Summer Fun

I found my next food challenge - Home Made Baked Beans! Did you know that  that was something that you could make from scratch? That there are recipes for it that do not include the words "Can Opener" and "Microwave on High for Two Minutes" I thought they came in cans and that was just how baked beans were formed.

In reality, real baked beans are beans that are baked and not in a factory. I will have to get  my own Dutch Oven Yay! new kitchen gizmo! Yay another thing to store!, which is delightful  and why they invented Marshalls/TJ Maxx/Tuesday Morning. It will also involve Navy Beans, which I am going to have to hope are sold in grocery stores. I have never looked. I am thinking that they are not actually navy blue, but rather were favored once upon a time by that branch of  the armed service -  but I don't want to ask, least I appear dim.

I would also ask if it would possible to forgo the expensive and difficult to store Dutch oven  step of the recipe and go directly to "existing slow cooker" , unless of course this is just not done and in which case I will bow down before the recipe and furnish it with its own oven.

I may go recipe shopping as "my" recipe came from a sniff  mass market ladies magazine and it might be a good idea to compare and contrast - which is such a drag as I just hate looking through my cookbooks! Such a bummer. I have a lovely antique cookbook from the mists of time that I suspect will have a very naughty recipe involving lard and  pounds of sugar and archaic pig parts. In  the  magazine recipe though, in its favor it does lean heavily on ingredients that I can actually find and perhaps even use again, although I do have my doubts about the cider vinegar and how necessary to the plot the Kosher salt would be in the long run.

After checking out my cookbooks and being rather disappointed in what I found - either the almost exact same recipe or the inclusion of  canned baked beans - I'm looking at you, "Crock Pot Cooking" - I might just have to go with what I have, and in the interests of  total transparency,  I did not check my Joy of Cooking and my really neat old cook book isn't here. It is not lost it is not here. There is a difference. I think however that I will need to amend t whatever recipe I use to include at least a hint of orange juice and a sprinkle of garlic as not a single recipe I looked at included any of either and I need both.