I cooked again

During one of my shopping excursions at WinCo, I went a little crazy in the bulk section and got a 13-bean mixture. It's just beans, no seasoning. I've had it for a couple of months when I finally remembered to soak it overnight and ended up soaking the beans for about a day and a half.

I poured the beans into the crockpot with 4 cups of water and thought, "Hm. Now what?" So I turned it on the high setting and called Rayleen and Apollo. They had some excellent suggestions!!! Here's what I ended up adding:

a can of chicken broth
cilantro
a bell pepper
bacon

When I was searching for bacon, I found "bacon ends and pieces". It was about a third of the price of "good" bacon and it had big chunks of meat in it. I am lucky enough not to be bothered by the fat on meat, so I had no problem throwing it all in.

While I would never post a picture of the 13 Bean Soup of which I am so proud (it's just not pretty), I will say that I had a very full crockpot last Saturday and now there's only one serving left after my dinner tonight.

As a sidebar, I wanna give props to my local Safeway. I've been in there a couple of times and I've had awesome experiences each time. They are friendly and helpful and well as seemingly sincere! I'm not going back to Fred Meyer. And they had Deschutes beer as low as where I work (known for reasonably low alcohol prices).

Oh, and apparently I'm not immune to the gas that beans produce... and now a song:

"Beans, beans, the magical fruit,
the more you eat, the more you toot,
the more you toot, the better you feel,
so it's beans, beans for every meal!"