Mark's Famous Beans
Aug. 31st, 2002 12:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Famous with my co-workers anyway. ^_^
This is based off a couple of boston baked beans recipes, that I've adapted over the years.
I take a large crock pot and fill it up very full because this is really a double recipe. First, I put in 2 bags of navy beans (2 lbs total). I suppose you can soak them first, I normally don't bother because I cook everything for 12-16 hours. I usually start right when I get home, and then take everything to work the next day and let it cook some more.
So, put the beans in the crock pot. Add water. Usually I add a beer too, a nice dark thick one like a guiness stout, just for more body. Then I slice up a large ham, 1 lb or so. I slice it in big chunks, after it's cooked 12 hours it will fall apart into smaller pieces anyway. Next I add:
1/2 cup brown sugar, roughly. Makes it taste sweet and good.
molasses. Recipe calls for 6 tablespoons, but I just pour in as much as I want. Lots is good.
2 teaspoons salt, more or less, whatever seems right to you.
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon pepper, roughly.
1 onion, sliced up. Walla Walla sweet onions are best of course.
Other secret ingredients, not in the original recipe:
4-8 cloves of garlic, crushed. Whatever seems good to you.
Liquid Smoke. Just pour some in.
BBQ Sauce. Sometimes I add some, if I have some around.
Cook on high for a couple of hours, then turn it on low and go to sleep. Next day, it should look and smell pretty good. ^_^
At this point I usually chop up several stalks of celery and toss them in, then cook until I go to work. You can add them earlier of course, but they'll cook down so much that they almost disappear, so I like to wait to put them in until a few hours before eating. I pack the beans in a large rubbermaid bin thing for travelling, so it doesn't slosh out of the crock pot (which I wash out), then when I get to work I pour everything back in and turn it up on high for a couple of hours at least.
Anyway, everyone acts like its some fantastic secret recipe, because they turn out pretty good. But it's pretty easy to do. Cooking for a long time on low is what makes it good, the brown sugar and molasses cook into everything.
Some stories from my free This Is True subscription:
LONESOME GUN: Former pop star Adam Ant has pleaded guilty to making
threats. The 47-year-old Brit appeared in court under his real name,
Stuart Goddard, and will be sentenced later. The incident occurred when
Ant walked into the Prince of Wales pub in London, England, wearing a
cowboy costume. Pub regulars laughed at the getup and hummed the theme
to "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". Outraged, Ant stormed out and
smashed the pub's window. When several patrons chased after him, he
threatened them with a starter pistol. (Reuters) ...Where are the
paparazzi when you need them?
AND THE WINNER IS: A radio station promotional contest in Toledo, Ohio,
awarded a car to Brian Root, 44, after he managed to keep touching the
car longer than 49 other contestants -- six days. WKKO then learned
that Root was not one of its listeners, nor even an area resident. Root
lives in Mobile, Ala., with his mother. He travels around the country
to compete in such contests and has won 16 of them since 1984, earning
him about $160,000 by selling the cars. "Who would have thought of
something such as someone who travels from city to city to participate
in these kind of contests?" said WKKO general manager John Potter.
Contest organizers say they plan to change the rules to prohibit "full-
time contestants." (Toledo Blade) ...Root's next career: suing contest
organizers for "restraint of trade."
RHYME RAGE: Lothian University Hospitals Trust in Glasgow, Scotland,
decided employees were stressed, so a stress counselor started sending
all 3,000 employees an e-mail "poem a day". Would-be poet Lynn Ogilvie
then asked workers to tell her what they thought of her e-mails. "We
have chosen haiku, as the poems are very wee, with the intention of
creating a moment of pleasure," she wrote. "Do these tiny poems create
a moment of pleasure or irritation?" The hospital e-mail system almost
crashed under the deluge of replies pleading for the poems to stop. "A
big poem, A wee poem, Ah'm sick o'em!" wrote one. "Not a haiku, Does
not scan, Just a plea from an overworked man" wrote another. So did the
hospital cancel the scheme? No: administrators have warned the staff to
stop complaining or they will lose their e-mail access. (Glasgow Daily
Record) ...Well, at least now they know the source of their stress.
Here's a scary local story: Seattle Times Story. A 19 year old kid (and probably 1 or 2 accomplices) bludgeoned 33 calves with a baseball bat the other night, killing 15. The farm this happened on is owned by relatives of people I work with... in fact, the owner's parents used to own the farm, and now a sibling owns it I think. Tim (my direct boss, whose dad owns the company) said it used to be his grandparent's farm and now was his uncle's farm.
Anyway, pretty sick story.
I'm thinking my company is an Axis of Evil. I explained this to Tim:
Point #1: Gary Leon Ridgeway, who was arrested last year and charged with several of the Green River Killer murders (he apparently IS the Green River Killer), worked at Kenworth Truck (a division of Paccar) here in Kent. They are our biggest customer, so several of our drivers knew exactly who Ridgeway was.
Point #2: A few months later, police in Vancouver BC descended on a pig farm and arrested two brothers in connection with the murders of several of the 50 plus prostitutes who have gone missing. Paul, a driver for Argus (which is a Vancouver trucking company that we have direct ties to, several of their drivers bring frieght down to us and take freight back up to BC every night) defended these two brothers when they were first arrested, because this pig farm is in his neighborhood and he's known these guys for years. He said that they had lots of wild parties on the farm, and prostitutes and bikers were there all the time, but they obviously weren't mass murderers. But since then Robert William Pickton (one of the two brothers) has been charged with the murders of seven of the missing women, and police are scouring the farm for dna evidence, bone fragments, etc.
Point #3: I found out two days ago that the guy in California who apparently killed those two teenage girls also worked for a company that we ship to on a regular basis.
