Vegan White Bean Chili

I love all kinds of chili, and during January will very often go on a meatless diet for four to six weeks. in an attempt to rid myself of carnivore toxins (and maybe some bad cholesterol too!).

Beans are an excellent source of protein during these diets, and I am always on the lookout for recipes which will be satisfying, yet suitable to replace the proteins that I am not taking in from animal products.  Great Northern Beans are an excellent substitute for these proteins and are flexible enough to work well in so many dishes.  They are my go to bean when I am looking to change out animal protein.

I'm going to give you two preparations for dried beans, one using the ubiquitous Instapot pressure cooker, and one using the old fashioned soaking method.  You can of course cut out these methods by using drained canned beans as a substituent, but I like to use the pressure-cooker bean juice too.

Traditional Bean Preparation

Pick through one pound of dried beans for stones, imperfections and other foreign objects such as twigs.  Rise the beans under cold water and place them in a sauce pot of salted water (about a teaspoon of salt to six cups of water).  Cover and let sit for eight hours minimum, or overnight.  Drain the water and add fresh salted water before bringing to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for about an hour, or until the beans are tender.

Instapot Preparation

Pick through beans as above and rinse.  Place in the Instapot and add up to six cups of low sodium vegetable stock.  Secure the lid and set the Instapot for 45 minutes, allowing the steam to vent naturally.  This will take an additional 15-20 minutes.

Chili Ingredients

1 onion, diced medium
1-2 jalapeno peppers, diced medium
1 red bell pepper, diced medium
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cups diced cherry tomatoes
4 cloves garlic, fine diced or pressed
2 cups vegetable stock
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
salt and pepper to taste
Sprigs of cilantro, chopped
Baked corn tortilla chips

Directions

Prepare the beans first.  (If using the Instapot, you can do this beforehand and then saute the vegetables and cook the chili right in the unit.  I chose to use the stove top for final preparation). Saute the vegetables until the onions are clear and the garlic is fragrant, over medium heat.  Add the tomato paste, stir and cook until the paste begins to change color.  Ladle in the beans, with their juice, and add the sliced cherry tomatoes and spices. Now add the vegetable stock, cover and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer for about an hour.

Depending on how hearty you want your chili,  you may want to add more vegetable stock or water if it is too thick at this point. Check for salt and add chopped cilantro before serving.  Reserve a sprig or two of cilantro for garnish, as well as a few baked corn tortilla chips.

If you are like me and discovered during this meal prep that you were out of chili powder, you can make your own! Here's how:

1/8 cup paprika
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon adobo powder (optional)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

How Long Should a Beginning Brass Student Practice?

This is an old question that band directors and private teachers have to answer all of the time from beginning students and their parents.  Often times students think that their twice a week band class or their once a week private lesson, if they are fortunate enough to afford them, is all the time they need to put into music study in general, and brass playing in particular.  As a retired band director and current private teacher I was always very hesitant to put a number on minutes to practice or the frequency, because students will tend to do just that much and no more.

What I do teach them to how to practice, and how to establish a good practice habit, and then commit to it consistently every week, class/private lessons not counted.  Instead of focusing on the minutes on a clock, I break down the session into different activities, each with the idea of achieving some overall goal for that day.  This gets them out of the mindset of just filling up twenty minutes with unstructured noise and then boom, horn goes in the case.

Not only do I teach this approach, I reinforce it by structuring lessons, and even my rehearsals when I taught school the same way. All the while I prompt students to think about what wee are doing and why we are doing it. Rather than assigning minutes to an activity, I ask them to think more about repetitions, specifically being able to repeat something without errors before moving on to the next activity.

It's a never ending struggle to keep kids focused in this way, because they (and we as adults too) are so preoccupied with our phones, video games, computers and television.  Practicing a musical instrument is time consuming, because it requires an investment in that time to develop specific instrument-related motor skills.  That's an old world idea that may not be compatible with today's instant gratification mindset.  Any skill that requires repetition to improve on will run into this resistance, because our devices teach us that we can find answers instantly by swiping a screen or using our thumbs to key in words on a search engine.

