February: Bean Recipes For R.L. Howard

I am pretending, for the duration of this post, that it’s not quite March, that I’m writing in February. This is necessary in order to have this retrospective introduction archived with the February bean recipes. We all know now that I’m writing this on March 2, but in the future, if there is still electricity or phenomenon enough of whatever sort to run computers and networks, we won’t remember it, and will think this intro fits seamlessly with the Feb. theme. Or would, if I weren’t writing about it. Enough postmodern silliness.

At any rate, it’s pleasing, quite, to see these four recipes adorning our first full month here. You’ve no idea how therapeutic and purely fun this project is for me. Sitting here at my boring tech writing job, these posts are renegade bursts of something akin to creativity, little breaks from the (hyperbole alert!) drudgery of capitalism and service to The Man I'm forced to undertake to pay the rent. Breaks that give me pleasure and purpose.

I found out this week that there is a community garden in my neighborhood, and I am going to get me a plot. It’s been a few years since I was able to grow my own vegetables, so watch out. I may have to wax about it in here. If anyone else is doing culinary gardening, by all means share. Once we get into summer, a word about how an ingredient made it from plot to pot will add that always desirable hint of glamour to a recipe. If glamour and compost are as intertwined in your minds as they are in mine.

That said, underlying are the bean recipes that Lisa, Molly, Nancy T., and Aunt Janey sent in, then mine. I hope that, in some small part, this teensy tribute to my departed father will somehow let him know, through whatever ethereal relationship exists between cyberspace and spiritworld, that whatever neglect I demonstrated toward him during life, I still loved him and remember many things fondly – not the least of them his love of food and drink, which I have obviously inherited from both genetic pools, and thank him for, and you, and will, along with every bit of love that inexplicably manages to come my way, refuse to take for granted as long as I have the sense to know who and where I am.