We’d love it if you would come to see Fred’s work at the Durham Art Walk this weekend, Nov. 1 – 2. We’ll be in the West Village Apartment lobby, across Morgan Street from Tosca.
Our recent trip to New York, where Fred visited the Met, MoMa, and the Frick, has fueled a creative streak that’s filled our apartment with about 50 new watercolors, including the watercolor below is inspired by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi. (It’s one of my favorites.)
Through all this, I keep cooking–the only thing that keeps me sane. This weekend, we returned to an old favorite: pinto beans and cornbread. I firmly believe that only two people raised on “country cooking” in the South can fully appreciate the joy of a dinner consisting of pinto beans and cornbread. I don’t see a point in offering a recipe–you put a pound of beans, a few slices of salt pork or bacon or ham, onions, and salt in a crock pot and cook on high for 4 – 5 hours, or low for longer. But when you’re buying a house, there’s no dish that can make you feel more frugal and virtuous.
The Newlyfeds 
what a coincidence! I’ve spent the week eating various incarnations of the pinto beans that I cooked on Sunday. Although I’m not a southerner, one of my staple meals as a child was pinto beans and hamhocks, back in the days when hamhocks were a cheap cut of meat.
I don’t know if I’ve ever bought pinto beans–dried, that is. I always thought of them as a southwestern bean.