Casserole of Slow-Cooked Calypso Beans with Orange and Onion

This was one of two recipes that I wanted to make from the very first time I flipped through this book (the other was Ned's Firey Oven French Bakes). I imagined it was more of an all-in-one meal. It is clearly a bean dish (hence its location in the bean chapter) so it needs a little something with it. We had corn bread muffins. But the beans - great! They are sweet and tangy with just a hint of an after-kick. CD is right about being heavy handed with the black pepper - it even out the sweet so that your dinner doesn't end up being too sweet. I may very well make this for my family's Thanksgiving dinner. We shall see. I used Great Northern beans in lieu of Calypso to no great detriment. I should have used our huge, oval slow cooker though so that all the onions could saute at once. Our smaller, round one only let some cook at once, meaning that the onions were quite strong and I cooked the beans the full 4 hours to even that out. But they were great. I even used the leftover orange concentrate as a glaze (as CD recommends in Dairy Hollow Soup and Bread) on the muffins. Fantastic if a bit over kill on the sweet orange. My sweetheart has renamed these "Apple Beans" since he thinks they taste like apple (despite the healthy dose of orange juice concentrate). Oh well, at least he liked them!