Springfield Retirement Castle Kidney Mush

Boo! Exit to your left. It’s almost Halloween and what is more terrifying than the grim possibility of living out your golden years in a retirement home eating mushed up foods? Kidney Mush does not sound appealing, as either a food or a medical condition, so why does Homer engage in violent wheelchair racing just to eat some? I get that he’s a fat guy who will eat anything, but I still wanted to make my kidney mush taste like something I would actually eat…or at the very least be willing to out wheelchair an old person for it.

In all the years that I watched this episode, I had always assumed that Kidney Mush was referring to a mush made from kidney beans. It was only in thinking about this recipe more closely that I realized the joke might be that the residents of Springfield Retirement Castle are eating mushed up kidney organs. I’m curious how others interpreted this. My experience with grinding and mushing organ meat is, at this time, nonexistent and so I choose to make my Kidney Mush with kidney beans, not kidney organs. Is this a cope out? Yes and I’m ok with that.

Ingredients

• Dried Kidney Beans
• Bay Leaf
• Salt and Pepper
• Garlic

Directions

Dried beans need to be sorted, rinsed, and soaked before they can be cooked. I prefer the “hot soak method”, heat beans to boiling for a few minutes, remove from heat and cover, then soak overnight. You can soak your beans however you see fit, but it’s best to soak them for at least 4 hours.

Once the beans have soaked they are ready to cook. Boil them low and slow for several hours, occasionally stirring / mashing the beans and adding water as needed. For the first hour as the water boiled down I added a bay leaf for flavor.

Once the beans have officially turned into mush, it’s time to add some seasoning. I added salt, pepper, and fresh garlic to the mix until everything resembled refried beans.

It may not include any organ meat, but this Kidney (Bean) Mush tasted surprisingly good. From a cost perspective this cost approximately $2 in ingredients (dried kidney beans and spices) plus there was about 4 hours of cooking time, but very little of it involved fully paying attention, so a Springfield Retirement Castle Employee could easily cook this while doing something else. All in all, this seems like a much more economical way to feed old people that doesn’t involve kidney organs or Lay’s Liquid Potato Chips.

Cromulence: 7 Lotus Flowers out of 10

Springfield Retirement Castle Kidney Mush Recipe From: The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons (The Simpsons Season 9 – Episode 7)