Anyone from Maine got it?? Hadum for Breakfast there few years ago!! HMMM Hmm Good!!

-- Grizz in Western Maryland (southerneagle@yahoo.com), February 28, 2002

Answers

Around my part of Maine we call them "beanhole beans". I'll try to dig up my grandmother's recipe!!

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), February 28, 2002.

Marcia, would it be possible for me to get a copy of that recipe as well? thanks tom

-- tom (wysfarm@yahoo.com), February 28, 2002.

Grizz, I just got the Tightwad Gazette book that someone had recommended to me. It has a Maine bean recipe in it. If you want me to send it to you let me know.

Susan

-- Susan in Minnesota (nanaboo@paulbunyan.net), February 28, 2002.

Grizz and Tom...Here's my grandmother's recipe for baked beans (word for word from her 1966 "Ellsworth Maine-U's" cookbook!)...

1 lb. pea beans 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup molasses about 1/2 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. dry mustard 1 small onion, chopped finely 1/4 to 1/3 lb. salt pork

After sorting out "bad beans", place them in a large saucepan (4qt.) and cover with cold water and soak overnight. Bring soaked beans to a boil over med-high heat and cook til skins break. Lift beans out of liquid (save liquid) and place in bean pot with all remaining ingredients placed on top. Cover with bean liquid and enough water to cover all. Bake 6 to 8 hrs. in slow oven (300 to 325 degrees) adding more liquid as needed to keep covered.

Now my aunt...from Vermont...had a similar recipe that used kidney beans and maple syrup instead of pea beans and sugar. I thought both recipes were equally good :-)!! Good luck!

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), February 28, 2002.

Grizz, your request for bean hole beans reminded me of an article that was in my great grandmother's recipe book. It's one of the OLD recipe books, it looks like a regular bound book, but the pages are blank. You write your own recipes inside. Great Grammie had clipped the following article from a Maine newspaper and pasted into her cookbook. I'm not sure which one, but likely it was either the Bangor Daily, the Portland Herald, or the Penobscot Times. Just guessing, as there's no date or heading. Beans for breakfast! Now there's something I haven't had in a loooong time. They are just as good in the morning as they were the night before. My mother even used to make us bean sandwiches to take to school. We got some funny looks, but they were good! My grandfather on my father's side used to be a "cookee" and work at a few of the area lumber camps. The stories that man could tell! I would sit and listen to him for hours....ok, the article, which elaborates more on the cooking process than the recipe.

"Bean-Hole Beans Appetizing To Maine Woods Followers

Bean-hole beans are the best beans, but when better beans are baked, bean-holes will bake them. It is easy to bake bean-hole beans. Anyone who will follow a few simple directions will successfully do the job. It is so easy to bake them, and they are so delicious, there should be a bean-hole near every home.

Bean-hole beans taste better than those cooked in any other way. And there is all the romance and glamor around the idea of "bean-hole beans Baked in the ground." Maine lumbermen have eaten bean-hole beans since lumbering began. They furnished the lumberjack the energy to cut or saw down the great pines, roll them on the yards, load the sleds--ride the logs in the white water! Maine lumberjacks and bean-hole beans! But, girls, please don't get too excited about the old-time lumberjack. People say mostly nice things about him. He did work like the devil! But, he also drank like a fish, swore like a pirate, fought for any reason at all and loved--anything in skirts--they called them petticoats in those days.

To make a bean-hole, simply dig a hole in the ground about two and one-half feet in diameter and the same in depth. Fill the hole and pile it high with dry hard wood, beech, maple or birch. Burn it down to coals only. When the wood is partly burned, throw in a few stones or pieces of iron to absorb heat.

While the wood is burning, prepare your beans. Wash and parboil them until they are fully swelled and soft. The soaking process will about double the bulk. Use an iron kettle with a tight cover. Use about one pound or a very little less, of fat salt pork to each quart of dry beans. Place the pork in the bottom of the pot. Put the pork in the BOTTOM of the pot, I said! It may not make a difference at all where you put the pork but someone told me to do it that way; I've always done it and know it's right. Prepare the beans in any way to suit your taste, use molasses, sugar or mustard if you like. Fill the pot to within an inch or less of the top. Just cover the beans with water.

Now dig a hole in the hot coals for the kettle. Put the kettle in the hole and then pile the hot rocks and coals all around and on top. Cover the whole with not less than eighteen inches of fine dirt. Be careful that no sticks or rocks come up through the dirt. Leave the beans in the hole sixteen hours at least. Dig them out and serve with home-made bread and enjoy a meal of the best beans ever baked.

Anyone can do it! They can be cooked just as well in a city backyard as under the hundred-foot trees up here in Aroostook, the land of the spud and the home of the doe."

-- Nancy in Maine (paintme61@yahoo.com), March 01, 2002.

OK I cheat but here goes. I take canned pork and beans .Add salt pork or bacon {fresh smoked of coarse} ,add onions {chopped},spicy brown mustard ,molasses and brown sugar .I bake them in the oven at 350 until the liquid thickens.

-- Patty {NY State} (fodfarms@hotmail.com), March 01, 2002.

Grizz, ol' pard, here's a photo of people preparing for a big bean- hole event in Minnesota's Lake Country.



If you want to read about it, click this: Pequot Lakes Bean- Hole Days

--Happy trails, Cabin Fever

-- Cabin Fever (Cabinfever_mn@yahoo.com), March 01, 2002.

Wow, this sounds like the same recipe we use here in OK. We put the bean pot in the same hole we are using when we cook a whole hog in the ground. Very tasty!

-- cowgirlone in OK (cowgirlone47@hotmail.com), March 01, 2002.

Thanks, Nancy, for the explanation of the bean hole. My grandmother never told us how to cook them that way...although I know she used to do that when she and grampa were younger :-)!! We steam lobsters and clams occasionally like that now (with lots of seaweed on top!).

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), March 01, 2002.