Slow Food

Dear Diary,

This idea has been a bit of a culinary movement around here of late...slow food.  It makes me smile and think of the old bean pot that was my grandmothers and which now sits atop my wood stove.  Baked beans are the ultimate slow food and I have such great memories of my grandmother soaking the beans overnight and then putting them, along with molasses and salt pork, in the oven to cook slowly for 6 hours or so.

I have a recipe for baked beans I call Capt. Howell's Baked Beans because it uses molasses and dark rum, two things my 3X great-grandfather brought back from the West Indies aboard his schooner, The Rebecca.  I haven't made them in many years.  Of course, the opposite of slow food is fast food and I remember going to McDonalds when it first came to our area, in the early 1960's.  A hamburger, fries and a coke were 85 cents!  That summer, I was working at a mill and my pay was 95 cents an hour.

 Today is All Soul's Day, a day to honor our ancestors.  I always feel a deep connection on this day to the past.  I am a strong believer in Carl Jung's theory of collective unconscious.  We are part and parcel of all those who have gone before us.  “We clasp the hands of those who go before us.” -Wendell Berry