“Many thanks to Grandma Gregg for sharing this ‘Feel Good Sunday’ piece which sparks several latent memories, for me, from days gone by. I think I have prepared just such a dish, on several occasions, but consuming copious amounts of Wrangler Iced Tea during it’s preparations has impaired my ability to recall if it really tasted as good as is alluded to, here. I HATE when that happens! Keep the faith, my friends” ~ R.T.
This recipe is not original but a variation on an old (perhaps ancient) Southwestern dish. It has also been a favorite of mine and was for many years the staple, the sole staple, of my personal nutritional program. (I am six feet three and weigh 190 pounds, sober.)
I call it Hardcase Survival Pinto Bean Sludge.
1. Take one fifty-pound sack Colorado pinto beans. Remove stones, cockleburs, horseshit, ants, lizards, etc. Wash in clear cold crick water. Soak for twenty-four hours in iron kettle or earthenware cooking pot. (DO NOT USE TEFLON, ALUMINUM OR PYREX CONTAINER. THIS WARNING CANNOT BE OVERSTRESSED.)
2. Place kettle or pot with entire fifty lbs. of pinto beans on low fire and simmer for twenty-four hours. (DO NOT POUR OFF WATER IN WHICH BEANS HAVE BEEN IMMERSED. THIS IS IMPORTANT.) Fire must be of juniper, pinyon pine, mesquite or ironwood; other fuels tend to modify the subtle flavor and delicate aroma of Pinto Bean Sludge.
3. DO NOT BOIL.
4. STIR VIGOROUSLY FROM TIME TO TIME WITH WOODEN SPOON OR IRON LADLE. (Do not disregard these instructions.)
5. After simmering on low fire for twenty-four hours, add one gallon green chile peppers. Stir vigorously. Add one quart natural (non-iodized) pure sea salt. Add black pepper. Stir some more and throw in additional flavoring materials, as desired, such as old bacon rinds, corncobs, salt pork, hog jowls, kidney stones, ham hocks, sowbelly, saddle blankets, jungle boots, worn-out tennis shoes, cinch straps, whatnot, use your own judgment. Simmer an additional twenty-four hours.
6. Now ladle as many servings as desired from pot but do not remove pot from fire. Allow to simmer continuously for hours, days or weeks if necessary, until all contents have been thoroughly consumed. Continue to stir vigorously, whenever in vicinity or whenever you think of it.
7. Serve Pinto Bean Sludge on large flat stones or on any convenient fairly level surface. Garnish liberally with parsley flakes. Slather generously with raw ketchup. Sprinkle with endive, anchovy crumbs and boiled cruets and eat hearty.
8. One potful Pinto Bean Sludge, as above specified, will feed one poet for two full weeks at a cost of about $11.45 at current prices. Annual costs less than $300.
9. The philosopher Pythagoras found flatulence incompatible with meditation and therefore urged his followers not to eat beans. I have found, however, that custom and thorough cooking will alleviate this problem.
Author Unknown
Related articles
Categories: The Force of the Horse
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Thank You RT and GG , but I think I will stick to just wrangler Tea……………………….. Someone on here was asking about connecting with Erin Brockovich she has a show on TV on the Investigational Discovery Channel i am sure she can be reached through them !!!!!
LikeLike
great idea! Erin is very approachable and answers e-mail personally. She does not abide by injustice. Hope it works.
LikeLike
I think I’ll leave this to the witches, thank you anyway! lol
LikeLike
I’ll make up s batch of it right away…lol hell, one batch would feed me for a year and a half if it didn’t kill me.. Chow down y’all and enjoy..lol
LikeLike
“Hardcase Survival Pinto Bean Sludge”
Author: Edward Abbey
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/173/
LikeLike
Maybe some Wrangler Tea IN the bean?
LikeLike
More from Edward Abbey
Tucson Daily Citizen
20 September 1972
Dear Sir:
The police helicopter is an unnecessary evil. The money being wasted on that infernal and idiotic machine would be sufficient to add another fifteen or twenty men to the force. The helicopter cannot be justified as a crime preventive; noise pollution is a crime and should be recognized as such, and in all the stink and smog and clatter of downtown Tucson, no individual machine is more obnoxious than that helicopter.
Even if the helicopter could glide about quiet as an owl, it remains still objectionable on even more serious grounds: aerial surveillance of a supposedly free citizenry is an affront to us all, and one more significant step toward an authoritarian police state. There are far better ways to prevent crime than by sending Big Brother aloft to keep his beady 450-watt eye on us dues-paying citizens.
I would suggest, for example, that a few good men on bicycles (a la francaise), properly uniformed and equipped, patrolling swiftly and silently through their own neighborhoods, friends not enemies of the people they work among, could do far more to prevent crime than two official Peeping Toms roaring over our rooftops in their fifty-dollar-an-hour plastic bubble.
Let’s think about this, people. You too, City Officials.
Yours sincerely,
Edward Abbey—Tucson
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/173/
LikeLike
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
– Edward Abbey
LikeLike
AMEN
LikeLike