Baked Yellow-Eye Beans

 Baked beans go oh-so-well with brown bread. And yes, I confess to having shied away from brown bread as a child, having been introduced to a loaf that tasted sour and not to my liking. But the brown breads in this cookbook  are fabulous and will make you a Brown Bread Believer, I promise (see Steamed Brown Bread and Aunt Geri's New England Brown Bread blogs...I've yet to bake the other brown bread recipe).

I was about half-way thru the recipes in this cookbook, and fretting a bit about how to bake beans without a bean pot. When luck and a prayer brought a bean pot into my life. A friend posted on facebook that she was ready to give away a few things she didn't need anymore. One being a bean pot. Just a simple bean pot, brown-and-cream colored. I said yes please, and met her halfway between our homes, at the Searsmont United Methodist Church parking lot, to pick it up one rainy day.

That sweet little bean pot had the happy experience of cooking the first bean recipe I have tried in the Beans chapter of the Bicentennial Community Cookbook. I was a little worried when the bag the beans were in said to soak the beans overnight, yet this recipe did not require a soak. You see, the extent of my bean knowledge is this...soak your beans! But I followed the recipe, and those yellow-eye beans were perfect. I did add salt pork. I mean, that's the other thing about beans that I knew, and couldn't quite do without...beans just need salt pork. 

Put some sauteed onions, red dogs, and brown bread on the plate, and your Saturday night meal is complete. What a great recipe, worthy of any Saturday night in Maine!