For a special weekend treat the husband decided to introduce me to a bit of his heritage. That's right, after six years of marriage, he felt that I was ready to learn about the Pot Of Beans. Apparently his mother, and his grandmother before her, always made enormous Pots Of Beans, every week of every month of every year. A special treat was when there was freshly baked cornbread to eat with the Beans From The Pot.
So, Saturday morning he got started on the Pot Of Beans, by filling our enormous soup pot with water and, uh, beans. It sat on the counter all day and all night, not to be disturbed, except for the occasional Changing Of The Water. On Sunday morning he put the beans on to cook, along with some bacon ends. I'm not sure what other magical things he did to the Pot Of Beans, but soon the house was filled with the not-so-delicate scent of beans and bacon. Intrigued, I decided to lift the lid and investigate. That is when I discovered that this was one Big Pot Of Beans. "Um, honey," I asked, tentatively, "Exactly how many beans did you put in here?" "Just one bag," he answered. "But how big was the bag?" "Just 3 pounds."
One thing you should know about my husband, when he decides to do something, he really Decides To Do Something. If he is going to make a Pot Of Beans, he isn't going to get those wimpy one pound bags of beans like everyone else, he's going to get the Biggest Bag Of Beans in the whole store. There was this one time when I told him that I'd like to have some Lily of the Valley growing in our garden, so he kindly ordered me some Lily of the Valley pips. I was thinking a few scattered under our lilacs, and maybe some under the big oak in the middle of the driveway, a hundred or so should do it. Then they arrived, and he had ordered 500. We never did get all those darn things planted.
Anyway, we've been eating beans, straight from the pot, beans with barbeque sauce, mashed up refried beans. And I even made some cornbread.
