Did You Eat Beans Like a Cowboy?

When I was a kid I loved Bonanza.

I had all the action figures and the horse. They were brilliant.

I also tried to eat and drink like the cowboys at Ponderosa.

Taking a shallow tin pie-dish from the kitchen I'd heat up some baked beans ['cos that's what I thought they ate] in a pan and slap 'em into the metal dish. Sprinkling loads of pepper on there for some reason, I'd dress up in my Western gear, complete with hat, waistcoat, sheriff's badge, belt and revolver, sit on a stool in the garden and eat my beans with a metal tablespoon.

Cowboys held their spoons in a certain way inside a clenched fist. I'd do the same and it lead to some interesting sweeping motions to pick my beans up. The important thing was to scrape the dish as much as possible, make as much noise as could be and when done chuck the plate and spoon clattering onto the ground.

The beans were good but what was missing was a coffee pot heating on a pot-bellied stove. The kind you always saw in Westerns. You know the one, it was permanently full of black coffee and always there when a thirsty cowboy needed a cup. Like the enameled pot, the cups were always metal too.

We didn't have any of this stuff at my folk's house. I did try to drink black coffee now and then with my beans but it tasted rank. I always wanted to pour half of it onto a campfire too! I wonder which coffee cowboys actually drank?

Did you ever eat cowboy beans readers?