Leola's brown bean recipe.....

It's a bright, sunshinny day in the Ozarks & suppose to be in the 50's. A great day to take some of my decorations down & dust a little. Nothing like that sun to let you know how badly you need to clean your windows & do a little dusting. For some reason, after Christmas I always want to strip the house down & put some of my "stuff" away & then slowly I add it back to it's jumbled mess.

My good friend Katie from Ragamuffin Gal wanted to know my recipe for brown beans & ham. It's very difficult! You soak a couple or 3 cups of pinto beans in plain water overnight. The next day rinse really well & put in a pot of water about 2" above beans & add plenty of good ham or a ham bone. Season with plenty of salt (I add some Johnny's Dock Seasoning Salt) & plenty of pepper. Bring to a rolling boil, then simmer for a couple of hours on low temp. Bake a box or 2 of cornbread & you have yourself a meal. My Mom always fixed fried potatoes with our beans & we would slather ketchup all over it. A true Ozarkian meal!

My Mom always fixed brown beans on wash day (Monday). When you have 8 kids & a husband you have to do a little planning. In the summer when it was really hot sometimes she fixed them on an outdoor fireplace that my dad built. I can't imagine how hard my mom must have worked. She churned butter, made home made bread, cooked all our food from scratch & made a lot of our clothes. Part of that time she worked in our grocery store. She always had on an apron & was almost always in the kitchen. She was amazing! That was Leola & when we opened our original shop in Galloway, Missouri, she worked almost every day with me so when we opened our new shop, we decided to name it after her. She's still with us in so many ways.

Hope Katie enjoys my Mom's recipe. It sure tasted great last night! Have a good Tuesday.