Quick and Easy Baked Beans Recipe

 I've never liked baked beans until I tasted this recipe. I found this basic recipe from New Jersey Homesteader's blog. I changed it quite a bit to make a quicker version out of it. The family loved it, too. I threw the leftovers into my slow cooked Mexican Pot Roast recipe the next night and created another tasty meal out of it. What makes this recipe quicker is that I soak and cook my 5 lbs of beans ahead of time and freeze them in two cup increments. I do this with all types of beans. The difference between canned and freshly frozen beans is astounding. Also, if you don't want to use bacon, no problem. You could use coconut oil instead.

Quick and Easy Baked Beans Recipe:

1/4 to 1/2 lb of bacon (optional)
5 cups (measured after they've been previously soaked and cooked) white beans (I used Great Northern, you can also use white navy)
1 cup homemade mock maple syrup (you can't tell the difference)
2 tsp ground mustard
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 Tbl molasses
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tsp lemon juice
salt to taste

Cook bacon, reserving lard. Remove bacon and chop into bite sized pieces. Saute onion in lard (or coconut oil). Add all the other ingredients (except bacon). Cook until the sauce thickens. Add bacon and mix well. Serves 4 to 6. Freezes well, too.

Enjoy! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Ours was great. I got to scrapbook at a MOPS fundraiser for 6 hours. I was able to 24 pages done (not including journaling)! We went sledding after church yesterday. Then we came home and did some purging (a spiritual experience indeed). We cleaned out our hobby room and Josiah's room. He can now shut the lid of his toy box! Always a good thing. Next weekend is Scrapbook Camp. So I've got a lot to do this week to get meals ready for hubby so he doesn't have to worry about trying to cook for the kids. Luckily, I've already got a lot of meals in the freezer, so shouldn't be too much extra work. I love my freezer(s)! Also, I need to try and sqeeze in 4 hours of soil database work in this week around homemaking and homeschooling. I'm so blessed to be able to work from home and around my own schedule.

God Bless,
Jackie