Brenda's Black Bean Soup

* (if you used a sweet orange or tangerine) Put your beans in a soup pot and cover with water.

Boil, take off the fire and let sit until cool. Cook onions and bell peppers in 1/2 the oleo until limp. Add them and the ham hocks and orange to the cooled beans; cover charitably with water.

Simmer until beans is soft (1 to 2 hours). Fish out the orange right now, before it gets tore up. With the rest of the oleo, brown the flour in a black frying pan, then stir it into the beans.

Brenda says: "Make sure you got a soup, now. If you need to add some more water, do it." From "White Trash Cooking", Ernest Matthew Mickler. Ten Speed Press, 1986. ISBN 0-89815-189-9.