No reference….all Hoosiers are born intrinsically knowing how to eat anything made with pork or corn:

Dried Great Northern Beans (last night I used Navy, which I like, but less so for this recipe.  They are stiffer and smaller.  I like larger, more prone to mush beans for this recipe)

Slab o’ ham.  Any slab will do.

Two boxes of jiffy cornbread..and call me crazy, but I simply can’t find a cornbread mix I like better than Jiffy.  Cheap and easy little boxes of Jiffy…go figure.  It’s corn.  Don’t make it harder than that.

Soak the beans in about 3 inches of water overnight.  I usually start them on a low simmer in my stockpot around noon.  If you drain off your soaking water, you’ll get rid of the chemicals in beans that lead to gas.  I’m just sayin’…simmer in fresh water.

Around the last hour of cooking, I throw in the chopped up ham and start to salt and pepper and taste.  We eat somewhere between 5 and 6.  Honestly, all beans go soft in their own time.  I never know when they’ve cooked enough, so I just sit down to eat when I’m hungry.

The secret to my cornbread: mix two boxes of Jiffy as directed and add vanilla.  I don’t know how much I add…I just throw some in.  I pour it into a cast iron skillet coated with a bit of Pam.  I bake it right in the skillet.  I cut it up like slices of pie (because who doesn’t like pie), cover it in butter, and then put pieces in my big mug of ham and beans so that I get it all in my mouth at once.  If crumbling a bread product into my pork dinner doesn’t make me a Hoosier, then I give up.