This is a traditional bean soup – a thick soup of beans, ham and ham stock and vegetables. This is a delicious peasant meal. It is a peasant soup that G.K. Chesterton would be proud of.
I need to clear up what I mean by peasant because it seems I, like Chesterton, will be championing peasantry and a peasant economy. Chesterton was a prolific writer in the first part of the twentieth century. In the mid-twenties when economic/social debate focused on socialism vs. capitalism he vigorously argued for a third way – distributism. “Three acres and a cow,” he called it or maybe his critics did. It envisioned an economy where individuals had the individual wealth (read private property) necessary to “make a living.” He viewed “capitalism” and “socialism” as two roads to the same dead end – soft slavery.
“…If capitalism means private property, I am capitalist. If capitalism means capital, everybody is is capitalist. But if capitalism means this particular condition of capital, only paid out to the mass in the form of wages, then it does mean something, even if it ought to mean something else.
“The truth is that what we call Capitalism ought to be called Proletarianism. The point of it not that some people have capital, but that most people only have wages because they do not have capital. I have made an heroic effort in my time to walk about the world always saying Proletarianism instead of Capitalism. But my path has been a thorny one of troubles and misunderstandings…”
Chesterton’s notions on distributism seem to be grounded in Roman Catholic teaching on individual dignity, private property, subsidiarity and solidarity. They seem to point back to a Catholic medieval, an economy of peasantry, monastery and guild. But that’s no so.
I do not use the term peasantry in the sense of an uneducated pre-twentieth country bumpkin. Instead, I am looking toward the agrarian economy of Wendell Berry, or Thomas Jefferson for that matter. This economy can no longer be solely rooted in the agrarian countryside. Still the notion of self sufficient households within the context of community applies equally to our urban industrial commercial environment. And happily, peasantry surrounds us.
Sure it’s the family farm. It’s also the baker, the auto body shop, the plumber, the lawyer, accountant, programmer and the guy with a PHD in Philosophy who bought the dump truck and now collects garbage as an independent contractor. All of the small businessmen and independent contractors are our peasantry. These are the foundation of our true economy. And these are those whom, after the dependent social under class, are most violently laid siege by Chesterton’s proletarianism.
I know. I am a carpenter. I now carry a state issued, EPA federally mandated, picture ID that says I am a “lead safe renovator.” It’s all about proportion. It’s about the Big lording over that which should be local. The EPA lording over carpenters or the the U.S. Department of Education lording over local school boards are examples. Fannie May and Freddie Mac underwrite our mortgages rather than local banks and savings and loans. The list goes on and it’s all wrong. It’s all upside down.
The answer lays in Chesterton’s notion of proportion and the Catholic teaching on “subsidiarity.”
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1883 nonetheless, it goes: “The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which “a community of higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of lower order, depriving the latter of its functions…””
The community of the lowest order is of course the household. It’s the realm and kingdom of the peasant. With regard to what we eat the communities of higher order are forever interfering. These are many: the corporate communities; the community of nutritionists and food scientists; the federal and state governments with their overlapping food programs; and finally the many communities of the politically correct who seem to want to set our tables according to own sensibilities and agendas.
To all I offer a simple bean soup – a peasant’s fare – hearty and delicious. For four to six you will need:
1 ½ Cups dried beans
1 ½ Lbs. smoked ham hocks – about three
1 Large onion diced
3 Carrots diced
3 Ribs of celery diced
Ham soup base to taste
Onion powder to taste
Pepper to taste
A bit of thyme
1 ½ Quarts of water
In the water quick soak to beans by bringing to a hard boil for about five minutes then cover and let steep. Meanwhile, bake the ham hocks in a 3500 oven for an hour. Deglaze the baking pain with water then add the hocks and pan dripping to the beans. Bring the beans to a slow rolling boil. After about two hours the meat should be falling off the bones and the beans should be tender or nearly tender. Turn off the beans and remove the ham hock and let cool. Trim the meat from the bones. Forty-five minutes before serving bring the beans back to a boil, add the ham and vegetables then slow boil until done. Adjust seasoning and serve with garlic toast.
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