From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Maine Folklife 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…
"Hello, police? There's a strange
lady in my home threatening
me with beans. Yes, I'll hold."
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 tomorrow---like, say, Jimmy Buffett's birthday or Cinco de Mayo---please drop by below the fold for a minute or two to say, "Merry...ooh, hey, what's that godawful smell?" It's a pleasure hurtling through the icy-coldness of space on Cuckoo Rock with you. God bless us each and every one. And by God, of course, I mean the State Lottery Commission.
Oh, almost forgot: tonight a special guest is joining us to tend the fire. Say hey to Lil Bub:
Sleigh bells ring down yonder... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, December 24, 2013
By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2014: 8
Speed at which Santa will travel tonight: 5,083,000 mph
(Source: The internet)
Approximate number of Xmas trees planted for every one cut: 3
Percent of people who say they wrap their gifts to others a day or two before Christmas: 27%
Real-life height of the young Rudolph figure used in the stop-motion animated TV holiday classic, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer": 4 inches
Cost to buy all of the crap they sell in that song "The 12 Days of Christmas": $27,393
Percent chance that the above number exactly matches the number of parody songs that have been done of "The 12 Days of Christmas": 98%
Shelf life of a store-bought Christmas fruitcake, if it's refrigerated: 3 years
(Source: CNN)
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Saved!!!
-
DOUBLE CHEERS to people who work on holidays. Police, fire, medical, utilities, national security (hello to Bart, my designated NSA tracker!), rum distilleries...you know who you are. As a veteran of 12-hour holiday on-air shifts when I worked in radio, I feel you. Thanks for keeping the planet turning. If you're not getting at least double pay and comp time, your employer gets one-way ticket to the nearest Young Republicans Convention (or is that too cruel?).
-
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:
And happy birthday to the Christmas Babies: Humphrey Bogart, Clara Barton, Sir Isaac Newton, Cab Calloway, Little Richard, Barbara Mandrell, Jimmy Buffett, Sissy Spacek, and Annie Lennox. And many blessings on your camels.
Okay. Let's eat.
-