"ALL beans is cooked with meat. "

Now, growing up in the deep south should educate one on how to deal, uh, diplomatically with certain specimens of humanity one is likely to encounter. I'm talking about folks not quite as tolerant, shall we say, of alternative lifestyles. What sort of alternative lifestyles? Well, like not cooking beans with meat (more on this later). Or dressing in clothes not appropriate for a day of deer hunting. Or, especially back in the year 1976, being a young man with long hair. And being Jewish (which Barry is). Or looking Jewish (which, apparently, I do, at least as far as some folks are concerned). When you're a little different down south, you learn to step carefully, and not be too confrontational with that certain type of good old boy who might think you'd look better with a pickaxe handle across your face. I'm talking about simple, basic survival skills which might just keep you from winding up pummeled, shot or tossed into the Chatahootchie River. This isn't quantum physics we're talking about, mostly just a matter of not making too much noise when you find yourself in the wrong (red)neck of the woods: not letting that certain knucklehead you've been unfortunate enough to have encountered know that you are, uh, smarter than he is. Survival skills: I guess i just knew when to shut up. When it came to my travelling buddy Barry, well, that wasn't quite as clear...

We'd been on the road all day, and were hungry. We were somewhere in Tennessee: deep woods all along both sides of the highway. The sun was going down. We were, as they say, in the middle of nowhere. An enormous illuminated word suddenly appeared on the horizon, towering above the pine trees. It was positively Biblical. It said, simply, "EAT". That was exactly what we wanted to do! We took the next exit, and down the road a ways, there it was: a bland little pre-fab structure sitting humbly in the middle of a vast sea of gravel, the sea of gravel in turn surrounded by the deep, dark Tennessee woods. The gravel sea was, of course, the parking lot, made extra large to accomodate big 18-wheeler trucks. One imagined truckers made up a rather big part of this particular dining establishment's clientele. However, at this time there were no trucks at all in the parking lot. And only one other car besides ours, which, ostensibly, was the vehicle of the owner/operator of this no-doubt deluxe eatery. We parked and went in. The only customers in the place. We made our way to a booth under the already vaguely hostile gaze of a very thin (okay let's just say it, skinny) woman who looked to be about 40 or so. Despite the complete lack of customers, she looked tired, kind of haggard. One suspected she was not a happy person. She did not appear to be a happy person.

She made her way over to our table after we'd had a little time to peruse the menu. I ordered a burger or something. But Barry was vegetarian (uh-oh...) and had certain questions to ask about how the food was prepared. I could already smell impending doom. He asked her about several things on the menu, determining, one by one, the reasons why they were inappropriate for human consumption. The skinny waitresses' eyes began to narrow. A certain kind of unspeakable hate was welling up within her, to which Barry seemed entirely oblivious. Finally he came to the baked beans. He asked: "Do you cook your beans with meat"? She gave him a seething look of disgust and said "ALL beans is cooked with meat". To which Barry replied "I don't cook my beans with meat." At this moment I became painfully aware that Barry was not a practitioner of the basic survival skills described above. And I was fully aware that this situation could get unpleasant. Or a lot worse than unpleasant. Barry then ordered some toast or something, and as the waitress walked away toward the kitchen, he went out to the car. I saw him through the window, fishing around in the back seat, looking for something. He came back into the restaurant carrying a huge jar of organic honey. This, of course, was for the toast he'd ordered. It was also an enormously bad idea. The waitress, stepping out of the kitchen, didn't miss a beat: from across the room she said to us: "Nuthin' frum tha OUT-side comes IN-side!" I suggested to Barry that he take the honey back out to the car. He did. The waitress had gone back into the kitchen. But the next person to come out of the kitchen wasn't the waitress. It was a male. Not a small, friendly, unthreatening-looking male. No, he was a big, unfriendly, threatening-looking male. He was holding a spatula. He stood there near the kitchen door, glaring at us. For what was fast becoming too long. I was by now genuinely fearful for our physical well-being.

What exactly happened next is not crystal clear in my memory, but I believe we hastily informed the nice man that we'd have to cancel our order and be on our way. Basically we got out of there, as fast as possible. And, as I recall, for the rest of our journey, we steered clear of deserted greasy spoon diners situated deep in the dark woods of Tennessee or any other state. I accompanied Barry all the way up to Vermont, and enjoyed hanging around the pleasant campus of the nice little hippie school he would be attending (where the beans were surely never cooked with meat...). Then after a few days I hitch-hiked down to Boston, promptly decided I would move there, and, about 3 months later, I did.

Almost 30 years have transpired since then. I cook black-eyed peas these days with some frequency: it is in fact a dish for which I've achieved some small degree of notoriety. And I find I don't need meat in their preparation: for my recipe,