If Only Christopher Columbus Had Had A Navy Bean Soup Recipe

Never mind an Englishman in New York, try an entire family for size. Having gathered our belongings together my wife and I, along with our motley collection of kids, all headed off to the US to create a new life. With new opportunities, new experiences and many expectations, we bid farewell to Old Blighty and departed for the New Land. Of course, the dream is one thing- reality is quite something else, and it has been a learning curve.

One of the things we most wanted to do was to try to fit in. Standing out as foreigners didn’t really appeal, and we all wanted to not only embrace the whole concept of the American life, but we wanted America to embrace us too. When in Rome.. and all that. So we all tried hard to understand the local customs, the traditional activities, and even the food. My wife and I both love cooking, and to us food is very important.

For many years we’ve been very happy to cook traditional British recipes, everything from Fish and Chips to the old Spotted Dick. But now we were in the US we wanted to introduce our family to traditional US recipes. At first we were slightly stumped, knowing that we couldn’t very well feed our kids on steak and chips every day. What we needed to do was to find out as much as we could about healthy, delicious recipes we could enjoy making in our new home.

So we spent quite a while trying to identify just what makes a traditional US recipe. We were looking for recipes that were very much part of America, taking in its history and culture as well as local foods and popular dishes. We had started making a lot of friends, and wanted to be able to offer them local recipes and typical US meals, not so much to make them feel at home, but to help them feel that we were trying to feel at home ourselves.

Another reason we were keen to find some good recipes was that the weather was somewhat chilly. With the winter looming we wanted to find some warming recipes we could enjoy, and which would keep us going. Our main port of call was the internet, where we came across a fantastic Navy Bean Soup recipe, very traditional. On the same website we found a Ham Navy Bean Soup recipe as well, and so we downloaded them and tried them out.

Well, our first attempt at following the Navy Bean Soup recipe was, though I say so myself, superb. The whole family loved it, including our kids. We tried the Ham Navy Bean Soup recipe shortly afterwards, and this went down a treat too. Mind you, it was all very well having two successful dishes to our repertoire, but this might become somewhat tedious over time. However, I had another look at the website we got the Navy Bean Soup recipe from, and had quite a surprise.

When I had another look at the website where the Ham Navy Bean Soup recipe was from I was amazed. I found two hundred similarly enticing recipes available – all traditional US recipes, easy to follow and definitely enough to get my mouth watering. But more than this – the whole pack of two hundred downloadable recipes were available for just $10.

To be honest, $10 doesn’t get a lot these days, I couldn’t even buy a hot dog and chips for my family for that. But now we have a stack of two hundred fantastic recipes, all as successful as our first Navy Bean Soup recipe. We certainly don’t run out of ideas now, and not only are our children delighted, and very happy, but we seem to have acquired something of a reputation in our neighbourhood, but at least we have a great many new friends!