Thoughtful Recipe - Forgiveness: Bean soup or casserole

When a blog idea comes to me I put it on a draft and update it when the occurence comes. In this case, I had a draft dated August 2005, a long way but I am sure you will find it interesting enough. 

Forgiveness is such a big word, but what is it really? When do we actually say, we forgive? Then, I had all the ideas about forgiveness. There is forgiveness, when we are able to think of a person whom we feel have offended us without culling any negative emotions. When the feeling of resentment of anger leave our hearts and the need to extract punishment, recrimination, or restitution for a perceived wrong or offense.

A lot of things are riding in this forgiveness.  There has to be anger, pride, jealousy, and other negative feelings that can weigh us down.  Therfore, I will classify it under the darkenss category.  I am now reminded of "the Lord's Prayer", forgive us of our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespas against us, and lead us not into temptation xxx.

The sad thing is, sometimes we harbor anger and demand restittution, when the offender does not even know that they have offended us.  Just imagine that burden that the offendee is carrying, for nothing, you know that to carry such a load is destructing and makes us lose our perspective of being with Lordy.

Think about it, I propose that we get rid of all this feelings and open our arms to prepare for advent, embrace the birth of our Lord Jesus.

What a comfortable feeling to be rid of that heavy load and live life in a fully present manner. As a start, I would like to offer a recipe, comfortable for this season, this weather, and just filling in an inexepensive way.

Ingredients:

     1  bag of dried beans (soaked in water overnight)
     1  medium sized onions
     1 smoked ham hocks
     1 heart of celery (hh)
     1 carrots
     1/2 bag green peas
     1 can tomato sauce
     basil
     salt and pepper

Optional ingredients

   garlic powder
   shredded cheese
   creme fraiche or sour cream

Tools/Utensils

   slow cooker/crockpot
   Stainless Slotted Spoon 
   Mandoline Slicer

Directions

Wash the ham hocks and trim of impurities (left over hairs, etc) then place in crock pot covered with enough water. Leave on medium, the instructions will sometimes say for 3 hours, but I like to leave it on so that favors will be infused in the soup.  You can already add, some celery and carrots to add flavor.  When the ham hocks are tender and the bones can be separated from the meat, actually the meat should be almost part of the soup.  Scoop everything from the pot, remove bones from the hh and cut or shred the separated meat into bite size pieces.  If you put vegetables into the soup, you can run it through a sieve so that the juice is extracted, put the juice back in the pot.  You can also run the soup in the sieve so that you will get a clean soup. Put in onions, tomato sauce, garlic powder (optional), drained soaked-beans, start building your flavors, continue to cook until tender, put in other vegetables.

Season to taste. Serve topped with grated cheese, creme fraiche or sour cream. You can also add chopped green or regular onions. Toasted baguette or warm flour tortilla is a good accompaniment.

I'm imagining that because this is so rich, it will go well with a pino noir or a chianti.. alright it is also best enjoyed with a Diet Coke, you need to burp it out ha ha..

Notes: 

A package of ham hocks will yield more than what you need for the soup (too much, as anything else will remove the balance.) once you have boiled, deboned, and shredded the meat, you can freeze half for future use.

After adding all the ingredients you can determine if you need to add more water. The starch from the beans and other vegetables will add a thickening agent.