Bean there - Done That!

I'm at my best, first thing in the morning, and often do a little cooking early in the day, when I've still got the strength and ability. Having been laid up and out of action with a slipped disc, now slowly on the road to recovery, I decided to get back in the kitchen. I was making the pastry base for a mushroom quiche. Wanting to bake the pastry blind before adding the filling, I put wax paper on the pastry and poured some red kidney beans on top, holding the pastry down, keeping it flat whilst baking.

After 20 minutes, I took the pastry shell out of the oven and laid it on the counter top. My dog watched closely, hoping I'd drop some delicious morsel of food. So far so good - nothing spilt and nothing on the floor! But this moment of triumph didn't last long, for as I lifted the parchment paper from both sides to remove the beans and slide them back into the jar they're kept in … well you can pretty much guess what happened next!

I misjudged the jar, and piping hot beans cascaded all around me, and scattered on the counter top and bounced onto the floor. If only someone had been there with a video camera, I am quite sure if would have made for a comic YouTube clip on "what not to do in your kitchen!"

I must have looked like some kind of mad frenzied woman, hopping barefoot about the kitchen as I tried to avoid stepping on the hot kidney beans, whilst trying to stop our dog from eating them. Our dog became highly excited by the dozens of red treats I had so generously dropped for her delight, but I need not have worried, for one taste of the extremely hot, hard and unpalatable beans and she walked out of the kitchen with a look of disgust on her face. My dog actually seems to have the ability to give a look sometimes, an almost human expression. If only she could talk!

We have a special visitor with us at present, and you may ask why is he is special? I invite you to take a look at "Spilling The Beans" in The Huffington Post.