NOTE TO READERS: These recipes are old family favorites that appeared here on my blog prior to my eating according to the Trim Healthy Mama plan or becoming a THM Certified Lifestyle Coach. While they taste fabulous, I cannot recommend them for healthy lifestyle or blood sugar control. However, I am working on adapting them to the plan so watch for future posts!

I promised to share this “award winning” recipe.  I believe it was back when the trees were shedding their leaves of red and gold.  Lately they’ve been laden with heavy snow – perfect weather to cozy up with some real comfort food and a bean story!

This recipe is an old favorite for my family.  I found the original in one of those tiny booklets that came with the old-style Crock-pots.  You know the kind I mean – the tall, skinny crock that did not lift away from the heating base, making it very difficult to clean.  Their thermostats seemed to come with unexplained variances.  My mom’s didn’t seem to have a LOW setting.  It just boiled away no matter how you adjusted the knob while mine, on the same setting, would make you wait a couple of days for your dinner. 

That little book contained an entry that did little to tempt the imagination or the palate.  It offered up, simply, the “One Pot Dinner”.  I’d never tried the recipe because, frankly, it just didn’t strike a chord within my romantic nature.  I’m the “Anne of Green Gables” type and am inclined to agree with her theories on naming things.  (Example:  Why call it Barry’s Pond when you can call it The Lake of Shining Waters?)

I have always been this way.

Anyhow, a dear friend of mine, upon hearing me say that I’d been in one of those moods that leaves me only two options – escape for a change of pace or give in to a crying jag – took pity on me and offered the use of her cabin in the woods.  It may not have been a villa perched on the Italian coastline, but it had three gleaming attractions.  It was free.  It had indoor plumbing.  It wasn’t my house.  I jumped at the offer.

I got excited.  I wanted to crawl into Timber Hill and forget about the rest of the world. Our daughter would take a friend.  There would be no TV and one emergency cell phone.  We’d play a few board games. Smuffy would fish, explore and read books.  I would read and take naps. 

Ahh!  Thanks, DeDe, for the memories (and the sanity check).

The last thing I wanted was to make endless trips to town for restaurant meals or supplies.  I started charting meals like a paid planner.  I wanted everything we ate to fit in with that log cabin feel.  We would make homemade pancakes.  I’d take homemade cinnamon rolls along to warm.  Cornbread sounded good.  For a main dish that would leave us lots of great-tasting leftovers, I wanted something special – something new.  Research led me back to the lack-luster little Crock-pot book.

If these beans, which sounded like they had possibilities, were going along on my grand adventure, they simply couldn’t go as the “One Pot Dinner”.  I re-named them “Timber Hill Beans” and they were a huge hit, especially with Smuffy.  In all the years we were graciously invited to spend our fall retreat at Timber Hill, we never left home without the namesake beans.

When our church began to sponsor an annual “Souper Bowl of Caring” as a benefit for the area food bank, they asked for soup – a lot of soup.  People brought in slow-cookers full of deliciousness in hopes of taking home a golden ladle in a contest for top soups.

Smuffy gave me a meaningful look and prophesied, “If you take Timber Hill Beans, you’ll win!”

“You think so?”  I hadn’t given much thought to entering the contest and I’d never really thought of those thick, hearty Timber Hill Beans as “soup”.

“I know so!”  He seemed certain of it.

I did come home with a golden ladle, thanks to Timber Hill Beans and Smuffy’s encouragement!

I can’t help but wonder, though, if “One Pot Dinner” would have ranked a little lower with the judges.

You may remember our educational and slightly embarrassing discussion on the subject of beans.  You can refresh your memory here.  Along with tips on cooking beans and avoiding their after-effects, I shared my own recipe for “Hearty, Healthy, Homemade Pork and Beans”.  You’ll find a free printable recipe in the post. I now use these in my Timber Hill Beans to avoid the mushiness that usually results from overcooking canned beans, not to mention all the sugar and other nonsense that the canned versions contain. You can prepare these and the bacon a day or two before assembling this recipe.  If you choose not to follow this simple, from-scratch step, you’ll need to substitute 4 (14 ounce) cans of pork ‘n beans and use care to avoid over-cooking them. 

The other beans in this recipe are also not of the canned variety.  If you absolutely do not want to rinse and soak your beans, you can use one can of kidney beans and one can of butter beans (drained and rinsed), but – I promise – you’ll be happier with the end results if you avoid the cans.

If you’re planning meals and feeding supper to hungry people, the best way is to brown the meat, prep the bacon and pork and beans a day or two before.  Then, soak the beans overnight, get up in the morning dump everything into the Crock-pot, set it on LOW and don’t give it another thought until supper other than checking it when you get home to see if you need to adjust it to the WARM setting.

