Wednesday morning at 11, I put 2lbs of brown beans to soak on the stove . Thursday morning at the same time I poured the water off of them, all soaked up and swollen, put in a ham hock, some ham meat cut up, (are a piece or two) a handful of salt and filled it back up with clean water, set it off to boil. And let it boil (gently ) for the next 4.5 hours.
In the meantime I chopped up an onion, mixed cornmeal, flour, sugar, oil, water and poured in into a 13 X 9 pan, turned the oven to 400 degrees.
Then I peeled about 10 pounds of white potatoes, washed them up and sliced them into two skillets of oil, and fried the little devils up.
Baked the cornbread.
Everything came off the stove at the same time, portioned it up and served it to six picky people who claimed it was the best they had ever had.
There was about two bowls of beans and five slices of cornbread left over, and the kitchen cleaned up in 30 minutes.
As simple as that, the previous generation had passed on their recipe (as four generations before had) and their way of cooking and I had passed it on again.
Good beans.
Ralph Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
Claremore, Oklahoma
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