Black Bean Chili

I had a couple of pounds of black beans laying around and decided to make chili using a pound of those instead of my usual kidney beans, red beans or pinto beans. Of course when I'm in a hurry I use Ranch Style canned beans.

Speaking of Ranch Style beans I used to buy the cans and they all had this dorky lookin' guy and the logo "husband pleasin'" on the logo. Sometime back they changed the logo to "appetite pleasin'". Can't go around pleasing husbands these days.

Anyhow I soaked the beans and then boiled them with a big onion and some spices and then made a batch of chili, mixed it up and have been eating it for a few days. I declare this as a successful experiment. Now I don't think that I will only make chili with black beans forever but it will be part of the rotation.

Now the next time I make a batch of chili I think I'll hearken back to the time I thought I was going to go to the University. Back then there was an itty-bitty hole in the wall restaurant near the University of Texas in Austin. It was called Shanghai Jimmy's Chili Rice. Just a little bowl of rice with a big dollop of chili over it with a dab of grated cheese.

It was a good cheap meal. Of course, thanks to the Democrats, rice is another endangered species. And Shanghai is gone, has another name now. Shanhai Jimmy is long gone as is his little restaurant. Jimmy was one of those old China Fleet sailors, long retired by then, of course. After the Boxer Rebellion there were a few dozen gunboats running up and down the big rivers of China and some Destroyers and Cruisers around the coasts. There were other "treaty powers", too. The Brits, the Japanese, the Italians, the Germans up until after WW1. I have met a few China sailors and China Marines, there were a few still in Service in 1964.

The main requirement for a China Marine of Sailor seems to be a big case of insanity. By my day the surviving China Sailors and Marines were senior NCOs and Petty Officers. I'm sure there were officers, too but I never had much truck with them. Anyhow, every China Marine or Sailor I ever met was a stud bull goose looney. Back in the day a Sailor or Marine got something extra for volunteering for the China Fleet, something like extra retirement or some such. At any rate the "conventional" Navy and Corps had a dislike for them. The ships, submarines and gunboats left in late 1940 or early 1941, IIRC, and there was an Army Regiment involved, too. Dunno the Regiment's number. The China Marines were mostly lost in the Philippine Island when Roosevelt backed out of his promise to send reinforcements after Pearl Harbor. MacArthur gave everyone but the Fourth Marines a Distinguished Unit Citation. His reasoning? The Marines have enough medals. Very few men of the Fourth survived the fight and then the captivity.

What's this got to do with Chili? Nothing. It's too bad I can't think of anything political to say. Those Senate idiots have the oil company execs in front of them again. Seems like it should be the other way around. It isn't the oil companies causing these skyrocketing prices.

So, Teddy Kennedy has cancer in the brain. I wonder if he is going to go up to Canada and use that free medical care he wants us to suffer through. Oh well, if I can't say anything nice