“I’ll never forget the wonderful flavour of my first spoonful of baked beans!” I grinned. Doug had yet again saved the day last week with his classic baked beans together with two poached eggs on top, (served in a bowl and eaten with a spoon). Every two or three weeks when I am busy finishing a blog or doing chores, I look at him with the sweetest smile I can manage and ask, “Dougie, would you like to make beans and eggs for lunch?”
When I was at school in England, I didn’t have a problem with the cooked lunches except for something masquerading as baked beans in tomato sauce. It felt like little bullets in your mouth served with a tiny amount of red speckles. I had not eaten canned baked beans till I arrived in Australia in the fifties. Either they weren’t available or my mother didn’t choose to purchase them. The first time I tasted them I was hooked.
At thirteen years of age, I would occasionally travel into Melbourne on the tram to the Eye and Ear Hospital. When it was lunchtime I would walk to a little milk bar/café at the top of Bourke Street and order baked beans on toast for my lunch. In my late teens when working in Launceston, I would go to the old Coles department store and invariably order a baked bean sandwich from their lunch bar.
Over the years we hardly ate baked beans but since we’ve been retired and living in Melbourne again Doug has invented his beans and eggs dish for which we have both acquired a taste.
The bible has a lot to say about taste, and sustenance. For instance {Psalm 81:16 says “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey from the rock.” (The rock being: the crags in amongst rocks, where bees have colonised and created a natural hive.) However, I like the words of Jesus best of all, “I am the bread of life;” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in Me will ever be thirsty again.” John 6:35.
Allow me to share this beautiful verse of thanksgiving written by Leanne Blackmore
Nourishment, sustenance given from above-
Satisfying longings through your gift of Love.
Bread of life I thank You for filling up my soul.
I pray my only hunger is You – that is my goal.
“From Praying the Names of God, published by Barbour Publishing, Inc. Used by permission.”
Veronica Nowell - Author 