Quarantine Day #71 Clean Puppies and Baked Beans

The W's got groomed yesterday!  It's been so long and they were so very shaggy.  Wils went first and he fought us mightily while we put him in the car.  It takes two of us and a sling and we still barely make it.  He turns into dead weight and he is a very hefty boy!  He hates the car and I don't know why.

The moment he saw the groomer, he dove out of the car and ran inside and never looked back.  He had three hours of bliss.

 Winnie was next.

She came home and looked 3X smaller.    The whole experience proved to be strange in that it was the first time that life felt normal after 71 days.  We are not out of quarantine yet but this was a peek from behind the curtain into the future.

I was so looking forward to one of our big Memorial Day parties but of course that won't be happening this year. I have promised food to people though.  It will be a home delivery party this year.  I started the baked beans a couple of days ago.  They have to soak for 2 days before you cook them.

You can find the entire recipe here:  http://octoberfarm.blogspot.com/2014/11/baked-beans.html

For years I made my baked beans from scratch never using canned beans.  A few years ago I tried a recipe using canned beans and it was wonderful so I kept making it.  Canned beans were one of the first things that were hard to find during this pandemic.  So, I reverted back to my beans from scratch recipe and I am glad I did.  This really makes the best beans.

I used 6 cups of dried beans which gives me 8 quarts of finished beans.  That's a lot of baked beans!

I add onions, celery, green peppers and lots of seasoning.

I also layer them in the pot with diced bacon.

I made them in a slow cooker too.

Here they are after about 2 hours of cooking on high.

This is after another couple of hours, still on high.

Here they are after 8 hours.  They will cook on low today and then sit in the fridge to "cure" until they walk out the door.  One menu item clicked off the list.