The Impossible Tale of the Bean Burger

When I called my mother to ask for the recipe, the silence on the other end lasted long enough for me to wonder if we’d been disconnected.

Then: “Why?”

Not the warm, nostalgic why you’d expect when someone asks about a childhood favorite. This is why it carried the weight of confusion, maybe even a little horror.

“It’s one of my favorite memories from childhood,” I said, already sensing I’d stumbled into unexpected territory. “I want to make them again.”

Another pause. Then my mother’s voice, quieter now, caught somewhere between disbelief and amusement: “Honey, we made those because we didn’t have ground beef. We made them out of pure necessity.”

And just like that, a beloved childhood memory revealed itself to be something else entirely.

She went on, her tone shifting to something almost apologetic. “Your Aunt Tootles—Juanita—she’s the one who came up with it. We were broke. Your father was… well, you remember. We had to make do with whatever was in the pantry.”

I did remember. Sort of. But not the way she remembered.

What she recalled as desperation, I remembered as magic.

Growing up, I didn’t know we were poor. I knew my father was gone a lot—in and out of places we didn’t talk about at the dinner table. I knew the pantry was small and the choices were limited. I knew my mother’s face sometimes looked tired in a way that went deeper than needing sleep.

But I didn’t know those things added up to poor.

To me, being poor was something that happened to other people—people in movies or in faraway places. We had a roof, a table, and each other. We had Aunt Tootles stopping by with her loud laugh and her knack for turning nothing into something. We had bean burgers.

And bean burgers, to a kid who didn’t know any better, were a delicacy.

The process was simple, almost ritualistic:

One pack of hamburger buns

One can of pork and beans (or leftover baked beans if we had them)

A pack of bacon

Cheese slices

Heat the beans until they bubble and thicken. Scoop them generously onto each bun—no skimping, Aunt Tootles would say, as if we were serving royalty. Lay a slice of cheese over the top, then crown it with strips of bacon, half-cooked and floppy. Slide the whole tray into the oven on broil and wait, the kitchen filling with the smell of crisping bacon and caramelizing sweetness.

When they came out—golden, bubbling, edges of the buns just starting to toast—they looked like something you’d order at a diner. They tasted like comfort, as someone cared enough to make something special out of what little we had.

I didn’t know then that “what little we had” was the point.

To my child-self, bean burgers weren’t about what we didn’t have. They were about what we did: the sizzle of bacon, the gooey stretch of melted cheese, the sweet, savory warmth of beans soaking into soft bread. They were Saturday nights at the table, bellies full, laughter spilling over whatever ridiculous thing Aunt Tootles had said.

They were the taste of being loved in a language I didn’t yet know how to translate.

My mother, of course, saw it differently. She saw a can of beans standing in for ground beef because the grocery budget didn’t stretch far enough. She saw bacon bought on sale, and cheese slices counted out carefully. She saw the creativity born not from inspiration but from desperation—a recipe invented because the alternative was admitting we couldn’t afford what everyone else took for granted.

She saw shame where I saw ingenuity. She saw lack where I saw abundance.

And maybe that’s the impossible part of this tale.

Now, as an adult, I understand both sides. I see the struggle she carried, the weight of making meals out of almost nothing and hoping her kids didn’t notice. I see Aunt Tootles—bless her heart—turning poverty into poetry, one can of beans at a time.

But I also see the truth I lived as a child: that love doesn’t need expensive ingredients. That comfort doesn’t require a full pantry that some of the best meals are born not from abundance but from the stubborn refusal to let hardship steal joy from the table.

When I made bean burgers for my beloved niece and nephews, they looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

“Beans? On a burger bun?”

I just smiled and slid the tray into the oven, watching the cheese begin to melt, the bacon start to crisp. The smell filled the kitchen—familiar, warm, impossibly comforting.

They took cautious first bites. Then bigger ones. Then they stopped talking altogether, which is the highest compliment a kid can give.

“These are good,” my niece said, surprised.

“They’re weird,” my great nephew added. “But good-weird.”

I didn’t tell them the story behind the recipe. Not yet. That can wait for when they’re older, when they can understand the alchemy of turning necessity into a feast, of making magic out of whatever’s left in the pantry.

For now, I just let them eat.

Because that’s what Aunt Tootles and my mother gave me all those years ago, even if they didn’t realize it: not just a meal, but a lesson.

That creativity lives in constraint. That love shows up even—especially—when resources run thin. That some of the best things we carry forward aren’t the ones that came easily.

My mother laughed when I told her the kids loved them.

“Well,” she said, her voice softening, “I guess Tootles knew what she was doing after all.”

“She really did,” I said.

And in that moment, I realized something: the bean burger was never about the beans, the bacon, or even the budget.

It was about the refusal to let hardship have the final say. It was about women who turned scarcity into a feast. It was about a table that, no matter how bare, always held enough.

So here’s to the bean burger—impossible, unlikely, born of nothing, and somehow unforgettable.

May we all be so lucky to taste love in such unexpected packages.