If you want to be a good shortstop in baseball, you gotta take a lot of ground balls. That takes a lot of time.  If you want to become a good trumpet player, you've got to develop the fine muscles in your face to make a good sound, supported by proper use of your air. That too takes time, through doing it consistently.

What is this structure that I teach? With brass it begins with the mouthpiece.  I start every lesson, every practice session with mouthpiece buzzing.  A good buzz happens when you have the mouthpiece set in the right place on the lips, which will vary slightly from one person to the next. I work to achieve a long low buzz sound using, without puffing the cheeks, then trying to make sirens with the buzz, varying the frequency of the buzz in the upper lip (the lower lip should not buzz).  Later I encourage students to buzz scales as they become more advanced, or even tunes that they can buzz by ear.  Only when the buzz can be made cleanly do I encourage the mouthpiece to be put on the horn.

Once the horn is assembled the next activity is to use the same buzzing technique to produce long tones on the instrument, and then work on lip slurs from one partial to the next, until they can be done cleanly.  The more advanced the student is, the more involved the lip slurring can become.  But again, repetition until success is the goal.

There is an old approach called the Caruso method, which involves keeping the horn on the face while playing a limited number of notes through playing or resting periods.  I'll discuss that method more in a later article, but even beginning brass players can do this, and I emphasize it as a warm-up activity even for kids just starting out.  Again when it can be done quietly and cleanly, that's the signal to move on.

As students become more advanced in age and experience scales may be worked on at this point, though a beginning fifth grader might only be able to play the four or five notes of a Bb Concert scale at this point.  If using the Caruso approach, they may use those first four or five notes of that scale anyway, a two birds at once sort of thing.

Kids will play what they know in their song practice list, and then disregard everything else.  I teach them to think of the song portion of their practice routine as a runner might think of warming up before a race.  I ask them to find something that they know and like to play for fun, and invite mom and dad or others in the house to listen.  Once this mini recital is over, dismiss them and then try to play the assigned lesson, song, or etude next, taking as much time as they need on something that gives them trouble.  If they have questions about a note, or rhythm or something they can't quite get, write that question in pencil directly over the measure (s) that give them trouble. If they can, then skip over it and finish by playing what they can to the end.

I also teach kids to have closure.  Never end a session by feeling bad about your playing,  Go back and find something that they know or have fun playing, and play it a couple of times.  Maybe change the tempo, or do something different to it that they can play without mistakes.  Sometimes young brass players will fatigue here.  That's okay.  Play to failure and them stop!

Not once here did I emphasize emphasize time elapsed.  If all these steps are taken, even at the most basic level, thirty to forty minutes will fly by.  That's a good structured expenditure of time.  And the good news is that as the player advances more material can be added to expand the session.

I always teach students to set a little goal for themselves every day they go into a practice session; perhaps a better buzz, learn one new note or fingering, play a note that they haven't reached cleanly before, or maybe even just holding a tone for longer than four or eight beats without gasping for breath.  With these type goals in mind, the session now has a purpose other than just blasting random notes for ten minutes, or playing Hot Cross Buns for five minutes. Structure is the framework for developing progress.

Chicken Soup for Two

I've done a chicken soup on these pages before, but they were large recipes, for four or more people.  The challenge is to make these recipes suitable for one or two people, which is sometimes not so easy.  But this one truly is.  The key is to find Better Than Bouillon, a great extract that enhances chicken stock flavor immensely.

INGREDIENTS

1 boneless chicken breast or thigh, cubed
1/4 onion, finely chopped
2 celery stalks, cut on a slight bias
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 box low sodium chicken stock
1 heaping teaspoon Better Than Bouillon chicken extract
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 cup frozen mixed vegetables
1 cup dried egg noodles
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium high heat. Dice the onion and celery and saute until the onions are clear.  Add the garlic and spices, continuing to saute until the garlic is fragrant. Take care not to over salt, as the chicken stock extract has plenty of salt already. At this point add the chicken and cook until it is no longer pink.  Add the Better than Bouillon and stock, bringing to a boil.  Cover and reduce the heat to medium.

