Sunday Dinner from the Past

 Sometimes I get a hankering for a good bowl of pinto beans cooked up with ham hocks. We ate a lot of beans when I was a kid and unlike some of the meals that crossed our table, like liver and onions, I still enjoy beans today. When beans are the main course at the supper table they can't just be a plan pot of beans. At our house, the pintos were simmered with a ham hock, or a ham bone, or if one of those weren't around then mom would use the bacon rind. We bought bacon by the slab, the whole side of bacon, unsliced. A slab of bacon still has the rind on which is actually not rind at all but skin. That skin is coated in fat and has all that rich brine and smoke treatment that bacon has. Throw that bacon rind into a pot of pintos with some onion, salt, and pepper, let it simmer for two or three hours, and you've got yourself a tasty meal. The rind gets tender and you don't even miss those tender chunks of ham that come with a hock. 

I was lucky this week and found ham hocks at the store when I was having my bean craving or maybe I got a craving because I saw the ham hocks. Either way, they came home with me. It used to be that ham hocks were dirt cheap, and "living high on the hog" used to be a literal concept. If you had money you could eat pork loin or pork chops, even a big shoulder roast, Farther down the hog was the ham, and farther down yet (almost to the foot) was the hock. Anyway, that smoky ham hock is chock full of gristle, fat, and flavor, just what one needs to turn a sack of pinto beans into a fine meal. No Gucci seasonings, just salt, pepper, and a touch of clove if you want to be fancy. We always ate our beans with fresh hot cornbread and --don't cringe-- a big dollop of cottage cheese plopped on top of that steaming bowl of beans and maybe some raw onion. 

Mom always had to make an extra pan of cornbread because after the bean pot was empty it was time for dessert. Dad was in charge of dessert and it was the one time mom let us act like hillbillies. Following Dad's lead we would crumble cornbread into our milk glass, top it with a teaspoon of sugar, then pour milk over it. If he didn't have pie, Dad would always settle for cornbread and milk. 

Tonight we had a fine dinner of ham hocks and beans with all the trimmings and even though the ham hock wasn't very meaty the flavor was there. I overate and found myself transported back to my boyhood. That's what the family recipes do, they trigger the memories of meals from the past and all those times
a family sat around the table together.