it.

The glass itself is still just a glass. The liquid in it is still just liquid. It has no inherent virtue. It's time we stopped using it as a symbol for every person's outlook on life! It's time we dumped this glass (metaphorically) once and for all!

No Flu for You!

Up until last year, I'd never gotten a flu shot before. I always considered it good exercise for my immune system to have to fight off an infection from time to time...plus, I kind of didn't want to miss out on my opportunity to take a sick day once in a while...plus, I'd heard some scary things about the flu shot and Guillain-Barré syndrome, and decided I'd rather deal with a few days of coughing over death by paralysis, should it come to that. ...Then I got the flu the spring before last. Wow, what a flu it was! After three days of abject misery, I vowed I would get a flu shot next year, or bust!

And so I did! Flu shots are free under my insurance plan, so it was an easy trip to the doctor for me, and then I was done! I did not get Guillain-Barré syndrome. I did not get the flu. I even only got one cold in late November.

Yes, you heard that right—from December 2016 through August 2017, I was entirely free of respiratory ailments!

I questioned this stroke of good health with all the cycnicism of someone who's caught at least 4 colds a year for as long as she can remember. What made this year different? Was it the fact that I was more assiduous about hand-washing when people around me were ill? Was it because I finally got wise and started taking immunity supplements (olive leaf extract, mainly) every time I traveled and every time I knew of a bug going around? Was it because of my flu shot?

The cold virus isn't the flu virus, sure, but I was willing to attribute any cause to this phenomenon, and a never-before-taken vaccination seemed as good as any. Whatever the reason, I kept news of my healthy streak strictly to myself. I wasn't going to say anything about it until my luck finally broke.

And boy, did it ever break!

In the past month, I caught three colds. The first one — on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, of all the annoying times — started with a sore throat and pretty much ended there. Normally a cold will start in my throat and work its way up to my nose before it finally leaves me. But I was able to go back to work on Tuesday feeling pretty much back to normal, without any nasal symptoms to speak of.

The second cold, on September 25, seemed like it was the remainder of the first cold, come back to finish what it started. It consisted entirely of a stuffy nose. I get unexplained stuffy noses from time to time, but this time I felt certain it was virally related, because along with it came a feeling of complete exhaustion, mild nausea, and general ickiness that usually mean I'm fighting an infection. However, that came and went in less than a full day, so I felt like I got off the hook pretty easily.

The third cold struck on Monday, October 2, and I have to conclude it was the rhinovirus' final attempt at giving me a proper cold with all the symptoms. I hopped into bed on that fateful night and suddenly noticed my throat was stinging a little, but assumed it was from the lemon bar I'd just eaten. The next morning, it was still stinging. But weirdly, I didn't feel sick at all. I got ready for work slowly, searching my body for other symptoms. I didn't find any, but I also didn't start feeling any better. Finally I decided to play it safe and just stay home. For the remainder of that day, the only thing I felt was a burning in my lower throat. It was very uncharacteristic of a cold. Where was that general ickiness? I began to worry all sorts of things—that I'd unwittingly gotten a chemical burn on my throat from using spray paint in an unventilated basement—that a piece of the acidic lemon bar I'd eaten before bed had gotten lodged in my tonsil and was slowly eating away my flesh—that I was having a sudden and serious case of upper esophageal acid reflux. But when I woke up the next morning, I was relieved (can you believe it?) to feel that the soreness had migrated up my throat and was now plaguing my nasopharynx—in the typical pattern of a very common cold. I had not developed acute throat cancer after all. I stayed home again that day, but not because I felt very sick—mainly out of concern for the public health and a desire to not overdo it and start feeling very sick! 

I actually almost enjoyed having this cold. It was bad enough that I had a legitimate excuse to stay home from work, but not so bad that I was consigned to writhing around in my bed for 2 days. I got quite a lot done at home while barely suffering from some very mild symptoms. Never once, in all of these three colds, did I feel feverish. If my throat and nose hadn't been acting up, I probably wouldn't have even known I was sick at all—a far cry from the total debilitation that usually accompanies my colds. So, in short, I don't know whether to feel thankful that I just experienced three of the easiest-to-overcome colds I've ever experienced...or annoyed that they kept on coming. 

Perhaps my three colds in September were my summer cold, spring cold, and winter cold, finally catching up with me. I'd been feeling astonishingly lucky, but everyone's luck must end sometime. Still, if these puny little infections were all that I'm going to get, I'm still pretty lucky!

It makes me wonder if, all those years I thought I was getting really terrible, miserable colds, I was actually getting the flu! If that was the case, I'm never going back to those dark times! I might now be the world's most enthusiastic flu-shot convert, and I'll be going to get my 2017 edition as soon as I'm fully over this cold. And you should too, if for no other reason than to make the title of this post make a little more sense.