Now add the dried noodles and the frozen mixed vegetables. cover until the noodles are soft..  Serve with a crusty bread or crackers and a dry white wine!

Chinese-Made Brass Instruments; Thoughts from a Retired Educator and Active Musician

It has been a little over a year since I last contributed to this blog page, though I see that there has been over 8,000 views of it since I started it.  In that time I've pondered whether to keep the page, or scrap it.  I've in the past written on some important events in my life and teaching career, shared favorite recipes, and featured some photos that I have taken as part of my other hobby, photography.

These are all great subjects, and I am sure that each one of them (and more) is worthy of the time, but I do believe that I do have something of value still to share in my chosen profession - music education. As such I believe that my views, insights and tips can help students and guide parents as they navigate through the modern world of music study in the 21st century.

So while I will continue to share recipes and tips on photography that I have learned, I want to focus for now on subjects and that can help both students and parents in school music programs.  I will be talking a lot more about playing and practice tips, music education and theory topics and equipment choices, all aimed at the 5-12 grade music student experience.

Today let's talk about student brass instruments.  When I was a young pup starting band in the mid-1960's, families in my neighborhood could not afford to buy musical instruments, so our local school loaned them out to students.  For brass instruments it was the venerable Olds Ambassador line cornets and trombones and baritones, or the occasional Conn.  These were well built tanks, with heavy bracing and high grade brass and nickel joint ferrules and durable lacquer finishes, capable of withstanding the pounding and neglect that a 5th grader could heap upon them.  In hindsight they weren't always free blowing, but they could take the abuse.  Today they command respect and can fetch a tidy sum on the open market, because they were so well built.

As I advanced into high school I began to look at other American makers more seriously; Bach, Conn, King and Holton, if anything because I figured that I had outgrown the old school instruments and kids were buying them with money they had saved from summer jobs.  But I was still poor, and for the time being I still played on a school horn.  My father purchased for me a used Buescher trombone, a nickel-plated odd ball, in my senior year, which I carried in my first year of serious music study at DePaul University in the mid-1970's.  It was a conversation piece to be sure.

By then, Yamaha had begun to make important inroads into the brass instrument market.  I remember being asked to play a school-owned Yamaha silver-plated euphonium for the DePaul wind and concert bands.  It was a dream, and I carried the horn around with me everywhere.

In those days, Yamaha was following the Asian manufacturing model - copy successful American and European brands until they could reproduce them equal or better to the originals; only then could their own innovations and characteristics be allowed to come forward. Their model for the euphonium was obviously the French Besson, which I played as an undergraduate as well, but preferred the Yamaha. 

A little more about my journey with brass instruments before I turn to the current climate facing today's students and parents.  About my sophomore year at DePaul I turned to trombone full time, ditching the odd Buescher my dad had bought me in high school.  My trombone teacher, Mark McDunn, was a clinician for the Selmer company and had subtly suggested that I consider a Selmer Bolero, a .509 bore tenor trombone that he himself played.  I agreed to buy one and he offered to pick up a horn off the assembly line on his trip to the Paris factory in the summer of 1976.  He sold it to me at cost, about $680. a bit of a King's ransom in those days, but I was working in the summers and managed it.

The horn was the best that I'd played to date; open, bright and penetrating, with a fine slide and resonant hand-hammered bell.  But it later proved to have one of the worst lacquer jobs I'd ever seen; my hands and neck would turn green from the contact points with the metal.  Maybe that was a positive sign of how much I was playing in those days, but I did not enjoy that.  I eventually sold the horn after I got married much later, but now regret doing so.  I could have had it refurbished, but being a newlywed, we needed the money.

