It's Bean Soup

I am cooking today....for the family...and I decided to do a thick Greek bean soup - phasoulada - those big white beans in an olive-oil tomato sauce...mmmmmmmm. One of my absolute favourites. I don't actually know if my kids like it - you know what kids are like, they say they like something, you cook it and then they don't want it....aaaarrrgggghhhhhh! So today I am pleasing myself.
I love beans. I fell in love with them via Mr Heinz and his 57 varieties as a kid. Heinz Baked Beans...mmmmm. I also learned the word "impair" from reading the tin..."do not boil as this impairs the flavour". Yes, sir!!
My mother always used to tell everyone how I went through a phase as a kid when I would ONLY eat baked beans. I remember having beans on bread and butter - a kind of baked bean sandwich - for breakfast and beans on toast for lunch...and for dinner beans on beans.
Six weeks that lasted.
No wonder I had a desk to myself at school, because there is one inescapable thing about eating beans...one thing your love affair with them has to put up with...they don't half make you fart.
And phasoulada is the same. It starts maybe 3 or 4 hours after you have eaten...that kind of bubbly feeling in your stomach and once it starts....well, it's windows open and put on reinforced underwear.
I learned a way to avoid this from a Greek girl I knew when I lived in Ioannina...she said if you put carrots into the soup it reduces the gas production....well, I have put a few carrots into this soup so we will see...

There is also the bean joke...what my kids not unreasonably would call, "oh-god,-one-of-daddy's-awful jokes"...
Man to waiter: Waiter, what is this!!!
Waiter to man: Why, it's bean soup, sir!
Man to waiter: I don't care what is has been, what is it now!

I'll get my coat...