steamed rice with roasted red pepper, baked beans

This is the last of the rice and beans and now that they're gone I want more. 

Right now.

The rice is steamed with a piece of kombu and that really does change it remarkably.

The roasted bell pepper comes directly from a jar. And when you think about it, expensive as it is, it's really not that much for a couple of red bell peppers already roasted as it is for two fresh red bell peppers. Especially red peppers in Maui. Jeeze, those things were expensive. Five dollars for one pepper.

The beans are not baked. That was lie. They were done much more quickly than that by pressure instead. And they have high quality bacon and not cheap @ss salt pork as Boston baked beans do, and they have brown sugar that is made with molasses, rather than straight black strap molasses as Boston baked beans do. And they're boiled from dried beans in half an hour under 7 LBS pressure rather than from beans soaked overnight and then baked all day as Boston baked beans are. 

Two things so basic. So fundamental. So unadorned. Together they make a complete protein. So easy to do. So inexpensive. I miss them already.

Today I saw a tiny woman of Mexican persuasion with a shopping trolly filled with prepared frozen dinners, and I thought, "Now here's a woman who does not like to cook." 

This is a meal she could do. 

I mentioned the woman I saw to another woman while waiting at the deli department, you know how you strike up casual conversation with strangers, and we both delighted in mocking her poor food choices together, bonding right there over our superior choices and our own useful talents. It was fun.