Axis of Evil, baby. No connections to Ted Bundy or Robert Lee Yates that I know of just yet though.
This is based off a couple of boston baked beans recipes, that I've adapted over the years.
I take a large crock pot and fill it up very full because this is really a double recipe. First, I put in 2 bags of navy beans (2 lbs total). I suppose you can soak them first, I normally don't bother because I cook everything for 12-16 hours. I usually start right when I get home, and then take everything to work the next day and let it cook some more.
So, put the beans in the crock pot. Add water. Usually I add a beer too, a nice dark thick one like a guiness stout, just for more body. Then I slice up a large ham, 1 lb or so. I slice it in big chunks, after it's cooked 12 hours it will fall apart into smaller pieces anyway. Next I add:
1/2 cup brown sugar, roughly. Makes it taste sweet and good.
molasses. Recipe calls for 6 tablespoons, but I just pour in as much as I want. Lots is good.
2 teaspoons salt, more or less, whatever seems right to you.
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon pepper, roughly.
1 onion, sliced up. Walla Walla sweet onions are best of course.
Other secret ingredients, not in the original recipe:
4-8 cloves of garlic, crushed. Whatever seems good to you.
Liquid Smoke. Just pour some in.
BBQ Sauce. Sometimes I add some, if I have some around.
Cook on high for a couple of hours, then turn it on low and go to sleep. Next day, it should look and smell pretty good. ^_^
At this point I usually chop up several stalks of celery and toss them in, then cook until I go to work. You can add them earlier of course, but they'll cook down so much that they almost disappear, so I like to wait to put them in until a few hours before eating. I pack the beans in a large rubbermaid bin thing for travelling, so it doesn't slosh out of the crock pot (which I wash out), then when I get to work I pour everything back in and turn it up on high for a couple of hours at least.
Anyway, everyone acts like its some fantastic secret recipe, because they turn out pretty good. But it's pretty easy to do. Cooking for a long time on low is what makes it good, the brown sugar and molasses cook into everything.
Some stories from my free This Is True subscription:
LONESOME GUN: Former pop star Adam Ant has pleaded guilty to making
threats. The 47-year-old Brit appeared in court under his real name,
Stuart Goddard, and will be sentenced later. The incident occurred when
Ant walked into the Prince of Wales pub in London, England, wearing a
cowboy costume. Pub regulars laughed at the getup and hummed the theme
to "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". Outraged, Ant stormed out and
smashed the pub's window. When several patrons chased after him, he
threatened them with a starter pistol. (Reuters) ...Where are the
paparazzi when you need them?
AND THE WINNER IS: A radio station promotional contest in Toledo, Ohio,
awarded a car to Brian Root, 44, after he managed to keep touching the
car longer than 49 other contestants -- six days. WKKO then learned
that Root was not one of its listeners, nor even an area resident. Root
lives in Mobile, Ala., with his mother. He travels around the country
to compete in such contests and has won 16 of them since 1984, earning
him about $160,000 by selling the cars. "Who would have thought of
something such as someone who travels from city to city to participate
in these kind of contests?" said WKKO general manager John Potter.
Contest organizers say they plan to change the rules to prohibit "full-
time contestants." (Toledo Blade) ...Root's next career: suing contest
organizers for "restraint of trade."
RHYME RAGE: Lothian University Hospitals Trust in Glasgow, Scotland,
decided employees were stressed, so a stress counselor started sending
all 3,000 employees an e-mail "poem a day". Would-be poet Lynn Ogilvie
then asked workers to tell her what they thought of her e-mails. "We
have chosen haiku, as the poems are very wee, with the intention of
creating a moment of pleasure," she wrote. "Do these tiny poems create
a moment of pleasure or irritation?" The hospital e-mail system almost
crashed under the deluge of replies pleading for the poems to stop. "A
big poem, A wee poem, Ah'm sick o'em!" wrote one. "Not a haiku, Does
not scan, Just a plea from an overworked man" wrote another. So did the
hospital cancel the scheme? No: administrators have warned the staff to
stop complaining or they will lose their e-mail access. (Glasgow Daily
Record) ...Well, at least now they know the source of their stress.
Here's a scary local story: Seattle Times Story. A 19 year old kid (and probably 1 or 2 accomplices) bludgeoned 33 calves with a baseball bat the other night, killing 15. The farm this happened on is owned by relatives of people I work with... in fact, the owner's parents used to own the farm, and now a sibling owns it I think. Tim (my direct boss, whose dad owns the company) said it used to be his grandparent's farm and now was his uncle's farm.
Anyway, pretty sick story.
I'm thinking my company is an Axis of Evil. I explained this to Tim:
Point #1: Gary Leon Ridgeway, who was arrested last year and charged with several of the Green River Killer murders (he apparently IS the Green River Killer), worked at Kenworth Truck (a division of Paccar) here in Kent. They are our biggest customer, so several of our drivers knew exactly who Ridgeway was.
Point #2: A few months later, police in Vancouver BC descended on a pig farm and arrested two brothers in connection with the murders of several of the 50 plus prostitutes who have gone missing. Paul, a driver for Argus (which is a Vancouver trucking company that we have direct ties to, several of their drivers bring frieght down to us and take freight back up to BC every night) defended these two brothers when they were first arrested, because this pig farm is in his neighborhood and he's known these guys for years. He said that they had lots of wild parties on the farm, and prostitutes and bikers were there all the time, but they obviously weren't mass murderers. But since then Robert William Pickton (one of the two brothers) has been charged with the murders of seven of the missing women, and police are scouring the farm for dna evidence, bone fragments, etc.
Point #3: I found out two days ago that the guy in California who apparently killed those two teenage girls also worked for a company that we ship to on a regular basis.
Axis of Evil, baby. No connections to Ted Bundy or Robert Lee Yates that I know of just yet though.
