Through its many classes and extracurricular activities, West Ottawa is a school that prepares students to be college, career, and life ready. Despite this, I’ve recently come across a glaring gap in my education regarding a vital, highly academic topic: baked beans. Although geometry has taught me the trigonometric ratios of triangle side lengths, I’m left with no concept of the ideal ratio of baked beans to pulled pork. I understand the basics of how globalization affected human society, but I flounder in the fundamentals of baked bean culture.

   I decided to take matters into my own hands and find some of West Ottawa’s most compelling stories and experiences about baked beans. My search led me to WO Instructor Kathryn Farney, who detailed an incident that occurred at an end-of-year celebration for her Honors English 2 class. A few days before the celebration, Farney asked students to write on the whiteboard what food they would be bringing. Under the baked goods category, a student wrote that they would bring baked beans. “I just kind of laughed and thought, ‘Okay, no one’s just going to bring straight-up baked beans to this potluck, so whatever,’” Farney said. 

   Time would prove that the student would, in fact, bring straight-up baked beans to the potluck. Farney was initially skeptical that anyone would actually choose to eat them, but one brave student volunteered as tribute. That student was Sr. Drea Harrold, who confidently tried some without heating them. “At the first bite, I was like ‘this feels wrong’. My body was like ‘I don’t like this’, but I was gonna keep going because I had to prove myself,” said Harrold, who ended up feeling sick the rest of the day. “It was my first time having baked beans. I didn’t understand the dangers of it.” Had Harrold been taught more about baked beans and the risk they pose, the whole experience could have been avoided.

   While baked beans evidently have potential for calamity, this shouldn’t deter people from the great memories they can create. One such example comes from WO Instructor Seth Piersma. His family would stop at a roadside shack called Lillie’s Q every spring break on their way out of Florida to get some baked beans and barbecue. “We always looked forward to having a meal there,” Piersma said. He described these amazing beans as having a “sweet, kind of syrupy base, but there would also be pieces of pork and other things that were kind of just, I imagine, thrown off the grill into the beans.” Family moments like this become precious memories, and a great meal of baked beans can help create them.

   After learning so much about baked beans, I had to take the next step and try some myself. Fortunately, Piersma offered to bring a can to my journalism class. It’s important to note that the beans were a generic can from Meijer, which Piersma rated “a six or seven” out of ten. About half the class tried them after we heated them up, with mostly positive reactions. “They’re literally gas,” Sr. Zandir Kladder remarked. He wasn’t wrong. The beans were really nice, with a strong bacon flavor and a subtle maple sweetness. The taste test was a fun and unexpected experience that will be remembered in the years to come, which is another win for baked beans.

   At the end of the day, people would benefit considerably from more discussion about baked beans. “Normalize talking about baked beans,” Piersma recommends, making special note of their potential for much more: “Usually, the best baked beans go beyond just the beans.” It’s this beyond-the-bean, memory-making effect that makes baked beans truly special. After all, while baked beans are pretty great, the friends we make along the way are what really seal this delicious deal.