bean there -- done that

I know.  I know.  I promised photographs of the house.  And this definitely is not one.  Even though it is inside the house.

Yesterday was the day I was going to start a series of introducing you to The House.  I knew what I wanted to shoot.  What I had not counted on was our local re-enactment of Niagara Falls.

Late Tuesday night, it started raining -- raining so hard I had to get up and re-write a paragraph in yesterday's essay about our "light sprinkles."  There was nothing light about them.  It would be a bit like referring to the plague as an inconvenience.

But I did discover something interesting about my new address.  When the rains start, I am on lake-front property. 

The street in front of my house and the two streets on either side were filled with enough water to rise above the hub on my Escape wheels.  The type of rain where you hope the engine does not stall when heading out across the waters.

What really surprised me was my reaction to our sudden drop in temperature.  Around 9, it was 73 degrees.  To me, it felt like 50.

So out came the leather coat, a baseball cap, and my big boy pants.  With a pair of aviator gasses, I could have been a weak Xerox of Tom Clancy.  Even then, I was still a bit chilly.

All of the rain made my lunch choice easy.  It was time to put my fantastic kitchen to a good use by creating Steve Cotton's Famous Bean Soup.

And that is what I did instead of playing Ansel Adams.  I used what was left of my bacon grease to sauté carrots, garlic, onion, tomatoes, zucchini, red and yellow bell peppers, and jalapeños before I stirred the mixture into a pot of beans I had expressed soaked. 

Then the pièce de résistance -- a cubed slab of ham steak.  The real stuff.

I know nothing better to eat on a rainy afternoon than a bowl of bean soup.  Well, it would have been better with a nice crusty baguette.  But "crusty" and "bread" are strangers in this part of the world.

Can I promise photographs today or tomorrow?  I am not certain.  With beclouded skies and enough flowing water to qualify for a dozen Italian weddings, I am not going to make any promises.

But, if you want to stop by for a bowl of the world's best bean soup, you should probably head somewhere else.  This batch is not as good as usual.

I am willing to let you watch Hannah and Her Sisters with me, though.  Or another Woody Allen film.  Like bean soup, Woody Allen movies make the rain bearable.