Horn and Hardart Beans and Cornbread

Sunday April 22

Our various tries with the recipe have come to this.

After all our experiences, we now use navy beans, whizz up and pre-cook the bacon and onion together, and make sure we have enough molasses.  Actually, we used the pan in which we pre-cooked the bacon and onion to assemble the non-bean ingredients and simmer them a bit.  Then, instead of draining the beans completely, we dippered most of the liquid out of the crockpot and reserved it, then added the saucepan full of seasonings, rinsed it out with some of the reserved liquid, and kept that liquid standing by in case the level of liquid over the beans needed to be topped up (the crockpot likes to have just a mite of liquid over all the beans).  If there's some liquid left at the end, leave the cover off and simmer on low for half an hour; that'll make the beans nice and dark as well.

Holt made the cornbread he likes (without the vegetables).  It was a natural American combo.