Over the weekend Dan and I did a test run on the traditional supper (a.k.a. dinner to some of you) that he remembers eating every Saturday night while growing up in Quincy, a suburb of Boston. Dan’s family are true New Englanders with family on his father’s side going back to 18th-century Kittery, Maine.
The meal Dan grew up on is baked beans (from a can), fried hot dogs, and B & M brown bread from a can. Dan grew up in the 1940s and so convenience had taken over tradition. Next week, I’ll attempt to recreate a real New England Saturday night dinner with baked beans cooked all day in the oven in my new bean pot and brown bread created from scratch steamed like a pudding.
But instead we had organic baked beans, fried hot dogs – also as healthy as we could find, and we did find B & M brown bread all the way down here in the south! In fact when I did see it I grabbed a can and wrapped it up for Dan for a Christmas present thinking I was just too smart. That was until I opened up the same present to me from Dan on Christmas morning! Yes, we’d both bought each other brown bread for Christmas!
The ingredients with my new bean pot ready for next week
The meal tasted great going down. Really great and I was very skeptical of the whole thing especially the brown bread and the hot dogs. I haven’t eaten a hot dog in years and certainly not fried! But I must admit that after about an hour the meal did sort of sit heavy in my stomach and I’d wished I hadn’t eaten the second hot dog…..
Stay tuned for next week as I report about the long history of the New England dinner and why it was ALWAYS served on Saturday! You may be surprised.
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