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Just like when Spring is about to arrive, I get the urge to plant, to clean up the yard and the house and to watch every day for bright green shoots coming up – my Daffodils and Forsythia are the first to bring the much needed color in the yard….I might be digressing…well in the early stages of Autumn, I get the urge to cook and to cook hearty stews and soups and to do so in my crock pot. So when I saw the recipe for Vegetarian Pasta and Fagiole soup in the Wegman’s Menu magazine and I had recently made the Slow Cooked Beef Minestrone, I JUST ASSUMED this soup was made in a crock pot too, NOT!
Unfortunately I didn’t discover this misapprehension until after I had soaked a pound of Northern Beans overnight, not until after I had rinsed the beans and put them in the crock pot with the required 10 cups of water. Mmmm what to do? I could have poured it all into a stock pot as the recipe stated but I needed to be out of the house for a couple of hours! I decided to leave the beans in the crock pot, turned it on high and left. I was pretty sure this recipe would adapt but I wasn’t positive, c’est la guerre.
1 pkg dried Northern Beans, sorted and rinsed
10 cups of water
3 Bay Leaves ( I used 5)
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1/4 cup olive oil
2 medium onions 1/2 inch dice (3 cups)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 carrots, peeled 1/2 inch dice
1 can (14.5oz) diced tomatoes or 4 plum tomatoes
1 carton (32 fl oz) + 2 cups of vegetable stock ( I used chicken broth because that’s what I had in the house)
1/2 tsp of crushed red pepper
2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground black pepper
2 pkgs (6 oz each) of baby spinach
1 1/2 cups Ditallini pasta cooked per directions
Place beans in large stock pot, cover with water and allow an extra 2 ” of water. Cover, tilt to vent and soak 8 hours or overnight.
Drain beans, discard soaking water. Add beans and 10 cups of water to medium stock pot. Heat on HIGH for 10 minutes until boiling and skim off foam. Add bay leaves and rosemary, reduce heat to MEDIUM. Cover, tilted to vent steam. Cook 1 hour; do not stir.
Heat olive oil in large stockpot on MEDIUM. Add onions, garlic and carrots. Stir occasionally and cook until vegetables are tender.
Add diced tomatoes, stock, crushed red pepper, salt and pepper. Simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, set aside off heat.
Check the beans for tenderness; if not completely tender, cover completely and cook as long as needed. Discard bay leaves.
Add the beans and liquid to the stock pot with veggie/tomato mixture. Stir and bring to a boil. reduce heat to MEDIUM-LOW. Cover, tilted to vent steam. Cook 30 minutes; stir occasionally.
Add spinach 10 minutes before serving. Adjust seasonings
To serve, put a portion of pasta into individual bowls and then ladle hot soup over the pasta.
Recipe from Wegman’s MENU magazine
What I learned:
You can make this in the crock pot but the beans took literally all day to cook, but I had the time.
Cooking the pasta separately is a great way not to have it blow up in size and get mushy.
We loved the dish, actually served it along with some left over Broccoletti which I had made the night before. And I will have to write about that recipe which I saw in the same magazine but would have never made had it not been for Gus, a chef at Wegman’s who often demonstrates the making of a dish and gives out samples.
My only complaint was that for what I thought would be a simple Sunday supper, I used 3 pots.
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
Pbenjay's Blog 
Wall Street 2- Money Never Sleeps
October 6, 2010 by pbenjay
Welllll what happens when there is way too much hype about a movie is what happened here – it doesn’t live up to the publicity campaign! A couple of friends had already seen it and said, “oh you’re going to love it”! NOT
The first thing that put me off the movie was the music. I am ALWAYS suspect of a movie that uses songs to express an emotion that the script has failed to convey. It’s almost as if the music is used to fill in the blanks left in the screenplay.
I understand and appreciate Oliver Stone‘s attempts to expose the excesses and abuses of the wild wild west of Wall Street. But you can’t do that when you use stars in your movie because they get paid a lot of money and only major studios and large production companies can pay those prices. Exposeé cinema is the work of Michael Moore. There were two other story lines played out; the relationship between Jake and Winnie and Winnie and Gekko – predictable.
The movie was predictable right from the very first scene – I mean you HAD to know that Winnie (Carey Mulligan) was going to be the daughter of Gordon Gecko. And that Jake (Shia LaBeouf) with his innocent looks and clean-shaven face would be the perfect foil for Gordon GekkoMichael Douglas) and Bretton James (Josh Brolin) characters. Greed is good.
For awhile I thought that after 8 years in prison Gordon was reformed, repentant and rehabilitated-NOT! Two clichés come to mind: Old habits are hard to break and a leopard doesn’t change his spots. However, in thinking back to first meeting between Jake and Gecko, I should have seen the foreshadowing in the trades. But then again, Michael Douglas is a star and of course the movie couldn’t end with him still being a prick – predictable.
The movie is filled and I mean filled with the vernacular of Wall Street; so much so that I believe most of the audience had no clue as to what the characters were talking about and there was no explanation offered either verbally or visually. Sub prime, insurance-swapping, margin calls, selling short, off-shore funding and on and on. It was nice that the research was done to make it authentic but if so much of the dialogue is in vernacular, it is lost on the general public.
Let’s talk about the acting; this is the second movie I’ve seen recently that had former leading actors and actresses in minor roles AND the greats walked away with the scene every time! Eli Wallach was powerful in the role of Jules Steinhardt, Susan Sarandon once again displayed her ability to shine in a comedic role and Frank Langella as Louis Zabel inhabited the character. Shia is good looking but not a great actor, Carey was too doe-eyed for me and Josh Brolin is a bit of enigma-I think he should be better than he is and yet he has had two leading roles recently.
As far as the cinematography goes, well…what New Yorker doesn’t love to watch a film shot in New York City? The street shots were great, I actually recognized a few but there were too many skyline shots. Could you identify what organization was being honored when the Empire State Building came into view and each time it had a different light configuration?
From my point of view, Wall Street 2 is entertaining, I enjoyed seeing Michael Douglas but it was contrived, not real enough – EVEN with all the product placement! It lacked meatiness and soul and I don’t know why those particular words came to mind but they do.
Just in case you’re wondering what product placement I’m talking about, consider these:
Dunkin Donuts
The Bowery Hotel
Michael Douglas
Heineken
Nintendo
Lay’s
Shun Lee
Johnny Walker
Red Bull
Cracker Jacks
and many many more!!!!
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Posted in From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books | Tagged Carey Mulligan, Frank Langella, Gordon Gekko, Josh Brolin, Michael Douglas, Oliver Stone, Shia LaBeouf, Wall Street | 1 Comment »