From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Maine Folklife Center:
"Hello, 911? There's a strange
lady in my home threatening
me with beans. Yes, I'll hold."
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…
Maine Logging Camp - the
Cook of the "Bean-Hole."
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.
I feel privileged to have created the internet's most cherished War-on-Christmas eve tradition: eating beans naked while swapping conspiracy theories (but only the true ones) with everybody on earth and our emergency civilization re-starting team up in the International Space Station. Whether you're a regular participant or a newcomer, we invite you to join us below and bear witness as the holiday mirth oozes forth spontaneously like boogers of freedom conga-lining through the nasal passages of destiny. I'll be staggering between tables, dispensing rum balls and counting the silverware.
Even if you celebrate a different holiday tomorrow---like, say, the War on Jimmy Buffett's Birthday or The War on Easter---I'll still consider it a pleasure to be hurtling through the icy-coldness of space on Planet Bqhatevwr with you. God bless us each and every one. And by God, of course, I mean the State Lottery Commission.
By popular demand, returning to tend the fire is Lil Bub:
Sleigh bells ring down yonder... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, December 24, 2014
By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2015: 7
Speed at which Santa will travel tonight: 5,083,000 mph
(Source: The internet)
Approximate number of Xmas trees planted for every one cut: 3
Percent of people who say they wrap their gifts to others a day or two before Christmas: 27%
Real-life height of the young Rudolph figure used in the stop-motion animated TV holiday classic, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer": 4 inches
Cost to buy all of the gifts in the song "The 12 Days of Christmas": $27,673
Percent chance that the above number exactly matches the number of parody songs that have been done of "The 12 Days of Christmas": 98%
Shelf life of a store-bought Christmas fruitcake, if it's refrigerated: 3 years
(Source: CNN)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Saved!!!
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I cede this space to Kossack DuzT, whose 2013 post should also become an annual tradition:
Economic forces dictate that there can never be a day where everything shuts down, where everything gets put on hold and people just get to enjoy time with their families. […]
So, if you're working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day; remember there's a shitload of us out here doing the same thing. Someone has to.
I feel you my sisters and brothers.
And to those of you able to enjoy the holidays with family, please take just a moment to think of us. We are out here to facilitate your lifestyles. We are out here making sure everything works the way you expect.
We are out here so you don't have to be.
And thank you for that. And speaking of people to be thankful for...
Finally, before everyone dives into the beans and conspiracies, let's take a moment and remember the reason for the season, as caught live on a smartphone a few years back:
Okay. Let's eat.
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