Bean Supper Refined

Tonight was our monthly bean supper at church. I am in charge of it so I was there from 8:30 am until we were done. It’s pretty exhausting but a good kind of exhaustion. The kind that comes with doing what one loves for people who need the help.

I find it interesting that after six or seven years of doing these suppers (that would be somewhere between 72 and 84 suppers), we are still finding ways of refining the process.

For example, last month the beans weren’t soaked overnight. The person who was supposed to forgot and, instead, rushed over to church first thing in the morning and boiled the beans so they would be ready for me to cook them. This process worked out much better than soaking the beans because they were softer to begin with and cooked faster. And I didn’t have to worry about serving hard beans, which, to be honest, happened two months in a row last winter (roaster pans were slowly dying).

So this month, I decided to duplicate the process and arrived at church early enough to boil the beans. This gave me extra time to work on the rest of the ingredients such as rendering down the bacon until it was mostly crisp and then cooking the onions and garlic in the bacon grease. When I mixed all of that with the boiled beans and the special sauce I had simmered for an hour, the process was well on the way to really good beans. I monitored the beans closely all day and only added enough water as needed rather than too much water right at the beginning. They ended up PERFECT! Flavorful, the right consistency and absolutely delicious. I received a number of compliments on them, which made me happy that my extra effort was worth it. I also took the time to write up the recipe in detail so I can now duplicate my process each month.

Towards the end of the evening, as we finished the clean up, we were discussing the process of serving the meal. We serve it family style, meaning we bring the food to the guests in bowls and they can pass the bowls around and serve themselves. This is a practice we have done from the beginning and the guests seem to enjoy it. Makes it more intimate and friendly.

But we were discussing the fact that there was a larger number of dishes washed this evening. Why would that be? Well, it occurred to us that 2/3 of our guests were new to the supper and they tended to sit at tables in twos and threes instead of joining tables that already had people sitting at them. So when they left, the whole table was cleared of dishes and re-set. This made for extra dishes to be washed. We were thinking that we are going to try to encourage people to sit with each other, whether they know each other or not. I think, in order to accomplish this, I will need to stand by the entrance and point out where people can sit. Well, I say “I” will do this. It will be either me or someone else…depending on who is available. This will not only help the dish washing crew but will possibly lead to friendships being formed among the strangers coming to our supper.

So, after all these years, we are still finding ways of refining our bean supper. Tweaking and adjusting so that it will run smoother, taste better and over all be a better experience for all that are involved. I’m glad that we are all flexible in our habits and practices so that this supper can evolve over time. Growth is always a good thing…especially when it comes to service to others.