Woonsocket Baked Bean Recipe

To start off the holiday baking season, I'm posting a family favorite.

Woonsocket Baked Beans as cooked by my grandmothers. Both recipes work, both fill you up, and both are known as "Extreme Comfort Foods."

Ingredients:
One bag of White Navy Beans (Can use Northern Pea Beans if Navy not available.)
One smallish white onion
One table spoon mustard powder
One half cup dark molasses
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
One 4-6 ounce slab of Salt Pork, or Pork Fat Back, or you can use a shit load of bacon if you can't find the chunky fat meaty goodness.

Note: This is Memere Hebert's recipe, Memere Trottier added 1/4 cup white sugar and cut the brown sugar to 1/2 cup. Memere Trottier also added 1 teaspoon of salt.

Note: The Undefeated Bean Hole Bake / Klondike Derby Championship recipe that we cooked up, was the above recipe from Memere Hebert plus 1/2  cup Clove Honey!

Cooking:
1. Clean and parboil beans (I hate chewing bean sized rocks)
    Parboil Method 1: Soak overnight, put only one inch of water above one package of beans! (You know what can happen!)
    Parboil Method 2: Boil (more like lightly simmer, not a rolling boil) for 1 hour or until husks start to come off beans)
2. Save the parboiling water, you're going to add this water to the bean mix after the next step.
3. Throw everything into a crock pot and let it stew for 10 - 12 hours or until nice and thick and gooey dark brown!
4. Mix everything up just enough, but not too much or you'll have mashed beans when your done cooking them.)
5. Pour in the parboil water to cover the beans only about 1/2 inch!
(No more or you'll be cooking the beans until tomorrow before its thick.)

A Finer Dining Note:
Don't forget to serve the beans with rolled and tooth picked boiled ham slices, and an ice cold salted "Gansette" to have the full Woonsocket Ice House experience!

Campy Out!

The Campanelli gluten free/dairy free diet

The Campanelli gluten free/dairy free diet

First, let’s start off with what I am no longer eating or cooking with.

No butter, no milk, no cheese of any type from a cow.

No wheat, rye, barley, spelt, hydrolyzed protein, or any malt, or flour made from these items.

No breads, to include, white, wheat, marble, rye, bagels, muffins, English muffins, croissants, buns, scones, and yes pizza dough.

No cereals, to include; cream of wheat, frosted flakes, cornflakes, Cheerios, any cereal that includes the above grains in its ingredients.

No breaded and fried meats such as chicken nuggets, chicken fried steak, some French fries, in essence anything that has been dredged through flour or wheat.

Hotdogs, sausages, and deli meats may have additives known as fillers in them such as barley and wheat products so again, beware of and read the ingredients list.

No beer!

Cookies, cake mixes, preprocessed foods, boxed rice, couscous, fast foods, soups with creamy sauces, and soups in general.  Be sure to read the labels and be on watch for wheat or barley based thickeners.

Now for the fun part, let’s begin with what we are eating:

Start out by reading the label; if it says 100% gluten-free on it, it's good!  There's usually a gluten-free diet area in most stores. Gluten-free bread called “Udi” brand bread is usually found in the freezer.  I’ve also had good results finding gluten-free snack bars, bread sticks, and other bread snack replacements.

Corn and rice-based cereals are good to go (just watch for malt) and any wheat, barley, rye, or spelt ingredients.  Buckwheat is good as well. 

Rice noodles and quinoa noodles go good with pastas so long as breadcrumbs and cheese are used in the meatballs.  I've been using cornmeal lately with Italian spices which works fine.

Rice cakes, popcorn, potatoes, polenta, millet, Wine and liquors are on the okay list!

I've been using oatmeal and gluten-free / dairy free pancake mix as well.

Instead of using milk, I've had good results mixing goat yogurt with hemp milk and egg whites. Sometimes I'll mix canola oil and applesauce with the hemp milk or goat yogurt depending on what I’m making.  I know it sounds kind of weird, doesn't it?

Anything made with rice flour, potato flour, potato starch, and coconut milk is good to go.

Marshmallows, gumdrops, hard candy, almonds, raisins, fresh fruit, humus, and any custom-made gluten-free cakes and pies or bread are good to go.

Eggs, fruits, vegetables, organic peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter are good.

Quinoa (KEENWAH), gluten-free oats, gluten-free cornmeal and gluten-free soy preparations are also cool.

To make things as simple as possible, we've been eating a lot of Asian food so long as it isn't breaded and fried, Italian food is difficult because there's so much cheese and bread incorporated into the ingredients, however it is doable and quite tasty to make at home. Fresh meat and vegetables, non-creamy or butter/flour based soups have been working fine.

Don't go crazy buying lots of stuff because we get there and we'll figure it out and maybe cook some real good stuff that you've not had before.