Austin Burned Beans

Everyone's heard of Boston Baked Beans, right? Well, what we had at our house tonight was nothing like that. We made a big pot of beans in our new pressure cooker last night--an experiment that failed to meet expectations and didn't really go at all according to plan. (The claim in the instruction sheet being that you could make a pot of unsoaked beans in 29 minutes. But after about twice that long, with the beans still relatively hard, we decided to eat something else and let the beans cook a while longer). So, needless to say, we had beans on the menu for tonight. I decided to warm them up on the stove, hoping for more thorough heating than the microwave could provide. Unfortunately, I got them started, and then I think both of my children demanded my attention seperately for several minutes each. (It's all kind of a blurr--oh, wait, that's just the smoke). By the time I finished up with the kids there was a stench coming from the kitchen and the house was quickly filling with smoke. The beans ended up in the trash (we couldn't possibly go for three strikes in this case!) and the smell lingers still. It's a disgusting reminder of my failure as a domestic engineer. Thank goodness Jeff had better luck out on the grill and not one of us went hungry!