Let’s get cooking!

Timber Hill Beans

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef or venison

1/2 pound uncured bacon, baked on a broiler pan in a 200-250 degree oven for about an hour.  (Should not be crispy, but have the better portion of the fat cooked out.)

1 cup chopped onion

1 recipe Hearty, Healthy, Homemade Pork and Beans (or 4 (14-ounce) cans pork ‘n beans

3/4 cup red kidney beans, rinsed and soaked overnight

3/4 cup butter beans, rinsed and soaked overnight

1 cup catsup

1/4 cup palm sugar or raw honey

1 Tablespoon liquid smoke (or to taste)

1/4 cup white vinegar

1 Tablespoon Celtic sea salt

Instructions:

Drain beans and rinse well.  Brown ground meat and onion in skillet.  Drain off fat.  Cut bacon into one inch pieces.  Place all ingredients in slow cooker.  Stir well.

Cover and cook on LOW for 5-9 hours or on HIGH for 3 hours.  LOW is best in order to avoid sticking.

Makes 14 cups.

Over the years, I’ve tweaked this recipe to take out refined sugars, avoid mushy canned beans and bring it to “golden ladle standards”, so please comment and let me know how you like it.

Normally, I steer away from adding corn to our diets anymore, mostly for the reasons given in this article by Dr. Axe and at the advice of my holistic M.D.  Once in a while, however, Smuffy says the occasion calls for cornbread, I give in and we cheat.  I’m giving you my Gluten-free cornbread recipe which includes a dry mix that you can whip up in a “jiffy”, if you get my drift.  (Perhaps you don’t if that little item is available only here in the Midwest.)  I hate having my cupboards full of endless little boxes and packets and feeling like I have to run to the store for something as simple as cornbread mix.  Years ago, I figured out the secret to that little box mix everyone uses and I’m sharing it with you today.

A word about buttermilk:  Smuffy and I often have differences of opinion on foods, but on buttermilk, we agree.  We hate the stuff!  It does make a fabulous batch of pancakes or cornbread, but we always had to throw out the leftovers.  Keeping a dry buttermilk mix on hand solves the problem beautifully.  Grocery stores will most likely have Saco“ Buttermilk Blend” in their baking section and if you can find a way to order in bulk, you can get a great price on a one-pound bag of buttermilk powder from Frontier Co-op Wholesale Store, where they have member and non/member pricing.  They both keep well on the back bottom shelf of the refrigerator for what seems like forever.

Gluten-Free Cornbread or Corn Muffins

(You may use all-purpose wheat flour rather than corn flour in these recipes.  If so, omit the xanthan gum and one of the eggs.  This option will, of course, not be gluten-free.)

Ingredients:

1 cup yellow organic, non-GMO cornmeal

1 cup organic, non-GMO corn flour

1/4 cup dry buttermilk powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup water

1/4 cup raw honey

2 tablespoons melted butter

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.    

Mix dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl.  Stir in the beaten eggs, water, honey and melted butter, mixing just until there are no dry areas.

Pour into greased muffin tins or a 9″X9″ baking pan.  Bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes.  Remove from pan immediately.

Now for that mix to keep help you whip up things in a “jiffy”.

Cornbread Mix for Recipes in a “Jiffy”

Mix the following ingredients together and in a “jiffy”,you’ll have the equivalent of the commonly used boxed mix.

1/2 cup yellow organic, non-GMO cornmeal

1/2 cup organic, non-GMO corn flour

2 Tablespoons dry buttermilk powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt

1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum

Add 2 Tablespoons raw honey to the recipe’s wet ingredients.

Thanks to the great folks at Crock-Pot.com for the original “One Pot Dinner” recipe and for all the improvements to the Crock-pot over the years.  The newer versions, with their removable crockery, warming features, digital settings and – best of all – those clamp-on lids that put an end to nasty spills in the car have made life so much easier.  Check out their latest products here. Hey there, sports fans! They even have NFL logo pots!

I confess to having four slow-cookers. My new favorite is this in-between size I found one day out flea-marketing. I like to think of it as a casserole. I find myself using it all the time.

Click below for your free printable for Timber Hill Beans and Gluten-free Cornbread!

Today, I am linking up with Weekend Potluck at The Country Cook, so be sure to check out all the great recipes there!

Looking for more delicious soups?  Keep it super-simple and impress your family with another “Golden Ladle Winner”, Creamy Leek Soup with Chicken and Sweet Potato.

If you prefer biscuits over cornbread, check out my Zesty Pumpkin Soup which comes with a bonus recipe for Billy’s Biscuits.  This savory soup is not what you’re expecting!

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