Country Lima Beans

Call me nutty, but all week I've been craving baked beans. I even went on line and starting searching for good baked bean type recipes. This week I was determined to make some kind of baked beans for Legume Wednesday. Then I got sort of sidetracked playing Scramble in Facebook. It's like playing Boggle. Remember Boggle where you have to shake the thing up and you get a grid of letters and you have to write down all the words you can find where the letters are all connected? My sister M. is a whiz at it. I am not. But I find it far more addictive than solitaire (which any given day you can find my mom playing when she's not quilting or sewing or blogging.)

So while working my way through some of the three pound bag of tortilla chips that we got as part of our Costco bounty and we've been nibbling on pretty steady for the last 2 weeks, I decided I didn't want a sweet baked bean recipe. I wanted something warm and comforting and mushy, but not sweet and still really tasty. Et VOILA! I found these lovely Country Lima Beans from the good people at Cooking Light. Whew! I sort of just happened to have big dried Lima beans in my bean cupboard and I didn't actually have to go out and buy any ingredients. Which undoubtedly would have taken away from my Scramble playing time...

Country Lima Beans

from Cooking Light

2 cups dried large Lima beans

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

3 bacon slices, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

2 medium carrots, finely chopped

3 1/2 cups water

2 Tbsp butter, softened

Sort and wash beans; place in a large Dutch oven. Cover with water to 2 inches above beans; cover and let stand 8 hours or overnight. Drain the beans. Return beans to pan.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Cook bacon slices in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan with a slotted spoon; set bacon aside. Add onion and carrot to drippings in pan; saute 5 minutes or until golden. Add onion mixture, bacon, 3 1/2 cups water, and butter to bean mixture in Dutch oven; stir well. Cover and bake at 300 degrees for 2 1/2 hours or until beans are tender. Stir every half hour adding more water if necessary and adding salt and pepper in final half hour.