My recipe for soup beans is very simple. Soak 1 small bag of navy beans overnight. In the morning, wash and sort through for any errant stones, then place in slow cooker. Add a good sized smoked ham hock and a medium yellow onion cut into chunks. Add enough water to cover the beans by an inch and add fresh cracked black pepper. Cook on high for 4-6 hours till tender then drop to warm till meal time. Serve with hot cornbread fresh from the oven.

Even though we don’t technically live on a farm, we do have five acres out in the country. We garden and mow and put up food in the fall, just like we did when I was growing up, so…I call it a farm life. I love it. The peace and quiet. The spring peepers (little tree frogs) calling. The great variety of birds that visit our feeders. All the great flower beds we have around. Our property is essentially a trapezoid-shaped chunk of land bordered by two creeks and a country road. It’s our little slice of “Almost Heaven”. 

When I was a young bride, all I wanted to do was to get the heck out of here. When I became a single mom, I elected to stay in Denver for the greater educational opportunities my daughter would receive. When my second daughter was born, any thought of moving to West Virginia was impossible till she grew up and finished college. By that time, I was married to Mr. Virgo and he had no desire to move back here. He’d spent his entire life trying to get to Colorado and that’s where he would stay till the day he died.

Once he was gone and I passed that one year mark as a widow, I pulled up roots for a number of reasons and made the big break for my home state. God has plans for us to prosper, and I’ve prospered emotionally big time since arriving in West Virginia. It is the home of my heart. Living on my grandparents’ farm was such an incredible blessing. Then, running into Mr. FixIt again and eventually marrying and moving to this plot of land…my life has come full circle.

I’ve kind of slacked off the baking and country cooking over the winter, but occasionally I just need to pull out all the stops and go for a great meal of comfort food. Last week, I cooked a pot of soup beans with a great big smoked ham hock, a quartered yellow onion, and a few dashes of cracked black pepper in them. We’ve each eaten a couple of bowls of beans from that pot and there was enough for each of us to have one big bowl yesterday. 

I put the beans on to reheat in my grandma’s old waterless cookware pan that she cooked potatoes in. Then I set to mixing up a batch of cornbread. I’ll share a link to the recipe HERE. I used my #8 Griswold cast iron skillet to bake it and….oh, my….it was SO good. Crispy on the outside and deliciously moist on the inside. I don’t like a crumbly cornbread. But I also don’t like it to be too cake like or overly sweet. This recipe was perfect and it has gone in my arsenal to make again. The recipe calls for milk, but I like buttermilk in my cornbread so I easily made the substitution.

We enjoyed a lazy Saturday. It was cold and either raining or spitting snow off and on all day. Hopefully, this is the last of Old Man Winter, but we could still get a cold stretch in April. I finished the black wool hat to match the mittens and worked on the shawl I’ve been knitting. Hopefully I’ll have it finished for the trip to Colorado in May. I’d like to wear it to the graduation since it will be outdoors. It’s still pretty cool in May in the Rockies.

It’s hard to believe March is almost over. Our fruit trees are trying to bud out but we’ve had two nights in a row below freezing, so I doubt we’ll see pears and crabapples this year. I have the new bedding out in the Big Birdhouse so hopefully I’ll get a little time out there today dressing the twin beds. I need to check the fridge, and if it’s still not working on electric, then give it a try on propane. If it isn’t working, I’ll need to call the dealership tomorrow to schedule repairs.

I can’t wait to go on a real camping trip!!!

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“And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.”

Genesis 1:29 ESV

#Comfort, #SoupBeans, #Cornbread