BEAN RECIPE - ONE OF THE BEST

Rushing past the breakfast area with her files in hand, I spotted one of the Carrington chefs and remembered I wanted to compliment them about a delicious bean dish that had been on last week’s menu. All at our table had agreed it one of the best. With neurons speeding around the brain department I still required a key word to complete this task (the senior moment syndrome). My mind came up with the letter ‘i’ so I went back to my suite and asked Google for help using the words “bean recipes” and my computer offered a long list of recipes to peruse.

Old recipe books are interesting judging from the notes that family members had jotted in the margins of cookbooks of yesteryear. Half a century before someone’s handwriting had penned, “This recipe won first prize at the fall fair of 1929.” Rolling back the tapes of time, we see the snow falling at our country school that doubled as a meeting place for the community. After evening get-togethers the men hitched the horses to their sleighs, while the women helped the children fasten coats, boots and scarves and banked the fire in the pot-bellied stove with a large chunk of coal for the overnight safety of our one-room school for studies the next day.

The cursor led me to older recipes. Winter months had delayed the egg-laying process until spring days warmed and brightened the prairies and the farm’s chicken house could get busy. Notes on cookbook pages told what might be used as a substitute for eggs in some recipes. Ground flax soaked overnight and extra flour added to some cake recipes to keep the cake from falling flat in the baking process. “Run to the chicken house to see if a couple of eggs have been laid, and on your way back stop at the grain bin for some flax. I’ll bring the kindling in and revive the fire. Then you can take the small bucket and together we’ll fill the boiler from the rain barrel, I think there is enough for the Saturday wash”, Mother gently ordered. Any day could be laundry day if there was sunshine to hang out the laundry and enough water in the barrel. If it was low one of my brothers loaded the six barrels, hitched up the team and drove a mile where water could be pumped from a creek. Mother placed her boiler on the two rear stove lids to free up the two front lids for cooking the breakfast oatmeal. Lids were lifted with a special iron tool in order to add more wood or coal at intervals all day to cook and keep the water warm in the attached reservoir. Was that recipe called "Chili Beans?"
Now where did I see that screen about beans – I’ll look another day. We may soon be going back to this more simple living.