In graduate school during the early 80's I purchased what I considered the standards in tenor and bass trombones, the Vincent Bach Stradivarius 42B and the 50B. Both of them turned out to have build quality issues and were real dogs, with very noisy valve linkages and workmanship.  I played them though grad school and beyond, but ditched both for a Getzen bass trombone in the 90's, a horn which I love and still play principally today.

So a long discussion leading up to today's world, in which students and parents are presented with a flood of brass instruments from so many different new markets, at all price points.  Instruments from the Pacific Rim are bountiful, as are domestic and European models.  The question is, which is right for any given student? A trumpet can be found on Amazon for $99; a trombone can fetch as low as $129 on some sites. while music stores can rent a domestic or Japanese horn with an option to buy for about $20 a month.  Are these instruments any good?

In my last two or three years a band director I saw horns brought in by students under the Mendini, Aamoon, Giardinelli and Moz brands, plus a few others I have forgotten, along with horns from more familiar brands as well.  These odd-branded horns, which more often than not come with white gloves (😅) sometimes would separate, come apart at the braces, had rather soft, dent prone metal and seemed to suffer from major fit and finish issues.  At one point early in my career Jupiter was a brand to run away from, suffering from some of the defects these newer horns have.  Repair shops wouldn't touch them. Taiwan based, they have truly improved over the years and are no longer cheaply manufactured.  Their XO brand line are professional horns.

I suspect that the standards for the lesser known brands are rising as well; they have to if they expect to keep selling horns.  In the instrument business these "knock-off" horns are called stencil horns, manufactured in a couple of Chinese factories and branded by the importer.  One such maker in Jin Bao, a company which is moving to improve workmanship on their products because they now have competition from other Chinese companies producing increasingly better made brass instruments all the time.   One such company, Eastland, has even purchased an American boutique trumpet and trombone maker, Shires, and is building and importing Shires designed instruments from the mainland.

In Europe, the English boutique trombone manufacturer Rath, a  maker of very fine professional trombones, teamed up in the last few years with a former builder in their factory, John Packer to collaborate on a new trombone, the JP/Rath line.  The horns are designed in the UK by Rath owner Michael Rath, built in China to Rath standards, and then shipped to the UK for final inspection and set-up before being exported world-wide.  I had been curious about these instruments, and knowing that I did not want to spend $5K on a Rath that I would never make my money back on, I ordered a large bore JP/Rath tenor trombone a couple of years back from a trusted dealer, Hornguys.com.  I had previously purchased two Wisconsin-based Getzen horns from them years back and still play them.

This new horn ran about $1750, maybe half the price of a Bach 42B and two-thirds of the price of a Conn 88H.  I received my horn in 80/20 brass rose brass, with a beautiful lacquer job and in a flawless condition.  I've lived with this horn on many concerts for the past two years and cannot find a fault with it. Tubing ferrules are artfully welded, with no sign of acid bleed around soldered joints or the bell bead.  There are no tooling marks whatsoever, and the slide right out of the box was great.  For the money it has played superior to any Bach that I have every played, and aligns itself quite well with the narrower slide Conn 88 style.

This instrument, and others in its class are considered intermediate, or step-up horns for the advanced student, but I must say that I have heard and read many positive reviews of these instruments by professionals. I've never had any hesitation about playing my JP/Rath in the concerts and shows that I do.  Now I am not a paid endorser of the JP/Rath line, nor am I of John Packer's own line of band instruments, but I do believe that in the instrument business you get what you pay for, especially at the lower end of the spectrum.  If I had a young fifth grader would I buy them a $99 horn online to start band, or a $1700 horn, not knowing if they will want to stick with it? Tough call, but I'd probably go the rental route for the first year; if progress is being made and my child was growing in musical ability and interest, yes I'd look at the intermediate instruments from JP/Rath, Yamaha, Jupiter, Bach and many others.  Brass students can grow with these horns, with little fear that the horn will crumble in their hands onstage.  I've seen that too!

If you have a question about one of these horns, I'll be happy to discuss them with you.  There are a lot of choices out there.  It can be confusing.