My pressure cooker makes life easier when it comes to cooking beans, which of course I had to do today for my 75th birthday.
I had a birthday lunch at The Range in Bernalillo earlier in the week, thanks to Lori and Mike, but there is something earthy about making beans at home on your birthday. The temp today neared 100 and my plan was to read and snooze inside. Cowboy2 got me started early.
I somehow knew I would end up reading Evan S. Connell and sure enough I’m cracking my heavily notated copy of Son of the Morning Star for the seventh or eighth time, still fascinated by its mysterious construction. But maybe it’s just entertaining and Connell, after deep research, was having fun, even while sticking to the facts. Obviously there were many rabbit holes in southeastern Montana in 1876.
I met Connell once in Sausalito, Ca., as a teenager in the mid-1960s but he apparently was more interested in his date, the singer Gale Garnett, and I knew one of his nicknames at the no name bar there was The Great Stone Face. I wish I could have talked to him as an adult in Santa Fe before his death in 2013 at an assisted-living place called Ponce de León but I’m still enjoying his writing to this day. By the way,
Connell would be 100 years old tomorrow, August 17. https://lithub.com/evan-s-connell-at-100-ever-the-elusive-surprising-and-singular-conjurer/
Heavily spotted alarm clock, age uncertain. And thanks for the peaches, Naomi.
PS: No more bacon in the beans, folks. These babies are vegetarian. Beans, onion, garlic, cumin, Chimayo red chile powder, water and salt. The late Barb Armijo counseled me on my first pot of pressure-cooked beans. I was terrified but she walked me through it with no intervening explosions.
dream ranch 