Cheers and Jeers: Xmas Eve Bean Supper, Nudeblogging'and Sharing of the Conspiracy Theories

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE'

Maine Folklore Center:

Across New England, and certainly throughout Maine, a tradition of baked bean suppers takes place in community institutions such as churches, granges, and firehouses'

While Boston is known as bean-town, only in Maine can you ever really get to know beans. B&M (Burnham and Morrill) baked beans of Portland still bakes beans in huge iron pots in brick ovens before they can them for distribution around the country. The Kennebec Bean Company in North Vassalboro packages a range of Maine-grown beans under the "State of Maine" label and also sells many of them prepared to an old Maine lumber camp formula. They cook varieties of beans only known in Maine'

While many people in Maine cook their beans in a ceramic bean pot, the most unique cooking process for beans in Maine developed in the Maine logging camps. Pork and beans, baked in a bean hole, remains the logger's main dish. The slow, long cooking makes the bean very digestible as well as tender and delicious. In the logging camps, beans were served at every meal. The bean hole is a stone-lined pit in which a fire is built until a good bed of coals forms. A cast iron bean pot (holds about eleven pounds of dried beans) is lowered into the pit, covered over with dirt and allowed to cook, usually overnight. Several bean pits could keep beans cooking at all times.

I can think of no better way to spend Christmas eve than eating beans in the nude while swapping conspiracy theories with my friends. So tonight we're throwing away the usual tux-and-tails formality of C&J to simply let the mirth ooze forth spontaneously like boogers of change conga-lining through the nasal passages of freedom. I'll be staggering between tables, dispensing rum balls and deliciously ill-informed opinions.

Even if you celebrate a different holiday tomorrow---like, say, Jimmy Buffett's birthday  or Cinco de Mayo---please join us. It's a pleasure hurtling through the icy-coldness of space on Cuckoo Rock with you. God bless us each and every one. And by God, of course, I mean the State Lottery Commission.

Sleigh bells ring in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]