(This is what O’Sullivan’s looked like when I worked across the street. I have no idea what Sam was selling out of his place on the corner, but I never saw a soul there. Ever. I wonder if he was surveilling the building where we worked? We were the Government, after all.)
I don’t eat a lot of beans these days- carb issues, you know- but I make a pretty good skillet of molasses and brown sugar and onion and bacon-topped legumes. I was thinking about that because the Cherry Blossoms have erupted into their full pink-and-white glory – I saw them ringing the Tidal Basin as I whizzed by on the 14th Street Bridge yesterday morning. It is finally Spring, for real, and I started to think about the outdoor grilling season, and some side dishes. I wanted to get shredded cabbage for some down-home slaw and maybe the fixings for some baked beans.
Old Jim caught me as I was back on the correct side of the Potomac, and invited me to broaden my horizons since Willow was booked for a private party that started about the usual time we do. “Meet me at O’Sullivans,” he said. “It will make you a better person.”
“I have to do the Class Six, get gas, and hit the Commissary. See you in an hour or so,” I said as I drove, and that is where the afternoon began to unravel.
Under the tender care of Lindsey, the bartender from Ashville, North Carolina, we managed to destruct a perfectly fine afternoon, though we committed no felonies that I was aware of in the process.
(O’Sullivan’s now. They serve a decent Guiness Burger and Guiness Stew, and has an easy air about the place. Unless the Arlington Health inspector is making a surprise visit to see if there is any gunk under the cover to the bar soda gun. It’s not the IRA, but you never can tell. Photo O’Sullivans).
I was going to continue the saga of people who get crosswise with the Government this morning. The saga of Rancher Bundy versus the assembled might of a Joint Inter-agency Task Force spearheaded by the Bureau of Land Management is worth noting, and I was going to put some context to the dispute with a recounting of the saga of the Sackett family versus the EPA up in Idaho, but you know what?
If you are not aware that the Feds are capable of the most extraordinary behavior (under administrations of both parties), you have not been reading the news. The EPA can spin it however they want, but fining the Sacketts $75,000 a day for daring to dump some fill on a lot they owned seems a little excessive. By the time they got to the Supreme Court, they owed the EPA $135 million bucks, which is a little pricey for the subdivision where the lot was located.
SCOTUS ruled in the Sackett’s favor, 9-0. Not that they will get to build their house. The rest of the business is back to square one and the Corps of Engineers.
We talked briefly about the BLM-led task force has surrounded the Bundy ranch in Nevada with two hundred agents, eight helicopters and a fleet of tactical vehicles because they are concerned about the Desert Tortoise, which used to be endangered and is now just threatened, and have been coexisting with the cattle on Gold Butte for more than a century.
There is a parallel story that the Feds themselves are going to kill a few thousand of the turtles for funding reasons. which went well with the Bud and the Sauvignon Blanc. The cost of funding the program to save the turtles is considerably less than what the Task Force is spending, but its all about the color of money, you know? The interagency seems to be able to find it for really important things like rounding up some crusty old cowboy’s cattle.
In fairness to the sharpshooters in the helmets and Kevlar vests, the 70-year-old Rancher, last one left n his county, has stopped paying grazing fees, and his animals are grazing on land that the BLM manages by act of Congress, He is pretty clearly crosswise with an agency that did not exist when his great grandfather first started running his cattle on public land.
It is a surreal mess, and I don’t know what is going to happen, and I certainly hope it is settled without violence. I said as much to Jim as he sipped his Bud and I tried the sauvignon blanc. We eventually got around to the lateness of the season, and the welcome respite from the Polar Vortex, and then about the new publicity on the Summary for Policymakers report that came out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Which brings me around to the whole bean thing. It is going to be outdoor grilling season in short order, and I had a powerful yen to make a big iron skillet batch of southern-style ranch beans. I stocked up on the ingredients at the Commissary, just in case.
I call my version Award Winning, since I beat Joey in the Big Pink cook-off with the last batch I made back in the summer of the Revolt of the Grandmas. I made enough for everybody, so this will please a pretty large gathering for sides to what you are doing on the grill.
Ingredients:
Pound of pepper bacon from Eastern Market
One Vidalia onion, diced
One medium green pepper, diced
3 large cans (28 ounces each) pork and beans- any brand works but I like Heinz- I will give you the scratch recipe dome other time- but that is more of an indoor, fall activity.
3/4 cup barbecue sauce- I like Sweet Baby Rays, and like the beans part, you can make your own, but that takes more effort than I feel like this morning.
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 teaspoons Coleman’s dry mustard
Directions:
Render the bacon in a large cast iron skillet. Mine is a Lodge, but any well-seasoned pan will do. Don’t cook it crisp- you want it flexible. Remove, drain on paper towel and reserve. Save most of the drippings in that container you keep in the back of the fridge; they might be useful for something else. Sauté the chopped onions and pepper until the onions are translucent and the pepper soft to the touch of your spatula. Add beans and remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer on the stove. Top with bacon, cracked black pepper and some sea salt to taste. I lace it with some Texas Pete Louisiana Hot Sauce- the vinegar base, not Tabasco, to offset the brown sugar. Then bake in the oven until the ingredients get to know one another and it begins to bubble- not too hot, there is enough sugar in there to scorch. Try maybe 275 for a couple hours. The smell will tell you when things are done. Pull and let it thicken before you drink any more of that sauvignon blanc. Don’t burn yourself. I speak from experience.
Anyway, I looked over at Jim and said the IPCC report was sort of alarming. In fact, it was sort of more alarming than the actual scientific report that goes with the summary. Some folks say that the temperatures haven’t gone up since the Clinton Administration, and other people look at those who say that like they are addled children, and that of course a warming world makes things colder and drier and wetter.
It seems like a miracle to me, particularly when the people who are most alarmed seem to be hoping for an el Nino event in the Pacific will make things get warmer.
“I don’t get it,” I told Jim, looking owlishly at my glass. “But that darn CO2 is a really talented trace gas.”
“Try methane,” growled Jim. “That is the new threat.”
“I read about that. They are going to have to do something about cows, aren’t they?”
“Perfectly understandable new rule from the Department of Agriculture,” he said. “Just imagine implementing it.”
“It could be worse than we think,” I said.
“I read the Brit press on my computer. I saw in the Mirror that here was a question in the UK Parliament- maybe tongue in cheek, though I am not sure what cheek. Some Viscount who has been in the House of Lords for a couple decades said the BBC reported that the UK has the largest consumption of baked beans in the world.”
“A traditional Big English Breakfast always includes beans,” I said, “And I love those tomatoes.”
“Yeah. The Minister of Energy said that his Lordship raised a very important point, which is that we need to moderate our behavior at the table.”
“No kidding,” I said. “You never know when we might get a nudge on that from the Feds. “
We may have solved another couple important issues while we lingered at the bar, but I am a little hazy on that. I can say this: I highly recommend O’Sullivans as a go-to venue for major problem solving, and the afternoons are quite pleasant there.
But I suggest if you are going to try the baked bean recipe, you might want to do it sooner rather than later.
You can freeze what is left over after the barbeque, though you might want to use an opaique container in case the FDA or the EPA decide later to go through the freezer for compliance purposes.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303