A friend is having a homecoming party tomorrow for his son, recently back from a tour in Iraq. Liz and I will be there. Jeff is having a pig roast – a 120 pound pig. He’s a conservative Republican, but one of his friends is Turkish and will be roasting a whole lamb. If this sounds confusing, let me remind you that this is Carrboro NC where a few years ago there was a Gay Rights parade one weekend and a KKK parade the next - and some people marched in both, just because they love a parade.
So Halal and redneck eats have no problems with peaceful coexistence. It’s all food.
I’m bringing a Corningware casserole of baked beans. My recipe began as a tip from a butcher at Rifes Market in Columbus, at the corner of 5th Avenue and Grandview Avenue. It’s still there – a miracle, outliving a major chain’s store right across the street. They’ve survived by following the “high quality means higher profits” model that made Whole Earth Foods a recent Wall Street favorite. They’ve been doing it for years.
Homemade sauerkraut from crocks in the back, free-range chickens (back on the farm, we just called ‘em “chickens,” but now you have to get more specific) and, if you were lucky, a pint container of baked beans made fresh every Sunday. They were legendary for reasons beyond those by which beans normally achieve legend. They tasted great – best baked beans in the world, I thought.
One day I had a major hankering for some Rifes baked beans and went over to get a pint. They were freshly sold out and I was unable to contain my disappointment to the butcher behind the counter. “Oh, those,” he says, “they’re real easy to make – just mix a big can of baked beans with a cup of ketchup and a half-cup brown sugar. Line a baking dish with bacon strips so the beans don’t stick, pour in the mixture, lay some more bacon strips on top, and bake a couple of hours at 275…”
I was dumbfounded. For years I had searched for the perfect Boston Bean pots, went through dozens of recipes, most of them with Coleman’s mustard in that funny looking yellow can, and sometimes herbs and spices from exotic places, imported from, I dunno, Hilliard or Circleville. “Is that all?” I asked.
“No. Get ‘em out of the oven before they get mushy.”
“How can that be all?” I wondered. “And what ever happened to secret recipes?”
That night, I duplicated the recipe and made the best baked beans I ever made – though not as good as the ones from Rifes.
They got better over the years, but after they reached a consistently high standard I couldn’t resist dicking around with the simplicity. Diced onions were the first addition, later they were sweated first. I lined the sides as well as the bottom of the casserole (and covering the top) and as the bacon got thicker and the yellow fat atop the beans began to be overwhelming, I started lightly sautéing it first to get rid of some of that. Not all, this is not health food. The long bacon strips are not very attractive either, though they do taste good, so I started cutting the strips into more manageable 3-inch lengths.
Then I started mixing in black beans, kidney beans, pintos, and great northerns to fill out the color a little more. That’s pretty much how it stands today. No spices from Circleville, but tonight maybe a little Worcestershire and Tabasco.
6:06:47 PM 
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