Party Beans!

Seriously, that's the name of this recipe. This morning when I woke up I suddenly remembered it is Legume Wednesday. Caught off guard again. To explain, school started this week and I'm a little overwhelmed. The other donut girl took a vacation, so I worked a ton of hours this weekend. And the Brain is hurt and I'm a little preoccupied with that. So when I woke up this morning it became clear that I have been neglecting my blog. (Sorry!) And that I needed to find a legume recipe.

Maybe I'm fickle, but I really didn't feel like digging in any of my usual cookbooks to find this weeks legume recipe. I thought about making something legumey out of my favorite Indian cookbook. Something in a Dal maybe. But then I realized that whatever I made for dinner had to be eaten by me after class, and by the Brain when he got home from work. That's a 3 hour time difference. So I needed something that reheated well.

Fortunately for everyone, my mom at one point in time used to go to St. Columban Catholic Church in Birmingham, Michigan. She has since gone back to the parish I was raised in, but for a brief time she went there and really liked it. What does this have to do with anything? Well, in the brief time she went to this church, they put out a cookbook. And my mom bought and gave me a copy. SO in this cookbook is this recipe for Party Beans. Down here in Ohio, these beans are also called Calico Beans, but I've never had a recipe for them and have only eaten them at pot lucks. I have a feeling, and I would love it if you lovely readers would check and leave a comment, that these beans are like Pretzel Salad, it's a recipe that's in every church / fundraising cookbook.

So I took this recipe for Party Beans and I adjusted it a bunch. Most importantly, I substituted pork sausage for ground beef. A large portion of the pig in my freezer, we'll call him Chester, is in sausage form. I also like this recipe because I can put some of the bacon from Chester in it too. Then I altered the recipe some more because I just didn't feel like going to the store to get a can of pork and beans (which I think are fairly gross anyway) or Lima beans. I decided to just go with a variety of beans I have in the pantry. And finally, I'm no dummy. I recognized an opportunity to zing things up a bit and I used a fair amount of Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce. Yummy. So yeah making this meal cost me no additional dollars. It was made completely out of things I already had in the house. It's made in the slow cooker so it was nice and warm for the Brain and it reheated great. And it tasted good. That's a winner on every level!

Party Beans

loosely based on a recipe submitted by Pat Costigan to the St. Columban Catholic Church Cookbook (sometime around maybe 1994)

1 pound pork sausage

1/2 pound bacon, cut into small pieces

1 medium onion, diced

1 (15oz.) can black beans with liquid

1 (15oz.) can garbanzo beans with liquid

1 (15oz.) can kidney beans with liquid

1/2 cup Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon mustard

1 teaspoon vinegar

2 tablespoons ketchup

Brown bacon, onion, and sausage; drain. Place in a crock pot with all the remaining ingredients. Cook on LOW setting for 5 to 6 hours.

"Makes a nice supper served with hot bread and fruit. Great for working mothers."