Recently, Derek cured and baked a fabulous Christmas Ham. I've been wondering what to have with it to round out a meal, although it is great on its own I think that it's better appreciated when served with complementing tastes. After doing some surfing (ok, I'm on Xmas vacay, so yeah) and realising that I've got some homemade BBQ sauce slowly dying in my fridge, I thought that baked beans sounded like a great option. Again, combining Smitten Kitchen and Epicurious, I've kinda come up with my own hybrid (pretty much based on what was handy, shopping is not an option today - it's New Years Day #1 and #2 I'm lazy)

I grew up with canned baked beans. They look pretty complicated when you look at them from the can (at least, they did to me when I was about 12!). Although, I'm not looking to repeat my canned bean tasting any time soon, I'm curious to see if homemade baked beans will taste as good with wieners as I remember the canned ones tasting. (I"ll let you know...)

5 slices of bacon chopped into rectangles

I have to put a big p.s. at the end of this. The beans tasted great - awesome, in fact. They did,

after all, exceed my memories of canned baked beans with wieners!! However, the beans that I used were probably a little old (about a year in the cupboard - although, if they are dried does it make a difference?). I should probably have boiled in the beans in water alone for about 2 1/2 hrs or ideally in a pressure cooker. I have baked the beans for a really long time and then even finished them off on the stove for a bit. I think that in future, since I don't have a pressure cooker right now, I would probably used canned Navy beans.