Hobo Beans

1
Hobo Beans

My Great Grandma Damon (my mom's mom's mom) handed down a recipe we all call Hobo Beans. As I recall the story, Great Grandma Damon was known for providing a hot meal for those in need. Hobos that rode the rail through town marked the sidewalk outside her house with chalk so others could enjoy her generosity.

I wish I could revisit those days and meet her, and the hobos. I know it's a romantic notion. It probably was nothing like how I picture it, but why should that matter, that is how I wish to picture it.

This is the recipe card written by my mom, Marilyn Cairns (née Grandy):

 

This is how the recipe reads:

Hobo Beans

1# ground beef - browned & drained
1# bacon - fry & crumble
2 cans pork & beans
1 can kidney beans - drained
1 can butter beans - drained
1 cup brown sugar - lightly packed
1 cup ketchup
1 small onion

Mix together. Bake at 350F for 1 hour.

I often use only 1/2 lb. gr. beef and 1/2 lb. bacon.

Beans: I usually use 1 - 16 oz. Campbell's pk. and beans and 1 - 28 oz. Bush's (any variety)

Reduce heat to 325F for slower, longer bake.

Slow cooker should tell how to adapt recipe.

In oven I use a 3 quart casserole.

2
Great Commercial

Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond) pitches St Joseph's aspirin. What fun, and what a great sense of humor Osmond and St Joseph's have. We need more of that.

[2012-08-21]

3
I'm just going to keep writing.

Ever get to the point where the noise becomes so oppressive, you can no longer process it? Batman, theater shooting, Sikh temple, 7 dead, are they Muslim? war on women, war on religion, hurricane, GOP convention, 17 partygoers beheaded in Afghanistan.

There are times when events are so mangled and jangled I can no longer process them.

And so I write about something I can process, that is uncomplicated, comfortable.

Like Hobo Beans.

There was time once when a bum could get a hot meal at a house in Corry, PA because a nice lady believed even bums deserved one.

[2012-08-10]