My mother learned how to cook the old-fashioned way, from her mother and grandmother. The women in my family (unlike me) are of that lost breed who can open the cupboard, pull out five seemingly random ingredients, and put together a meal (much like Janzen describes in her family). I don't have this talent (can I blame my mother for that??) but I have great respect for it. It's a particularly valuable skill if you're perpetually broke, and we were.
But while my mother knows how to cook in a deep sense of the word, I think that as she moved into her 30s, she realized she didn't really give a stuff about cooking. I don't think she derives the kind of pleasure from it that I do (and for that perhaps we can all blame my father, who has never learned how to cook anything but a microwave dinner...)
In the 80s and 90s though, in the Midwest, potluck culture was big and everyone expected that the women would lug the pots. Between church potlucks, family potlucks, "progressive dinners" and other dinner invitations, Mom must have been expected to produce a potlucky kind of dish 10 or 15 times a year. Mom worked full-time though and also went to college through the 90s, so she was always on the lookout for the quick potluck recipe. And then she found "Jan's Green Beans".
I cannot remember the beginning of "the green beans", really. I can remember life before the green beans. Back then, I think mom's standard potluck dish was the Seven-Layer Salad. Tasty, but awfully labor intensive. Plus, buying all those ingredients could be a pain in the butt and assembly really took awhile. We also used to make an Applesauce Cake pretty often--yellow cake mix with a cup or so of applesauce and some cinnamon-sugar to dust the bundt pan and make a swirl through the middle. It tasted great, but was pretty humble looking. It usually got passed up at potlucks in favor of something slathered in whipped cream, drenched in chocolate, and/or crusted in Oreos. I couldn't blame them. Plus, it meant more leftovers for me. The Applesauce Cake made a killer breakfast.
I can also remember life after beans, but I'm not quite sure of the trigger point. Jan of the "Jan's Green Beans" was one of my mother's best friends when she was in her twenties. My middle name is after her. I guess the story must have gone that Jan brought these green beans to a church potluck once in the mid-eighties and the recipe got passed around.
Now where I grew up there was an unwritten Potluck Code. If someone had a winning recipe she was expected to share it; in return the recipients of the recipe pledged never to bring it to an event that the original owner would attend. Competing versions of the beans would have been very gauche. So one got new recipes from family members to take to church potlucks and new recipes from church potlucks to take to the family potlucks. And so the recipes proliferated, but never competed. It was the recipe Circle of Life.
***
I'm suddenly wondering what would have happened to my mother's green bean legacy had Jan's husband not left in the summer of 1989. It was terrible when it happened; I hadn't really known anyone who'd gotten divorced before. As a result of the divorce Jan left the church and this meant that the green bean slot was open on the Potluck Dance Card. My mother snatched it up. (Though let it be said that I know she would have rather kept her friend than the rights to the green beans.)***
The virtues of the green beans as a potluck recipe are many. The beans are quite cheap to make, but also very fancy looking. Dump about three cans of green beans (the French-cut ones look the nicest) into a casserole dish. Slice an onion or two into thin rings and create a layer of onions on top of the beans. While you're working on the onion, cook the bacon. I myself am not a particular lover of bacon, but the smell of bacon in the oven was the "Tomorrow There's a Potluck" smell in our house. Mom would spread the slices of bacon in rows on a baking sheet and bake them until they were crispy. Then she'd set them out to cool and drain on some layers of paper towels. Scatter the top with a layer of sliced almonds (slivered works too, but sliced is really the prettiest) and once the bacon is cool enough to touch, you crumble it over the top . Then you make a speedy dressing on the stovetop of bacon drippings, white vinegar, and a little sugar and pour the whole thing over the top.
Which brings us to the beans' other chief virtue: they can easily be made the night before and only get better with time. They thus possess the Potluck Trifecta: Fast, Cheap yet Fancy, and Make Ahead! You can't ask for much more than that...well, except for portability, which is the beans' only flaw. All of that dressing has a tendency to slosh around and wind up all over the floor of your car, leaving it smelling like vinegar and bacon. There are worse things your car could smell like, but still.
Over the years Mom developed an elaborate system to keep the car free of bean juice. In the Pre-Bean Age, potluck foods were always carried in a big Longaberger basket (which is probably worth a small fortune by now). But alas, the bean juice leaked out and stained the bottom. So Mom began looping those big rubber bands that you sometimes get with your mail over the handles of her battered Corelle baking dish, circa 1975 (a dish unsurpassed in its hideousness...). Then she'd take a shallow cardboard box and line it with newspaper and maybe a few kitchen towels. The bean dish would get nestled in among the towels and the combination of the towels, newspaper, and cardboard box would contain the leaks. And Woe Unto You if you messed with Mom's cardboard bean box. Those things were like gold. I think the best bean box we ever had was leftover from a high school sausage-and-cheese sale. It was just the right size for the bean dish and Mom kept it until it disintegrated...or Dad used it for kindling--I really can't remember.
I'm realizing now that my mother has been making those beans for probably 25 years, with exclusive rights for 22. She probably makes them five times a year or more; people freaking love those beans. I think it's a combination of America's obsession with bacon and the fact that the vinegar helps cut through all the fat that typically accompanies everything else on the potluck plate. People request 'em. People get grouchy if she doesn't bring 'em. They have a following.
Jan's Green Beans
4 cups canned green beans1 onion, sliced into thin rings
8 slices cooked bacon
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup white vinegar
Drain beans and spread them into a 2-quart casserole dish. Cover with a layer of sliced onions and then sprinkle with sliced almonds. When bacon has drained and cooled, crumble bacon over the top. Save bacon drippings and dissolve sugar and vinegar into them over low heat. Let cool slightly and pour over beans. Bake 45-60 minutes at 350 degrees. (Better if allowed to marinate overnight before baking.)
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