NealI Love Savory Beans
July 8th 2008 10:57
Aside from Canada, the more obedient English colonies all have an American product that virtually nobody eats in America; Heinz Baked Beans. Instead, we prefer our beans to be loaded with sugar and served alongside...grilled food? No offense to fans of the North American baked bean as I've been known to partake with a nice bratwurst myself. It's just a weird concept the more you think about it....sweet beans.
But when I was living in the South Pacific, most of our groceries came from Australia or New Zealand, and this included "Wattie's Baked Beans." Thinking that they were akin to their American counterpart, I purchased a can of them on one of my first shopping trips, wondering if they were the same beans I had enjoyed with breakfast at the local watering hole. I cooked them up and placed them alongside my fried eggs and toast, and damn is that a great combo for a sodium filled breakfast.
One of my friends there was from England, and once mentioned that his Sunday meal would "probably just be beans on toast." I asked if he ate that meal frequently and he went on to tell me that it was English tradition; a staple of "tea time." From that point on, several bored afternoons were slightly improved by a simple snack of baked beans on toast.
I suppose I didn't really fall in love with the style of beans enough to care about them during my first few months back in the country because I was so delighted to see cheese, milk, USDA Prime and a selection of more than 4 beers (man can not live on 4 beer varieties). I was probably six months in before summer which is prime baked bean season in America, and along with it came my disappointment with the domination of sweet beans loaded with maple flavoring. I looked in the area that would most likely have the beans I'd enjoyed overseas but found no substitute for the sugar beans. Then, I did some research.
Heinz, the Pittsburgh food company, made Navy Beans in their signature Tomato Sauce, and the product went from an exotic food to a staple in the British diet. The band The Who famously bathed Roger Daltrey in them on their album cover for "The Who Sell Out." It was a variation of these beans that I had tasted living in the islands and now was growing increasingly obsessed with finding in my own country.
After casually noticing that some online "English Specialty" stores sold them at $3 a can, and that Brit's Pub in Minneapolis served sides of them for $3, I came to the realization that Heinz Baked Beans were just out of reach in America, and probably not worth the trouble. Back to life, back to reality.
It wasn't a week later that I was grocery shopping at Cub Foods at 2:00am, browsing through my favorite super-aisle, the best collection of multi-ethnic foods I think I've seen anywhere. I always get my curry, Indian, Asian and Hispanic foods from this area but had somehow skipped right passed Italian and Greek to Indian and East African, not noticing the small ENGLISH section! It had all their little Cadbury candies, canned puddings, Biscuits (cookies to us bleedin' Yanks) and of course, Heinz Baked Beans. I bought 6 cans at $1.83 each and drove home repeating how awesome Cub is.
The next morning, I made one piece of toast covered with a slice of sharp cheddar, piping hot beans and an over easy egg. Delicious. The next, just beans on toast. The next, well, just a banana. But the next day was as close to the full English Breakfast as you can get here: sausages, a tomato, fried eggs, Heinz Baked Beans and toast. There's nothing quite like using toast as a utensil to combine egg yolk, fried egg white, beans, and the patented Heinz tomato sauce. The English really have comfort food down, maybe because their weather is so depressing.
Even if beans with breakfast sounds strange, at least it's a fantastic snack on toast. It just happens to work well with breakfast; it's got enough sweet to balance eggs and sausages but is still savory, much like Bush's baked beans with a salty bratwurst. I can't picture the two beans accompanying the other meal, and the thought of Bush's with breakfast actually makes me a bit ill.
So, to see if your grocery store is cool or not, try finding not only Heinz Baked Beans, but Gulabjamun in a box, Panjera bread (no, NOT PANERA) and coconut juice all in one double aisle sandwiched into a normal grocery store. Then buy each food item I mentioned and have a blast (don't mix any of them)!
But when I was living in the South Pacific, most of our groceries came from Australia or New Zealand, and this included "Wattie's Baked Beans." Thinking that they were akin to their American counterpart, I purchased a can of them on one of my first shopping trips, wondering if they were the same beans I had enjoyed with breakfast at the local watering hole. I cooked them up and placed them alongside my fried eggs and toast, and damn is that a great combo for a sodium filled breakfast.
One of my friends there was from England, and once mentioned that his Sunday meal would "probably just be beans on toast." I asked if he ate that meal frequently and he went on to tell me that it was English tradition; a staple of "tea time." From that point on, several bored afternoons were slightly improved by a simple snack of baked beans on toast.
I suppose I didn't really fall in love with the style of beans enough to care about them during my first few months back in the country because I was so delighted to see cheese, milk, USDA Prime and a selection of more than 4 beers (man can not live on 4 beer varieties). I was probably six months in before summer which is prime baked bean season in America, and along with it came my disappointment with the domination of sweet beans loaded with maple flavoring. I looked in the area that would most likely have the beans I'd enjoyed overseas but found no substitute for the sugar beans. Then, I did some research.
After casually noticing that some online "English Specialty" stores sold them at $3 a can, and that Brit's Pub in Minneapolis served sides of them for $3, I came to the realization that Heinz Baked Beans were just out of reach in America, and probably not worth the trouble. Back to life, back to reality.
It wasn't a week later that I was grocery shopping at Cub Foods at 2:00am, browsing through my favorite super-aisle, the best collection of multi-ethnic foods I think I've seen anywhere. I always get my curry, Indian, Asian and Hispanic foods from this area but had somehow skipped right passed Italian and Greek to Indian and East African, not noticing the small ENGLISH section! It had all their little Cadbury candies, canned puddings, Biscuits (cookies to us bleedin' Yanks) and of course, Heinz Baked Beans. I bought 6 cans at $1.83 each and drove home repeating how awesome Cub is.
The next morning, I made one piece of toast covered with a slice of sharp cheddar, piping hot beans and an over easy egg. Delicious. The next, just beans on toast. The next, well, just a banana. But the next day was as close to the full English Breakfast as you can get here: sausages, a tomato, fried eggs, Heinz Baked Beans and toast. There's nothing quite like using toast as a utensil to combine egg yolk, fried egg white, beans, and the patented Heinz tomato sauce. The English really have comfort food down, maybe because their weather is so depressing.
Even if beans with breakfast sounds strange, at least it's a fantastic snack on toast. It just happens to work well with breakfast; it's got enough sweet to balance eggs and sausages but is still savory, much like Bush's baked beans with a salty bratwurst. I can't picture the two beans accompanying the other meal, and the thought of Bush's with breakfast actually makes me a bit ill.
So, to see if your grocery store is cool or not, try finding not only Heinz Baked Beans, but Gulabjamun in a box, Panjera bread (no, NOT PANERA) and coconut juice all in one double aisle sandwiched into a normal grocery store. Then buy each food item I mentioned and have a blast (don't mix any of them)!
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