From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Maine Folklore Center:
Across New England, and certainly throughout Maine, a tradition of baked bean suppers takes place in community institutions such as churches, granges, and firehouses...
While Boston is known as bean-town, only in Maine can you ever really get to know beans. B&M (Burnham and Morrill) baked beans of Portland still bakes beans in huge iron pots in brick ovens before they can them for distribution around the country. The Kennebec Bean Company in North Vassalboro packages a range of Maine-grown beans under the "State of Maine" label and also sells many of them prepared to an old Maine lumber camp formula. They cook varieties of beans only known in Maine...
While many people in Maine cook their beans in a ceramic bean pot, the most unique cooking process for beans in Maine developed in the Maine logging camps. Pork and beans, baked in a bean hole, remains the logger's main dish. The slow, long cooking makes the bean very digestible as well as tender and delicious. In the logging camps, beans were served at every meal. The bean hole is a stone-lined pit in which a fire is built until a good bed of coals forms. A cast iron bean pot (holds about eleven pounds of dried beans) is lowered into the pit, covered over with dirt and allowed to cook, usually overnight. Several bean pits could keep beans cooking at all times.
I can think of no better way to spend Christmas eve than eating beans in the nude while swapping conspiracy theories with my friends. So tonight we're throwing away the usual tux-and-tails formality of C&J to simply let the mirth ooze forth spontaneously like boogers of change conga-lining through the nasal passages of freedom. I'll be staggering between tables, dispensing rum balls and deliciously ill-informed opinions.
Even if you celebrate a different holiday this time of year---like, say, Guy Fawkes Day or Cinco de Mayo---please join us. It is a pleasure hurtling through the icy-coldness of space on this rock of cuckoo with you. God bless us each and every one. And by God, of course, I mean the State Lottery Commission.
Sleigh bells ring in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Holiday cheers to everyone from the Americans in Iraq, the Iraqis, and the people who had to eat bugs on reality shows this year.
And a Merry Christmas to all, including people who have white Christmas trees decorated entirely with purple balls. Merry Christmas to the Red states and the Blue states, to the R's and D's, and to all the troops stationed in Afghanistan, including the French troops there – Mais oui, Christmas, y'all. [...]
Here's to all the Americans on both sides of this year's unusually peppy fights over the allowability of religious symbols on public property. This annual battle, in which the American Civil Liberties Union strives once more to make itself as popular as the Grinch, is over the part of the First Amendment that says the government cannot sponsor religion. I always liked what former Gov. Ann Richards said when informed there were demands that the large star on top of the state capitol come down. "Oh, I'd hate to see that happen," she drawled. "This could be the only chance we'll ever have to get three wise men in that building."
---December, 2004
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Puppy Pic: Her present---she likey.
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Before everyone dives into the beans and potato salad, let's take a moment and remember the reason for the season. From the traditional text, we take you to Bethlehem, where the mother of a newborn babe receives a trio of special visitors:
Mother: Who are you?!!
Wise Man #1 We are three wise men.
Mother What?
Wise Man #2 We are three wise men.
Mother Well what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at 2 O'clock in the morning?? That doesn't sound very wise to me!
Wise Man #3 We are astrologers.
Wise Man #1 We have come from the east.
Mother Is this some kind of joke?
Wise Man #1 We wish to praise the infant.
Wise Man #3 We must pay homage to him.
Mother Homage? You're drunk! It's disgusting. Out!! Bursting in here with tales about oriental fortune tellers... Come on... Out!
Wise Man #1 No No, we must see him!
Mother Go and praise someone else's brat. Go on!
Wise Man #1 We were led by a star.
Mother Lead by a bottle more like! Go on...out!
Wise Man #1 But we must see him, we have brought presents.
Mother Out!!
Wise Man #1 Gold, frankincense, myrrh...
Mother Well! Why didn't you say so? He's over there. Sorry the place is a bit of a mess. So you're astrologers are you? Well, what is he then?
Wise Man #2 Hmm?
Mother What star sign is he?
Wise Man #2 Uh...Capricorn.
Mother Capricorn, eh? What are they like?
Wise Man #2 He is the son of God! Our messiah!
Wise Man #1 King of the Jews!
Mother So that's Capricorn, is it?
Wise Man #2 No no no...that's just him!
Mother Ahhh, I was gonna say...otherwise there'd be a lot of them.
Wise Man #1 By what name are you calling him?
Mother Uh...Brian.
Wise Men Together We worship you, oh Brian who art Lord over us all. Praise unto you Brian, and to the lord, our father. Amen.
Mother You do a lot of this then?
Wise Man #2 What?
Mother This praising?
Wise Man #2 No, no...
Mother Well, if you're dropping by again, do pop in, eh? And thanks a lot
for the gold, and frankincense...but don't worry too much about the myrrh next time, all right? Good bye! Well, weren't they nice. Out of their bloody minds...
---From Monty Python's Life of Brian
And happy birthday to the Christmas Babies: Humphrey Bogart, Clara Barton, Sir Isaac Newton, Cab Calloway, Little Richard, Barbara Mandrell, Jimmy Buffett, Sissy Spacek, Annie Lennox. And many blessings on your camels.
Okay. Let's eat.