The hunt for beanz

The nearest major city to where I now live is Boston. Boston is famous for many things - in Britain it's famous for its Tea Party. The Tea Act of 1773 allowed the East India Company to undercut everyone else in their price for tea - even tea smugglers who evaded import duties. This resulted in patriots in Boston throwing a lot of tea out of a ship and into Boston harbour (harbor).
But that's only one of the things that Americans think of when they think of Boston. I don't know for sure, but I reckon baked beans would be a close second.
And as a Brit living in New England, that sounds like a great thing. Baked beans are very popular in England.
But... There is a very big "but" coming up. When you try the beans in a New England household, they taste gross. The sauce is thicker, the colour is too dark, the flavour is just wrong.

The taste

When you look at the ingredients on a can of American beans, you realise that they contain molasses (an approximation of British treacle) and pork!

As with a lot of my disappointments when it comes to things I think I know about, it turns out that Americans had beans this way before the British inherited them from Heinz in 1904. It may even be that the recipe we know and love today is only a result of Second World War rationing.

The last time my wife and I went to the local supermarket (I need to share how we chose our supermarket at some point in the future) we tried to find Heinz beans. There were none. Shelves and shelves of Bush's brand beans and not a single can of Heinz (or Branston).

Heinz is an American brand. It's based in Pittsburgh, which is about as American as I can imagine. But they struggle to get shelf-space alongside the Bush brand, which is not an international brand. We Googled UK Heinz baked beans and they are super expensive on Amazon.com.

The reveal

I have told you a white lie. We did find a can of Heinz beans, but there was just one kind, labelled "Vegetarian", as if that is something they need to say.

The beans were reasonably priced and tasted nearly the same.