January 18, 2008
"I come from a home where gravy is a beverage," --Erma Bombeck.
In mid-January here in the Midwest, there is popular solution to the sunlight deprivation that afflicts us.
Serious comfort food.
Yes, I know that most weight-loss counselors frown upon the soups, gravies, and beans that we all love in the winter, but please experts, may we have them if we promise not to overeat.
Nutritionists tell us we only want them because they make us happy, but isn't that the point?
In our household during these gray winter days, we like nothing better than a supper of ham and beans, (always better the second day or the third) and served up steaming hot with cornbread and butter.
I do not know about your family, but in ours, we only eat it in the winter anyway, so I say go for it.
Thus, on a particularly nasty winter day this week, my husband announced, "It is about time we have ham and beans. I am getting the ham hock out of the freezer."
Thankfully, he retrieved the freshest one because there was a stale hock hiding in the back. We allowed the meat to defrost slowly in the refrigerator before simmering it all night with navy beans and spices in a crock-pot.
By morning of the first day, the soup looked perfect.
We did not want to serve it until evening, so the spousal unit suggested we sit the pot on the cold garage floor until noon. Then, we would put it in smaller containers and refrigerate until dinner. I did not get home for lunch after all and did not see the soup again until I reheated it in the evening.
I noticed it had thickened, and I did not see many beans. What happened I wondered?
Perplexed at the ham-and-bean soup without beans, I searched through the cupboard and found a can of pre-cooked beans I could add to the mixture. The only problem was that the beans were ranch-style, spicy with a hint of jalapeno. In ham-and-bean soup? I did not care though because I wanted the comfort food right now. It would do.
The next day I cooked more navy beans and added them to the soup.
It was then I noticed an additional ham hock in the broth, no doubt the old one from the back of the deep freezer. It looked inedible so I fished it out right away and sent it straight to the trash.
By the third day, the bean soup was perfect, but I still wondered why the beans disappeared on the first day.
In a moment of contrite confession to avoid the doghouse, the spouse admitted to eating every single bean out of the soup during his lunch hour on the first day. Also, he confessed adding the extra ham hock because he thought the soup needed more ham, freezer-burned or not.
Moral: ham-and-bean soup is not a group project.
