Slow Cooked Bean Medley

February, and the world outside the kitchen is beginning to murmur about something. A virus. In China. The murmuring is distant — the way a storm murmurs on the horizon, present but not yet relevant, the kind of thing you notice and file and do not yet worry about because you have enough to worry about in the house where your mother is forgetting your name and your daughter is leaving for college and your husband is retiring and your sister lives in a group home and the worrying has filled every available container and there is no room for a virus in a country you have never visited.

Carrie is in the final semester of high school, and the semester has the quality of an epilogue — the story has been told, the climax has passed (the Emory acceptance), and the remaining pages are the denouement, the gentle descent from the peak of achievement to the plateau of waiting. She is still excellent. She is still fierce. But the fierceness is directed outward now — toward Atlanta, toward Japan, toward the life she has been planning since she was fifteen and learned that the world was larger than Charleston.

Robert is counting down to his retirement — June 30th, six months away. He has been spending evenings in the workshop with increasing frequency and duration, the workshop becoming the rehearsal space for the life he will live when the law releases him. He is building a desk — not for Naomi, not for the children, but for himself, the first piece of furniture he has built for his own use, and the building-for-self is a new thing, a retirement thing, the beginning of a life where Robert Blackwood's primary client is Robert Blackwood.

I have begun hearing the virus murmur more frequently — at the library, in the news, in the conversations of patrons who are worried and who come to the library for information because the library is still, in 2020, the place where people go when they need to understand something the world has not yet explained. I ordered books on pandemic preparedness and placed them on the new arrivals shelf, the librarian's version of stacking sandbags: you may not need them, but you put them where people can find them.

I made lentil soup — the February soup, the practical soup, the soup that says "the world is uncertain and the kitchen is certain and the certainty is in the lentils, which cook in thirty minutes and cost almost nothing and feed everyone at the table, which is all that any food has ever been asked to do."

The lentil soup I mentioned that February gave way, as the weeks turned, to whatever dried beans I had on hand — and I found that the slow cooker asked even less of me than the stovetop, which was exactly right for a season when I had very little left to give. This bean medley became the week’s anchor: I’d set it before the library opened, and by the time I came home to Robert in the workshop and Carrie already half-gone in her mind to Atlanta, the kitchen smelled like something had been quietly, faithfully at work all day — which felt like the most hopeful thing I could say about February 2020.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 8 hrs | Total Time: 8 hrs 15 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 cup dried great northern beans, rinsed and sorted
1 cup dried kidney beans, rinsed and sorted
1 cup dried black beans, rinsed and sorted
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, sliced
2 stalks celery, sliced
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
6 cups low-sodium vegetable or chicken broth
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons olive oil

Instructions

Soak the beans. Place all dried beans in a large bowl and cover with cold water by at least 2 inches. Soak overnight or for a minimum of 8 hours. Drain and rinse thoroughly before using.
Layer the slow cooker. Add the olive oil to the bottom of a 6-quart slow cooker. Add the drained beans, onion, garlic, carrots, and celery, stirring gently to combine.
Add liquids and seasoning. Pour in the diced tomatoes (with their juices) and broth. Stir in the paprika, thyme, cumin, pepper, and bay leaf. Hold the salt until the end — adding it early can toughen the bean skins.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 to 9 hours, or on HIGH for 4 to 5 hours, until all beans are completely tender and the broth has thickened slightly.
Season and finish. Remove the bay leaf. Stir in salt to taste. For a thicker consistency, use the back of a spoon to mash a portion of the beans against the side of the pot and stir them back in.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and serve with crusty bread or over rice. Leftovers keep well refrigerated for up to 5 days and freeze beautifully for up to 3 months.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow Cooked Bean Medley — The Certainty of a Pot That Asks Nothing of You