Labor-less day

I am lucky enough to have the Labor Day holiday off and plan to spend today doing as little as possible.

I have some sourdough rising as we speak. I ran out of bread flour and being too lazy to run to the store mid-production, I substituted about half a cup of white whole wheat flour during kneading. I don't think it should alter the taste too much, but we'll see.

Other than finishing the sourdough and watching a movie with Sean this afternoon, I have no plans. What about you? How will you be spending Labor Day?

Yesterday, I combined my efforts to improve my bean-making skills with a much needed chore: cleaning out the freezer. We had accumulated dozens of partial bags of stuff that, by themselves, amounted to nothing. So I decided to throw it all in a casserole dish together and came out with Freezer Round-up Beans.

I made half a pound of chickpeas and mixed in the following freezer remnants: two tablespoons of tomato paste, two chopped chiles in adobo sauce, about 1/4 teaspoon of chopped jalapeno, a hand full of chopped broccoli, two hand fulls of chopped spinach, about a quarter cup of chopped red onion and about a cup of bean cooking liquid. On top, I sprinkled bread crumbs made from three pathetic-looking whole wheat bread heels.

After about an hour in the oven, it came out smelling smokey and spicy. A couple of dashes of Tabasco sauce, and it was actually pretty tasty. A bonus because I had already resolved to take the beans for lunches this week, and it would have been a long week if the experiment had been a flop.

After dinner, Sean and I had a sweet craving and decided to make apple turnovers out of a couple of apples in the fridge that were past their prime.

I am not very good at making pastries and was grateful to have Sean's help. Alas, we won't be expecting a call from any of the major cooking magazines to show off our results anytime soon. Let's just say the turnovers tasted good and were made with love.